My Internet: Chris Dalla Riva
The music data analyst and writer counts Gotye as a subscriber.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Every other Wednesday we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.
Today we welcome Chris Dalla Riva, who writes data-driven analysis of musical trends in his newsletter, Can’t Get Much Higher, and works at the the streaming service Audiomack. His first book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves, is out this fall on Bloomsbury. Chris listens to podcasts on Mondays and relies on people for recommendations more than algorithms, even though part of his job is working on recommendation algorithms. —Nick
EMBEDDED: Do you tweet? Why?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: Though I am mostly a lurker on Twitter, liking and reposting endlessly, I also tweet from time to time. As most people seem to say, Twitter isn’t what it used to be. But despite the degradation of certain parts of the service, I still haven’t been able to find a suitable alternative. So, for now, I will continue to repost niche music memes and write long threads about the worst songs of all-time.
EMBEDDED: Do you post on Bluesky, Threads, or Substack’s Notes? Why?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: I am not active on Bluesky or Threads. I don’t think they are any better than the degraded Twitter, though I would love it if they were. I am active on Substack Notes, as that’s where my newsletter exists.
I think Notes is a relatively joyful network that is great for staying in whatever bubble you enjoy. I don’t think it’s great for finding stuff slightly outside of your main interests. Like, yes, I mostly post about music, but I enjoy some sports content from time to time. The old Twitter was good about knowing that. Notes isn’t. Nevertheless, I’ll continue to post my stray thoughts about Netflix and couches and the postal service there too.
EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: Though I promote some of my writing on Instagram, I tend to mostly use it to share photos of my life with friends. Honestly, given changes to the platform, I find myself using stories more often than Reels or the regular feed. But that’s mostly because they’ve made the regular feed close to useless.
EMBEDDED: Will you miss TikTok if it is eventually banned, and if so, what will you miss most about it?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: I have 100k followers on TikTok, so I will miss having access to the audience if the platform is banned. At the same time, I would feel relieved if it were banned. You have to be on TikTok all the time if you want to grow a following. Plus, the following doesn’t even matter. Every post is a lottery ticket. I could have a post with 5 million views and then another with 2,000 even if the quality is the same. Follower counts are almost pointless. We live and die by the algorithm.
EMBEDDED: Is TikTok a national security threat if it remains under Chinese ownership?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: Probably. Power concentrated in any online platform, especially one used to transmit ideas and sell products, is always liable to be dangerous.
EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: I do still see a lot of breaking news on Twitter, despite my gripes with the platform. But I also actively read The New York Times and The New Yorker, albeit the former is much better for news. A good long read in The New Yorker, especially when it’s about something that feels obscure, is still unmatched. This recent story about the pope’s astronomer is a good example.
EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: Twitter and TikTok. I don’t really care about celebrity discourse, but I like to keep up on the discourse in music, movies, and television.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last strong opinion you had about a story, topic, or controversy online?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: There was recently a trend on Twitter started by Matthew Zeitlin (in a deleted tweet) where people were discussing the worst song of all time. Some of the most popular suggestions have been ridiculous. “Brown Eyed Girl.” “Sweet Caroline.” “Hey Ya!” If people think those are the worst songs of all time, they can count themselves blessed. One thing I explore in my book is the worst songs in each era. If you think “Brown Eyed Girl” is bad, I implore you to listen to Ray Stevens’ “The Streak” or Rick Dees’ “Disco Duck.” Both of these were number one hits!
Even so, a sub-debate was spawned by this trend where people were hating on 2010s indie folk, sometimes derisively called “stomp-clamp” or “stomp-and-holler.” Much of this music deserves hate. It comes across as AI-generated music for a JC Penny commercial. But there is undeserved hate being spread.
While I rarely revisit the Mumford and Sons catalog, the Lumineers’ first record is quite good and the Edward Sharpe song “Home” is delightful, despite being hippie cosplay. Even the stomp-and-holler-haters at Pitchfork liked that one:
But then there's "Home", a jaunty duet between Sharpe and ladyfriend/bandmate Jade Castrinos. It's the one moment that justifies Up From Below's existence. Sure, it calls to mind another fairly different classic sound of the 60s-- Johnny and June Carter Cash's conversational duets-- but, thanks in no small part to Castrinos' whiskey-splashed pipes, it feels glaringly original amidst the daisy chain surrounding it, an obvious affection passing between Sharpe and Castrinos as they murmur sweet nothings.
Also, shout out to Jeremy Gordon for writing an incredible piece about this discourse.
EMBEDDED: What are your favorite newsletters?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: Adam Mastroianni’s
EMBEDDED: How do you think Substack has changed media, if at all?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: 100%. I don’t see how you can claim that a platform causing people to defect from legacy institutions, like The New York Times and CNN, is not changing media.
EMBEDDED: Do you believe that the “artificial general intelligence” and “superintelligence” that many AI boosters have warned of actually pose a risk to humanity?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: If a superintelligence is developed that learns on its own and is smarter than humanity, then I think it could pose a threat. But given the hype-cycle of the last decade around crypto and the metaverse, you can color me a skeptic for if we will reach the superintelligence threshold in the near term.
EMBEDDED: Are smartphones bad for us? Where do you fall on the Jonathan Haidt-Taylor Lorenz divide?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: If you believe Robert Putnam’s thesis in Bowling Alone, then whatever is going on with the collapse of socialization is not new and likely began with the proliferation of television. I don’t think the smartphone generally has been that bad for this trend—having GPS in your pocket is great—but I do think having constant access to social media in your pocket is a bad thing for everyone.
