Defining the greatest albums of all time

Rolling Stone published a list in 2003 that ranked the 500 greatest albums of all time. The list was updated in 2020, and there was a lot of change. For The Pudding, Chris Dalla Riva and Matthew Daniels delve into the shift and ask what makes an album the greatest.

A lot of the differences appear to stem from who does the ranking, which makes for a good polling and statistical accuracy example.

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Diva-ness of national anthem renditions

You’ve probably heard various renditions of The Star-Spangled Banner, and sometimes singers put a little extra something in the anthem. A bit of flourish. Some attitude. For The Pudding, Jan Diehm and Michelle McGhee quantified that extra something into what they’ve dubbed a Diva Score.

Out of the 138 versions they scored, the highest belong to Chaka Khan at the 2020 NBA All-Star game and Patti Labelle at the 2008 World Series.

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Analysis of romance novel covers

When I was a kid, I remember uncomfortably walking past the book section at a grocery store where I would see a bunch of books with a muscular man, probably Fabio, clutching to a woman as he looked deeply into her eyes. Times have changed. For The Pudding, Alice Liang analyzed the shifting style of the romance novel cover.

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Clock plays a song with the current time in its title

For The Pudding, Russell Samora pulled songs via the Spotify API and made a unique kind of clock:

Every minute, random songs are played that contain the time in the title (e.g., 6:47 or 6:47 from Central Station). If there are at least two songs with the correct am/pm (or it is absent), then the incorrect ones will be excluded.

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Rarity of songwriters who are women for popular songs

It’s common to see singers who are women, but the people who write the songs that end up in the Billboard Hot 100 are still mostly men. For The Pudding, Chris Dalla Riva, with design by Ashley Cai, highlights the rarity of women on songwriting teams over the past decade.

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Astericking NBA champions

It seems to have grown more common for basketball fans to complain that whoever wins the championship didn’t have to go through a legitimate challenge. If so and so wasn’t injured on the opposing team, so the naysayers claim, then such and such team wouldn’t have won. For The Pudding, Russell Samora made it easier to whine, based on an aptly named metric called CRUTCH.

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A moving drumbeat, explained visually

When you first learn to play music, a lot of the instruction is about structure. Turn the metronome on and follow the beats straight up. James Dewitt Yancey, also known as J Dilla, shifted the beats for a different feel and sound. This piece, by Michelle McGhee for The Pudding, demonstrates this difference.

Turn the sound on and press the buttons. It’s neat to hear the breakdown of the rhythm as you walk through the styles.

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A visual story about kimchi and family

Alvin Chang, for The Pudding, illustrated the search for his kimchi, which is a metaphor for other things. Interact with the items in the story and be sure to turn the sound on. There are charts tucked away for historical context.

Many of my best memories throughout life are tied to food, so this one struck home for me.

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A geolocation game in the format of Wordle

With a cross between the games Wordle and GeoGuessr, Russell Samora for The Pudding made a daily game that challenges you to geolocate a place based on images of the place from Wikimedia Commons. You get five guesses to click on a map, and after each guess you get a new image and the number of miles you were off.

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Among cities with the same name, which one people are probably talking about given their location

Throughout the United States, there are a surprising number of cities that have the same name. In fact, after playing with this interactive map by Russell Samora for The Pudding, it seems more likely that cities share a name with another than not. (Don’t quote me on that.)

The question is: When someone mentions a city, which one are they talking about? Samora calculated the likelihoods, given the county that person lives in. For example, when someone refers to Buffalo, most people are probably talking about Buffalo, New York. If you live in Buffalo, Kentucky, then probably not.

You can also mess around with your likelihood metric here.

See also: street names across the country.

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