You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Or, Why Oil Production Declines with Rock and Roll

Michael Giberson

From the “too good not to share” category: “The Hubbert Peak Theory of Rock, or, Why We’re All Out of Good Songs,” from the pop culture scrutineers at Overthinking It.

A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine added fuel to the music snobbery fire with its “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list.  Anyone casually paging through the list would notice that the bulk of the list was comprised of songs from the 60’s and 70’s, just like the music snobs always say.

I, however, wasn’t content with the casual analysis.  So I punched the list into Excel, crunched some numbers, and found an interesting parallel between the decline of rock music quality and, of all things, the decline in US oil discovery and production:

Looks like a correlation to me. More analysis offered at the link.

(HT to Tom Fowler at NewsWatch: Energy.)