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28 January 2013updated 27 Sep 2015 3:57am

67p none the richer: popular music uprated for inflation

In which the fun is sucked out of music.

By Alex Hern

Everyone writes music about money. It’s one of the most emotive of topics, alongside love, death, and writing songs about writing songs. But music is forever, and contemporary price levels are not. If you include a concrete value in your song, be prepared for it to sound increasingly out of date. But what if you adjusted those prices in line with inflation?

22 Grand Job

“22 grand job in the city, that sounds nice,” sang the Rakes, in May 2004 (the single was later rereleased by V2 records in March 2005, but unacceptably, the band failed to update the sum despite low and stable inflation in the intervening ten months). The song remains popular(ish), but the sums are now woefully out of date.

To the young indie rockers of 2013, trying to really understand what Alan Donohoe, the band’s lead singer, was feeling when he sang those words, we have to uprate them to fit for the world of today.

The CPI measure of inflation is indexed so that May 2005 is equal to 100. In May 2004, the index stood at 98.1, while December’s level was 125. Do the sums, and we can work out that, for someone to feel as “alright” as Donahoe did in 2004, they would now have to be earning £28,032.62. Round it down to a 28 grand job, and it even scans acceptably.

(From 2004 to now also included a considerable portion of the boom years, as well as the post-2008 slump in real wages. As a result, if we decide to uprate their income according to the seasonally adjusted average weekly earnings index, we find they have had a marginal boost in real wages. Using the index which includes bonuses — because the job is in The City, after all — we find their expected wage would be £28,115.32. That’s Alright.)

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If I had $1,000,000

The Barenaked Ladies’ song has already been subject to a rigorous financial analysis by the blog Panic Manual, which concludes that all the goods mentioned in the song — except, presumably, “your love”, but they recommend a diamond ring as a valid substite — can be purchased for around $770,000.

But Panic Manual failed to take account for the fact that a million (Canadian) dollars (the band is from Toronto, after all) is worth considerably less now than it was in 1992. While the band has been singing, rather than acting — surely they actually have a million dollars? They are quite popular, after all, and their dreams have been becoming increasingly banal since they started.

The band still sings about having $1,000,000; but in 1992 money, that would be a paltry $689,736.84. Would they have achieved international success if that had been the fourth single from their first album?

Sixpence none the richer

I was wondering how to deal with this one, since Sixpence None the Richer are in fact from Texas. Do I convert sixpence into US dollars at the market rate for 1992? Should I assume sixpence refers to six cents?

Thankfully, I’m saved by the fact that the band’s name is actually a reference to a 1952 book by C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. Sixpence in new money is 2.5p, inflation (measured using RPI this time, because CPI was only introduced in 1996) since 1952 is equal to 2562%, and so the band ought to be called Sixty-six Pence None the Richer. (Actually it’s equal to 66.54 pence, but I’m rounding down for aesthetic reasons).

Money, money, money

Abba’s hit single was released on 1 November 1976. The Swedish CPI stood at 69.1. Thirty years later, the index stands at 314.61, which means that, properly adjusted for inflation, the song ought to be called Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, mon.

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