ABBA vs. The Bay City Rollers (aka Neil Young vs. The Beatles)

I was recently talking to KJ about the national origins of the musical artists I'm a fan of. I made the statement that—after the big three of the U.S., Canada and England—my next favorite country, based on the current musicians it has produced, would probably be Sweden. I'm not sure what got me on this subject, other than my interest in trivial conversations about the demographics of the little world inside my head. Maybe we were listening to Jens Lekman or the Shout Out Louds. But, of course, the end result was that it made me want to do a little further research.

So, I went through my year-end lists for the past three years, and here are the results:

U.S. - 72.1%
England - 10.2%
Canada - 8.0%
Scotland - 2.7%

After that, Sweden, Australia, Iceland and France were tied at 1.8%. I actually had initially considered that Scotland might rank ahead of Sweden, but at the time of the original conversation, the only significant (to me) Scottish band I could think of was Teenage Fanclub. But, now I'm asking myself, what was I thinking? Sweden? Beyond the aforementioned Jens Lekman, the Shout Out Louds and a couple others, there aren't really that many Swedish bands I'm into. Certainly not ABBA, although I would probably have to rank them ahead of The Bay City Rollers, the Scottish band whose 1975 hit, "Saturday Night," was the first 45 I ever owned.

Also of interest to me is the fact that England beat out Canada for the #2 spot. Not satisfied with this outcome, I took a different angle and looked at the artists represented in my Fab 40. The results weren't all that different, at least in the top three spots:

U.S. - 75%
England - 12.5%
Canada - 10%
Australia - 2.5%

But, of course, these are just absolute numbers, and don't take into account the fact that Rush was my favorite band during most of my high school days, and Neil Young has been my favorite for the past 20 years. So, I think it would be safe to say, The Beatles notwithstanding, that Canada is #2...to the U.S., of course. I'm sure their citizens are tired of hearing that familiar refrain.