The Geography of Pop and Country Hits

Early this year the good folks at Very Small Array did these maps showing locations in song titles of hit songs. The maps enable us to compare the geography of pop music (mostly urban) to that of country (Wolverton Mountain represent!)

Here are the pop hits. I'm not sure what Wiz Khalifa (as listed above the map title) has to do with this - he doesn't seem like the #1 hit type. Sorry the blogger templates won't let me post larger, more readable images but you're just a click away from the original content.

Here is country music.

While country hits are less international in scope they do get points for Japan and (apparently) multiple mentions of Waterloo. "Turning Japanese" wasn't a #1 hit? They must repeat song titles for each week they appear as a #1 hit. Are there really that many other songs about Folsom Prison?  How many country songs about Saginaw are there?

Razorback World

There's lot of important things going on in the world but nothing fun. Instead here's a picture sent to me by Charlie Alison from the public relations office of the University of Arkansas. It's a piece of artwork by Jason Jones that hangs in the lounge in the student union. The world's continents are rearranged to form the Arkansas Razorbacks logo.

 According to Wikipedia's Razorbackologists a Razorback is " an Americanism, loosely applied to any type of feral pig or wild boar in North America. The term has also appeared in Australia, to describe such animals there." Here is an actual logo for comparison.

 Here's how it looks at midfield.

Finally, here is (was) an actual razorback - the original Tusk. Currently they are at Tusk III.