History Archive

Most Successful Songwriters: 1890-2008 and 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s

By Dan Zambonini, June 5, 2010, 9:34 pm in History, Music, Past

Most successful Billboard songwriters from 1890-2008

The Whitburn Project is an informal group that collects data about all songs in the Billboard chart, and has amassed a huge amount of information from 1890 onwards. The data is a little inconsistent (due to the nature of mass collaboration) and isn’t 100% complete, but it still allows for some interesting analysis.

Here we present the most successful songwriters of all time and per decade (from the 60s onwards), according to this data. Note that inconsistencies may result in some songwriters having their data split across multiple spellings of their name, e.g. Timbaland may appear as both Tim Mosley and T.V. Mosley in the 2000s chart.

Most successful Billboard songwriters from the 1960s

Most successful Billboard songwriters from the 1970s

Most successful Billboard songwriters from the 1980s

Most successful Billboard songwriters from the 1990s

Most successful Billboard songwriters from the 2000s (to 2008)

Source Data

Song Writer Writing Credits
1890-2008
Babyface 94
Gerry Goffin 96
Eddie Holland Jr. 97
Carole King 99
Brian Holland 102
Lamont Dozier 105
Burt Bacharach 105
Hal David 111
John Lennon 127
Paul McCartney 141
1960s
William “Smokey” Robinson 61
Carole King 67
Eddie Holland Jr. 73
Lamont Dozier 74
Brian Holland 74
Burt Bacharach 76
Gerry Goffin 76
Hal David 79
John Lennon 86
Paul McCartney 86
1970s
Brian Holland 28
Neil Diamond 28
Robin Gibb 28
James Brown 31
Lamont Dozier 31
Carole King 32
Norman Whitfield 34
John Lennon 38
Barry Gibb 39
Kenny Gamble 47
Leon Huff 48
Paul McCartney 52
1980s
B.Springsteen 14
B.Taupin 15
H.Knight 15
J.Vallance 15
D.Child 17
Babyface 18
D.Warren 19
*Prince Symbol* 20
D.Foster 22
J.Harris III 26
T.Lewis 27
1990s
Madonna 21
L.A.Reid 21
R.Kelly 21
D.Simmons 25
T.Riley 26
*Prince Symbol* 26
J.Harris III 45
T.Lewis 45
D.Warren 47
Babyface 69
2000s
A.Thiam 17
Jermaine Dupri 17
Marshall Mathers 17
S.Smith 19
T.E.Hermansen 19
J.Dupri 20
T.V.Mosley 25
S.Garrett 26
Tim Mosley 28
Pharrell Williams 28
Chad Hugo 35
R. Kelly 37
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Why are the East of Cities usually Poorer?

By Dan Zambonini, May 31, 2010, 1:10 am in Architecture, Culture, History, Past

Smoke / Pollution

Many older cities rapidly expanded during the Industrial Revolution, as workers flocked to the urban centers. As the towns and cities expanded, the residential areas for the workers tended to be in the east, with the middle and upper-classes in the west.

The reason for this is that in much of the northern hemisphere, the prevailing winds are westerlies – blowing from west to east. The massive, unchecked pollution from these early industries would therefore drift eastward, making the air quality much lower in the east end of cities, lowering the desirability (and price) of the housing. Middle classes preferred the cleaner west ends.

The issue was probably even pre-Industrial Revolution, as smoke from personal chimneys would still have caused problems to the east.

In many cities, this will have been compounded – or confused – by the direction of the main river in the environment, which would have been relied on for many uses, including sewerage. London, as an example, displays a massive east/west divide, caused in large part by both early industry and the west-to-east flow of the River Thames.

Smoke image under Creative Commons license, by Flickr user Señor Codo

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Hard Men/Soft Deaths – Wyatt Earp

By Amy Thibodeau, May 8, 2010, 11:59 pm in Culture, History, Past

Despite the expression “what comes around, goes around” there are a group of outlaws who had surprisingly soft endings, despite having lived extremely hard, dangerous and, in most cases, crime ridden lives.

During his eighty years of life, Wyatt Earp earned the reputation as one of the most fearsome cowboys in the West. Fluctuating between legitimate lawmaker and criminal, Earp’s claim to fame is his participation in the famous gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona and his ongoing series of vendettas, most notably the Earp Vendetta, also referred to as the Arizona war. At various points in his career, Earp also worked as a “farmer, teamster, buffalo hunter, gambler, saloon-keeper, minder and boxing referee.” (source)

There are conflicting records of how many people Earp killed during his wild old days, but there are some records that place the number somewhere between eight and over thirty (source):

  • Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 1900: “Wyatt Earp is credited with ten men, one of them his own brother-in-law.”
  • G. W. Caldwell in the introduction to his interview with Wyatt, 1888: “[Wyatt Earp] Has killed more than a dozen stage robbers, murderers, and cattle thieves.”
  • Los Angeles Tribune, July 1888: “[Wyatt] Earp has a cemetery which he has stocked with over 30 men, and no one seemed desirous of questioning his word.”

Despite his life of debauchery, Earp had a rather peaceful death in Hollywood where, at the age of 80, he died at home of prostate cancer (though the actual cause of death isn’t confirmed) with his common law wife at his side. He had a proper funeral with Hollywood Western actors serving as his pallbearers and was cremated and buried in California. When his wife Josie died nearly twenty years later, she was also cremated, her ashes buried next to those of Wyatt Earp. He never returned to Arizona after the battle at the OK Corral.

