Chris Dalla Riva

1 week ago | cantgetmuchhigher.com | Chris Dalla Riva

Last week, I announced my debut book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. I was overwhelmed with the positive reception. If you still haven’t, please consider ordering a copy. One of the last sections of the book deals with artificial intelligence and music. I was reminded of this for two reasons. First, I’ve had to reread the book over the last week while it’s being typeset.

1 week ago | cantgetmuchhigher.com | Chris Dalla Riva

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider ordering a copy of my debut book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music covering 1958 to 2025. You can read an excerpt here. Today’s newsletter is another edition of “The Take,” the periodic series on Can’t Get Much Higher where songwriters, artists, and industry insiders give their input on three random songs that I send them.

1 week ago | cantgetmuchhigher.com | Chris Dalla Riva

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how pop music was becoming a sport. Some of this transformation was related to the language fans used to describe their favorite artists. Other pieces were connected to new-ish betting markets, like Kalshi and Polymarket, that allow you to gamble on basically anything, music included. In researching that piece, I gambled a few hundred dollars and netted $1.98. Caleb Davies has made a lot more money than that. Hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

2 weeks ago | cantgetmuchhigher.com | Chris Dalla Riva

7 years ago, I decided that I was going to listen to every number one hit. Along the way, I tracked an absurd amount of information about each song. Using that information, I wrote a data-driven history of popular music covering 1958 through today. It’s called Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves, and you can finally pre-order it from Bloomsbury!Over the next few months, I am going to share excerpts from and insider information about the book.

2 weeks ago | cantgetmuchhigher.com | Chris Dalla Riva

I am an unabashed lover of music festivals. Whether it’s a small festival that occurs during the afternoon with ten local acts or a multi-day extravaganza that involves traveling hundreds of miles and sleeping in a tent, you can catch me there. So, when I had the opportunity to speak with festival execs Adam Brill and Jesse Fayne at the Wasserman Music, I was excited.