billboard

Listening to the Planets: Planetary Archetypes in the Billboard Top 100 Songs of All Time.

Listening to the Planets: Planetary Archetypes in the Billboard Top 100 Songs of All Time.

Using various Billboard rankings, I’ve cobbled together a short list of recognizable songs that I believe correspond quite nicely to planetary archetypes, both in obvious and subtle ways. Music has been a profound source of human storytelling since time immemorial. The planets are like characters, each coming forth with a different set of motives and messages. Songs therefore become narrative. We can not only find our stories reflected back to us in the most pervasive of pop hits but can also learn of and relate to the stories of others.