What Does the Music of Elton John Look Like?

He goes by many names “Sharon,” “Rocket Man,” and “Hercules” but he was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight. I am, of course, talking about the legendary Elton John. You likely know him one of his nine number 1 hits, 57 top 40 hits, his 6 Grammy awards, or 2 Oscars.

Using data from Spotify's API, this post takes you on a journey through Elton John's music.

First, Elton is an accomplished pianist, what is his favorite key to play in?

Second, what key is Elton Johns' hits written in?

Third, using Spotify's metrics, what does the distribution of his music look like when I turn it into data?

Spotify uses a few metrics to measure its music. These measures include:

1. Acousticness: A confidence measure from 0.0 to 1.0 of whether the track is acoustic.
2. Danceability: Describes how suitable a track is for dancing based on a combination of musical elements including tempo, rhythm stability, beat strength, and overall regularity.
3. Energy: Represents a perceptual measure of intensity and activity. Typically, energetic tracks feel fast, loud, and noisy. For example, death metal has high energy, while a Bach prelude scores low on the scale.
4. Loudness: The overall loudness of a track in decibels (dB). Loudness values are averaged across the entire track and are useful for comparing relative loudness of tracks.
5. Tempo: The overall estimated tempo of a track in beats per minute (BPM). In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece, and derives directly from the average beat duration.
6. Valence: Describes the musical positiveness conveyed by a track. Tracks with high valence sound more positive (e.g. happy, cheerful, euphoric), while tracks with low valence sound more negative (e.g. sad, depressed, angry).

Read more about them here.

Finally, how does Elton John's music compare to other accomplished musicians?

Let's look at the keys other artists like to write in.

Lets see how they compare across Spotify's music metrics