Image Credit: Richard Beal’s Blog

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Why Are Post-it Notes Yellow?

By Dan Zambonini, February 25, 2010, 8:27 pm in Business, Design, History, Present

A thought occurred to me as I stared at the Post-it notes on my desk: why are they yellow? I turned to Google, but could find no answer on the web. On the off-chance, I decided to ask 3M – inventors of the Post-it – via Twitter.

After much effort on their part, I received a detailed response via email, which included a transcription of an interview that had been conducted to specifically answer my question:

TRANSCRIPT OF DISCUSSION BETWEEN HUGH MURPHY (BUSINESS MANAGER, E-CHANNELS) AND DR GEOFF NICHOLSON (RETIRED, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT TECHNICAL OPERATIONS), 3M RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
(23rd February 2010)
HM: Why were Post-it Notes originally yellow?
GN: “Great question – fantastic question. “
“Guess what – we were in the labs and if you imagine, this is my lab here, and then there’s a corridor, and then there’s another lab. They happened to have some scrap yellow paper – laughs – it’s absolutely true. “
“Now afterwards we had a lot of people who said well it’s got a good emotional connection or…” (pauses) “that’s a load of … whatever.”
“They had some scrap yellow paper – that’s why they were yellow; and when we went back and said ‘hey guys, you got any more scrap yellow paper?’ they said ‘you want any more go buy it yourself’, and that’s what we did, and that’s why they were yellow.”
“To me it was another one of those incredible accidents. It was not thought out; nobody said they’d better be yellow rather than white because they would blend in - it was a pure accident.”
“Just like the adhesive was a pure accident. They are the best kinds of accidents to have, but you have to recognise it – which we did.”
HM: “So who actually invented the Post-it note?”
GN: “There were three people. Spence Silver invented the adhesive by accident. He was trying to make – he was in the business of trying to make stronger better adhesives to stick aeroplanes together –  and we do stick aeroplanes together.”
“He came to my office about 48 hours after I joined the commercial tapes division from the overhead projectors part of the business.”
“I’d been made the new products laboratory manager, and they hadn’t had any new products in about 15 years. They hadn’t had a new product since magic tape, and magic tape was about 15 years old.”
“So he knocked on my door. There were two guys – Spence Silver and another guy called Bob Oliveira. They had discovered this adhesive in 1968 – that’s when the patent was filed – and here we are five years later in 1973.”
“He’s saying ‘Geoff would you be interested in this adhesive?’ And I said yes. Why? Because I’m naïve – I’m naïve about adhesives. I don’t know much about it. And I also believe a certain naivety is important. He asked me if I was interested.”
“He had been trying for 5 years to get any business unit interested in this adhesive so he gave me samples and we started playing with things and we started making bulletin boards. “
“As we were making bulletin boards, and tapes and things like that, another guy who worked for me was Art Fry. He was making tapes for skis – ski tape – things like book arranging tape- Things that you’d put on a bookshelf and it would hold books in place”.
“And he said ‘why are you putting the adhesive on a bulletin board. Why don’t you put it on a piece of paper and then we can stick it to anything.’”
“You know – and that was the three of us that came good. And I was in a management role primarily to defend and go fighting for it”.
“When you get down to it with innovation – a lot of people are required to make it successful. Marketing sales, even the accountants.”
“But you sometimes have to fight for it – and that’s inevitable in something that changes the basis of competition. People resist change.”

So there you have it. Not just a fascinating piece of history, but evidence of a company that are willing to go above-and-beyond for no immediate profit or benefit to themselves. 3M (and Hugh in particular), you rock.

Post-it image by Flickr user zarprey

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Unorthodox Ships of War

By Dan Zambonini, February 14, 2010, 4:21 pm in History, Past

Concrete Ships forming the Kiptopeke Breakwater

During the First World War, steel shortages forced President Wilson to commission the construction of 24 cement war ships. The war ended less than a year later, at which time the first 12 ships were still under construction. These were eventually completed and sold to private companies. Many of them can now be seen slowly decaying off the coast of the U.S., and one has even been converted to a 10 room hotel off the coast of Cuba.

Almost 25 years later, Geoffrey Pyke recommended the construction of a huge aircraft carrier – the equivalent of a floating island – made from ice and wood pulp, during the Second World War. The material, dubbed Pykrete, possesses incredible tensile strength – more than concrete – at less than half the density. The project, named Habakkuk after a biblical quote (“I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe“), underwent a number of prototypes and tests, from secret lairs under Smithfield Market in London, to Lake Louise in Canada, but was never fully realised due to a number of engineering and cost concerns.

Wikipedia recounts an entertaining anecdote about a demonstration of Pykrete’s strength:

… at the Quebec Conference of 1943, Lord Mountbatten brought a block of Pykrete along to demonstrate its potential to the bevy of admirals and generals who had come along with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mountbatten entered the project meeting with two blocks and placed them on the ground. One was a normal ice block and the other was Pykrete. He then drew his service pistol and shot at the first block. It shattered and splintered. Next, he fired at the Pykrete to give an idea of the resistance of that kind of ice to projectiles. The bullet ricocheted off the block, grazing the trouser leg of Admiral Ernest King and ended up in the wall.

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