The Track Six Theory

Okay, once upon a time before I even knew who Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds were, I was taping a song of their’s that I really loved: ‘Red Right Hand’. It was in, my opinion, one of the best songs I’d ever heard. I’ve since heard a whole pile of other Nick Cave stuff, which I love dearly as well, but none of them ever quite surpassed ‘Red Right Hand’. So when I discovered it on the X-Files soundtrack I thought, ‘hey cool, oh and look it’s track six’. Six has always been one of my favourite numbers. As my CD collection grew I noticed something weird, my favourite song, or at least a really good song, always seemed to be track six. It sort of dawned on me in the wee hours of some morning. I was probably trashed.

Okay in case that doesn’t make sense, what I’m saying is that track six is usually very good. This is the track six theory. Just in case you don’t believe me, here’s the research. I have far too much spare time.

So I’ve taken a sample of 38 CDs from my collection, and rated them in relation to the quality of music I’ve come to expect from the respective artists. Here’s a fucked up table (go Microsoft Word and your funky ways of screwing up the format when you convert to html) to make it relatively not as simple as I originally thought.

Artist	Album	Track Six	Rating
Placebo	Placebo	Nancy Boy	J
Placebo	Without You I’m Nothing	Allergic (To Thoughts of Mother Earth)	J
Placebo	Black Market Music	Black-eyed	J
Effigy	Effigy	Bluffing	J
Effigy	Century Collapsing	Suspicion Bells	J
Powderfinger	Parables For Wooden Ears	Citadel	J
Powderfinger	Double Allergic	Give	K
Powderfinger	Internationalist	Don’t Wanna Be Left Out	J
Powderfinger	Odyssey Number Five	Up & Down & Back Again	J
David Bowie	The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars	Lady Stardust	J
David Bowie	Diamond Dogs	Rebel Rebel	J
David Bowie	Low	Be My Wife	K
David Bowie	Heroes	V 2 Schneider	L
David Bowie	The Best of David Bowie 1969-1974	Rebel Rebel	J
David Bowie	The Best of David Bowie 1974-1979	Can You Hear Me	K
David Bowie	Hours…	What’s Really Happening	J
The Cure	Pornography	A Strange Day	J
The Cure	Disintegration	Lullaby	J
The Cure	Bloodflowers	The Last Day of Summer	J
Marcy Playground	Marcy Playground	Sherry Fraser	K
Marcy Playground	Shapeshifter	Wave Motion Gun	J
Gomez	Bring It On	Here Comes The Breeze	J
Gomez	Liquid Skin	We Haven’t Turned Around	J
Custard	We Have The Technology	Totally Confused	J
Custard	Loverama	Nervous Breakdance	K
Suede	Nude	The Drowners	J
Suede	Head Music	She’s In Fashion	J
Nirvana	Nevermind	Polly	J
Nirvana	In Utero	Dumb	J
Hole	Celebrity Skin	Dying	J
Filter	Title of Record	Take A Picture	J
Lit	A Place In The Sun	Zip Lock	J
Bob Dylan	Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits	Mr Tambourine Man	J
The Living End	The Living End	Monday	K
Garbage	Garbage	A Stroke Of Luck	K
Various	Mission Impossible Soundtrack	Have A Cigar*	J
Various	Songs In The Key of X	Red Right Hand**	J
Various	The X-Files: The Album	Invisible Sun***	L

* Pink Floyd song covered very well by the Foo Fighters and Brian May.

** Belongs to Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds.

*** Belongs to Sting, and apparently Aswad assisted.

In total we have:

J 28

K 7

L 3

And in percentages that’s:

J 73.7%

K 18.4%

L 07.9%

Mathematically speaking then, chances are track six is going to be bloody good. However, the scientist in me wants to poke holes. Okay so, the fact that I’ve chosen CDs from my own collection obviously will provide an element of bias. If I picked up a Spice Girls CD I can safely say I would hate track six, but I’d also hate track one, two, three etc. etc. you get the picture. But, in relation to the other tracks, it’s probably quite ‘good’, if you like that sort of thing. So, if you compare the track relative to the other songs on whatever album, I’m willing to bet, 7 times out of ten, that it’s going to be one of the better one’s on said album.

I think that’s enough for now, don’t you? My advice to you all is go try this at home with your own CDs. Come on, prove me wrong, I dare you. ^_^