“The Most Timeless Songs Of All Time”

This is a story about proving, with data, that “No Diggity” by Blackstreet is timeless.

Until recently, it was impossible to measure the popularity of older music. Billboard charts and album sales only tell us about a song’s popularity at the time of its release.

But now we have Spotify, a buffet of all of music, new and old. Tracks with fewer plays are fading into obscurity. And those with more plays are remaining in the cultural ether.

20 years have passed since “No Diggity”’s release. Its popularity on Spotify, relative to every other song from the 90s, is a strong signal for whether it will be remembered by our children’s children. So let’s examine every song that ever charted, 1990–1999, and rank them by number of plays on Spotify, today.

The concept of “timelessness” is one I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, particularly as we enter the resurgence of cultural trends that were popular when I was little: flared jeans, nü metal, Clintons. I read once that trend cycles work on 20 and 40-year delays, which is why so many decades are infused with the trends that came before them. For example, the ’90s totally had a ’70s moment, and the pre-recession part of the ’00s was infused with the greed-is-good aesthetic of the ’80s, and now as we move solidly into the second decade of this century we’re looping back around to the ‘90s.

Trying to capture a decade through music is a fun exercise, as this Polygraph study does, specifically because sound is so much like smell when it comes to our memories: it seems to call up a memory or feeling without any effort on our part, even against our will! I would love to be able to divorce myself from the memories that “Wonderwall” pulls up but that is just not how brains or songs work.

I’m particularly interested in the way the most popular artifacts of a time don’t translate to our memories; like, sure in 1991 Vanessa Williams was more popular than Nirvana, but Nirvana time traveled more successfully. Sadness, tragedy, catchy lyrics: these are the qualities necessary for the kind of popular ubiquity that gets you a t-shirt at Urban Outfitters. That’s not a criticism! It’s a testament to how well certain bands and songs and public figures can leap between decades and trend cycles so that new people can find them at every turn. It makes the future seem like a funny game: what song could possibly be waiting to greet me in 20 years? Only time will tell!!