EMBEDDED: How do you find recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: Since I’m lucky enough to work in the music business, I get most music recommendations through the osmosis of my daily life. Funny enough, I rely on people for recommendations more than algorithms, even though part of my day job is working on recommendation algorithms.
EMBEDDED: Have you had posts go viral? What is that experience like?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: I’ve had a couple posts go viral on TikTok, but TikTok virality is very contained to the platform. Years ago, I had an essay go viral on the wonderful website Tedium. It was about how there are no key changes in pop music anymore. That was weird.
That essay led to me appearing on NPR and in The Economist, among a bunch of other outlets. In fact, I don’t think my book would be getting published without this essay.
The weirdest thing about this is that as I would scroll through Twitter or YouTube, I’d see musicians and critics that I respected arguing about the trend. I thought the essay was quite niche, but I think it went nuclear because people would just use the one chart to justify whatever their prior beliefs about current pop music were.
EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: Gotye, the guy that wrote and performed the huge smash “Somebody That I Used To Know,” subscribes to my newsletter. This will probably only matter to millennials, but the creator of the Nickelodeon animated comedy Fairly Odd-Parents also follows me on TikTok.
EMBEDDED: Who’s someone more people should follow?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: John Franklin is a great comedian. Sportsball shares some of the best data visualizations you’ll ever see. And The Big Sartorialist is just a big man dressed to the nines who always brings a smile to my face.
EMBEDDED: Which big celebrity has your favorite internet presence, and why?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: Bob Dylan! He randomly started tweeting last year and the results have been nothing short of magic.
EMBEDDED: Are you into any podcasts right now? How and when do you usually listen?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: I try to listen to podcasts on Mondays. Recently, I published a list of the greatest standalone music podcast episodes, so I was deep in the music pod-sphere. But my favorite podcasts are Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and Heavyweight.
EMBEDDED: Have you ever been heavily into Snapchat? Do you miss it?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: Not really. I got logged out last year and haven’t logged back in. I’m considering resetting my password and throwing a party where everyone that shows up gets to watch a year of my unopened Snapchats.
EMBEDDED: When was the last time you browsed Pinterest? What for?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: Never! Though I know my fiancée has a board for our wedding, so I’m sure I will be on there in the next year. Happy to report back then.
EMBEDDED: What is your Wordle starting word?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: Don’t be a coward. Start with a different word everyday.
EMBEDDED: Do any of your group chats have a name that you’re willing to share? What’s something that recently inspired debate in the chat?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: My college roommates' group chat is called “The Wild by Christmas.” Why? Nobody is really sure. During the haziness of a day-long party it got changed, and we kept it because we thought it was funny.
EMBEDDED: Do you text people voice notes? If not, how do you feel about getting them?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: I sent one to my friend Ken recently, and he said he liked it, so I might try some more. I feel like they usually come across as crazed, though.
EMBEDDED: Do you pay for a music streaming service, and if so, which one? What’s a playlist, song, album, or style of music you’ve listened to a lot lately?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: Given that I work in the music industry, I have tried basically every music streaming service out there. I have a subscription to Audiomack, the service that I work for, though I am almost always on our ad-supported tier for testing purposes. I’m also a long-time subscriber to Spotify. Spotify is great, but I think parts of the service have become degraded lately.
At the end of each of my newsletters, I recommend a new song and an old song, so I am constantly listening to the playlists that contain those songs. I also frequently listen to my playlist containing every number one hit in history given that my forthcoming book is about how I spent years listening to all of those songs. My most listened to new album this year is the latest from Bon Iver. My most listened to older album is probably Chet Baker Sings.
EMBEDDED: If you could only keep one streaming service for TV and/or movies, which would it be, and why? What’s a show that you’re really into right now?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: HBO. Lots of great prestige television and movies on there. I’ve been enjoying The Pitt lately.
EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: Are Letterboxd and Goodreads social media? If not, those. I also like to peruse the insane markets on Kalshi.
EMBEDDED: What’s the most basic internet thing that you love?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: Wikipedia. I think it’s one of the only promises of the early internet that was fulfilled.
EMBEDDED: Is there any content you want but can’t seem to find anywhere online?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: As noted, my book was written as I spent years listening to every number one hit. Basically, every chart-topper is on streaming, except for Divine’s soulful number one “Lately.” Yes, you can technically find it on YouTube, but because of licensing issues it remains absent from music streaming services.
EMBEDDED: Have you recently read an article, book, or social media post about the internet that you’ve found particularly insightful?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: Adam Aleksic, better known as The Etymology Nerd, recently released his first book called Algospeak about language and social media. I really enjoyed it!
EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?
CHRIS DALLA RIVA: The trend on TikTok where children were saying to their parents “I’m so hungry I could eat [INSERT RANDOM PERSON FROM THE PARENT’S PAST THAT THE CHILD DOESN’T KNOW]” brought me immense joy. #SueBattaglia
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Thanks Chris! Subscribe to his newsletter and pre-order his book.
More My Internet Jacob Silverman ∙ Molly Mary O’Brien ∙ Emily Oster ∙ Alyssa Vingan ∙ Paul Krugman ∙ Karen Hao ∙ All
Thanks for the shout and kind words! Chris has got me in some excellent company here.
omg chris is so cool