The Monday Media Diet with Chris Dalla Riva

On Jay Winik’s 1861: The Lost Peace, Solothurn, Switzerland, and Brendan Varan's Good Stuff

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Chris Dalla Riva has been doing a lot of interesting work at the intersection of music and data. Be sure to buy his new book: Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. -Colin (CJN)

Tell us about yourself.

My entire life is mostly consumed by music. I’ve been playing in bands and writing songs since I was a teenager. I work on data and personalization for the music streaming service Audiomack. I also write a popular newsletter about music and data called Can’t Get Much Higher and talk about much the same to my 100k followers on TikTok.

All of this culminated in me gearing up to put out my first book this fall. It’s called Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music that I wrote as I spent years listening to every number one hit song ever. I actually built a huge dataset about all of those songs that I made available to the public.

Describe your media diet.

I feel somewhat old-fashioned in that most of my media consumption is still in print rather than video or audio. I have subscriptions to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker, so I feel like I get most of my news from those sources, with a special focus on the first two. As a magazine, The New Yorker is obviously a better source for analysis and long-reads than breaking news.

For that matter, I think I prefer articles from The New Yorker that are about things outside the current focus of major news organizations. Over the last few months, they’ve had great pieces on the Pope’s astronomer, a possible cure for progeria, and oddities unearthed by the proliferation of DNA testing.

Outside of legacy media, newsletters are a big part of my weekly media routine. Casey Lewis does great coverage of youth trends. Walt Hickey has a fun newsletter about numerically-focused news. Embedded is my go-to for online culture. Ross Barkan also has incredible NYC-area analysis. Unfortunately, I still also get a lot of news from Twitter. I would prefer to use another social media site, but even in its degraded form, I don’t think anyone else has built a better product.

What’s the last great book you read?

Since I wrote a book about the history of popular music, I naturally had to read more than any human should about the history of popular music. When I submitted my manuscript, I asked my Instagram followers to recommend me books that had nothing to do with music. This sent me in a million different directions, some good (e.g., Yellowface by R. F. Kuang) and some bad (e.g., The Housemaid by Freida McFadden).

No recommendation came as close to being as good as Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, though. That’s one of those books you read that make you think every other writer is doing it wrong. Not only is the plot gripping, but the writing is magical. I know it’s a huge book, but it is well worth your time.

What are you reading now?

I’m still churning through a bunch of stuff that people recommended on Instagram. Right now, I’m in the middle of Jay Winik’s 1861: The Lost Peace, a very digestible work about the lead-up to the Civil War and the last ditch efforts to prevent it. I’m halfway through a collection of Emily Dickinson’s poems. I have a copy of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us on my kitchen table because one of my followers said it was a travesty that I’d never read any of her books. (I’m not looking forward to it.)

And as I was writing this paragraph, I got a notification from the Hoboken Public Library that they have a copy of Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams for me. I have no idea what it’s about. I think someone recommended it on TikTok. The cover is pretty arresting.

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

I get copies of The New Yorker, Tape Op (music magazine), and the weekend New York Times in print. For the first two, I usually just start at the table of contents and see if anything grabs me. (I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but judging a story by its headline is fair game.) For the Times, I typically look through the book review, magazine, cooking, and games before I even think about the news. I feel silly saying that, but it’s a good reminder that bundling lots of services is a great reason we turn to news organizations, print or not. I think many digital publications would benefit from remembering that.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article that attempted to use data to unearth the most underrated song of the 1980s. Afterwards, I got an email from a Rex Evans asking about my methodology and if he could see the data. I obliged. He later told me that he has a newsletter with 9 subscribers. I thought that was a shame! He writes short pieces about odd ideas that cross his mind. I thought it was kooky but compelling.

Brendan Varan also has a great newsletter called Good Stuff where he recommends – for lack of a better term – good stuff. It’s a great place to find out what you should be eating, watching, and listening to.

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone?

Spread. It’s a new social media app for sharing media. It’s inherently non-toxic because all you can do is share or react. If you want to yell at someone, you need to go to a different app. So, it’s a great way to find things to read, watch, and listen to. Additionally, they have agreements with some major publishers, like The Atlantic and The New Yorker, that let you bypass their paywalls if you access their articles through the Spread app.

Plane or train?

Living just outside of New York City, I technically live in the most train-connected part of the United States. Still, NJ Transit and the PATH system constantly leave me disappointed. If the train works, I love it. It’s the most poetic way to travel. Planes obviously make more sense for longer distances, though.

What is one place everyone should visit?

Solothurn, Switzerland. It’s a very small-ish town in northern Switzerland. I ended up there because my fiancée had to go for work. While she was collecting her paycheck, I spent a relaxing day by myself in a place I would never have gone otherwise. I won’t claim there are any crazy sights to see, but sometimes it’s nice to wander around a place you’d never heard of before.

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

Most editions of my newsletter are about rabbit holes that I’ve fallen into. Maybe my favorite thing I’ve ever written – and the deepest rabbit hole I’ve gotten trapped in – was investigating my grandmother’s claim that Frank Sinatra performed at her high school. My grandmother had died by the time I did this, but trying to figure this out required digging through newspaper archives, speaking with Frank Sinatra experts, and bothering scores of strangers on Facebook. I won’t spoil the ending, but it was a wild ride.