howtowrite3e

Examining Models

INFOGRAPHIC

Nickolay Lamm, The History of Music

Digital artist Nickolay Lamm created this series of infographics first by looking at Billboard’s “Year-End Hot 100” list of songs since 1960. He then tracked the appearance of specific words—love, for example, and kiss—in the most popular songs through 2013, constructing a graphical representation of each word’s use over time. According to Lamm, “Each cell represents a song. The more red a song is, the more often that particular word appears in the song.”

Source: nickolaylamm.com/thoughts/the-history-of-music

Reading the Genre

Question

1. Lamm’s infographics track the occurrence of specific words in pop music over several decades. What other words would you choose to track in this way? What additional information would your words’ infographics provide?

One possible answer might be: lonely, wait, hold. The additional information would show how often words less positively associated with love show up in popular music. Comparing the frequency of those words with the more positive terms might show how optimistic (or not) popular music was about love in a given time period.

Question

2. How well does the design of Lamm’s infographics work? What information is easy to understand, and what could be made more clear? What, if anything, would you change about how the information is displayed?

One possible answer might be: While the design is clear, I would add a version that includes several words at once, with different colors becoming stronger as each word shows up more often. That way, a more direct comparison could be made among three or four words at once.

Question

3. These infographics collectively and individually offer a rhetorical analysis of the language of pop music. What conclusions can you draw about music and/or pop culture based on the infographics? What other evidence can you find to support or refute those conclusions? In other words, how accurate is the information and analysis Lamm provides?

One possible answer might be: One conclusion about pop music might be that our obsession with love has become more about the specific acts associated with it and less about the feelings behind it. The increase in popularity of online dating sites geared towards people with specific tastes supports this conclusion—sites that promise to provide a better match are becoming less popular than those geared towards hooking up.

Question

4. Using Google’s Ngram Viewer, track three of Lamm’s chosen words in books from 1960 through 2008. How does the use of the words in books compare to their use in songs? What do you think might account for this difference?

One possible answer might be: The three words baby, body, and boys show up differently in books than in songs—in part probably because all are used in the context of many situations other than love. Body is more popular by far than either baby or boys, although baby has increased in frequency since 1960.