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New Data Shows Each States Favorite Music Artist, Sufjan Reigns Supreme In IL

By Lisa White in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 25, 2014 11:05PM

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(Courtesy of Music Machinery)

A new group of data taking a look at what people listen to through online music platforms has lead to a map of top artist by state, and while some seem pretty obvious a few left us scratching our heads. The Echo Nest, a music intelligence platform for popular services like Rdio and Spotify, provides a mass amount of data on what people across the US like to listen to, Time reports. Paul Lamere, the director of developer platform, took things a bit further and broke down favorite bands in each state.

The favorite artist of Illinois is Sufjan Stevens, which given the fact he wrote an album about our fair state, not that surprising. Every new transplant pretty much has to queue up “Chicago” as the skyline pops into view while driving towards the city. And it isn’t like we have a plethora of Casimir Pulaski songs to celebrate the holiday. What made us chuckle more is the top pick in Kentucky is suburban Chicago natives Fall Out Boy. Who knew pop-punk grew up and moved to a horse farm in the bluegrass state? Sugar, we're going downstate towards Kentucky apparently. More perplexing is Wisconsin’s love of Jack Johnson, the somewhat syrupy sweet acoustic guitar crooner. You’re the home state of Bon Iver, you’ve got a built in bleak winter singer right at your fingertips, get it together Wisconsin!

A lot of the data isn’t too surprising, many state favorites being a native (Juicy J is from Memphis, Future is from Atlanta, Rick Ross from Florida, Bruce Springsteen and New Jersey, etc), the popularity of country music in the bible belt or the love of jam bands in the hippie friendly Vermont and New Hampshire. That said, while we appreciate Rush being big in Delaware, we don’t fully understand it, but numbers don’t tend to lie. If you’d like a more detailed interesting breakdown on the reasoning behind each pick, head over to Lamere’s blog for more information. Now excuse us while we go put on some Sufjan.