Hello, my name is Colin Munroe
I’m starting this Substack because I want to share a project I've been working on for the past seven years. The project has now reached a stage of maturity worth sharing, and I hope that by sharing it, I can continue developing it for the foreseeable future.
Around 2016 I started to analyze and catalogue 50+ musical properties of every song that appears in the Hot 100 chart. Properties of the composition, performances, instrumentation and production; all with the intent of gathering a deeper understanding of popular music. Beginning in those years, I sat down at the start of every morning to listen, analyze and catalogue. And so it has been almost every morning since. With the help of a fellow musician and dear friend currently working at Microsoft and fluent in data analysis, the architecture of the database began to take shape and grow. But the core of the process has been my daily morning analysis. It has become a part of my routine and an almost meditative-like practice that serves not only to grow the mass of data and scratch the itch of my original curiosity, but to help make sense of my own relationship to music in a life and career that has been devoted to it.
For anyone that doesn’t know me, I began my career as an artist who wrote, produced and recorded my own material. That lead to collaborations with legendary figures (Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and many others) two major label record deals, (first Motown, then Capitol) a publishing deal (EMI now Sony) and all the attendant excesses and adventures you probably assume come with such a life. In later years, my focus shifted to writing and producing for others as well as helping to develop and sign new artists. I have worked with and continue to work with some of the top writers, producers and artists in the business. If you want more details on this part of my life you can find it here: colinmunroe.me
What this substack will be
Primarily, it will be where I share this data. There is enough of it in complete form now (late 2020 - present plus some partial data from 2016 - 2019) that I think it can be reliably mined for relevant and applicable insights. I’ve been working with ChatGPT, designing my own GPT system to analyze and explore the data.
I’ll be writing articles with charts, graphs and anything else that might emerge from the data as interesting. Obviously, given the nature of the data and my sphere of expertise, the focus will be on aspects of songwriting and production. These will likely be things mostly relevant to other writers, producers and anyone interested in the nuts and bolts of popular music. But I expect it will often bleed into matters of culture, fashion, maybe even politics.
In addition, I’ll be using this space to process some personal and profession insights from my experiences in the music industry. Having lived and worked through the mixtape era, the streaming era and now into whatever this is turning into, I have some thoughts. And a few stories!
From there, who knows. I may grow this into a space to collaborate both musically and on any matters this unique pool of data may be able to illuminate! For now this is where it begins.
