I rushed out last night’s posting about the “50+” artists in my iTunes library without mentioning a few points that I’d noticed.
First – and rather obviously – the artists with the largest numbers have been very prolific, which takes time: I’ve been listening to most of them for many years. I was surprised to find that there’s only one whom I started to follow since the turn of the century: Robbie Williams.
The second thing that struck me about the list was how English (or, more accurately, British) it is. Of the 40 that qualified, 24 are originally from the UK, 12 from the USA, 3 from Canada, and 1 from Ireland. In fact 12 of the first 13 artists hail from the UK, although the Legendary Pink Dots have lived in Holland for many years, and Al Stewart is comfortably ensconced in Southern California with his wine cellar. Clearly I’m still very much a Brit, even though the “expat” phase will soon exceed the original.
Finally, this collection of “50+” artists accounts for just about 31% of my total library – 4,657 tracks out of 15,031.