I thought I’d use the Philly Music Hackday as a chance to dive into the Echonest API and get my hands wet with D3.js. The charts below look at the valence (roughly = mood) and energy of the number 1 charting singles on May 20th from 1941 to 2013.
The “happiest” songs are those with high energy and high valence. The valence and energy numbers are added for the first chart. This assumes equal weighting between valence and energy, and I’m not sure that’s the case, but it is a start. The dip in the middle of the chart is Roberta Flack’s 1972 hit, “The First Time I Saw You Face“.
The second chart breaks down results by decade. Most decades have at least one outlier, but there is definitely a trend up and towards the right since 1990.
I had a great time at the hackathon and am looking forward to doing more with both the D3 and Echonest libraries.