A round-up of our favourite charts of 2020 December 20, 2020 at 07:09PM

As in so many things in 2020, though, coronavirus has ruined our plans. Without doubt the data team has produced some outstanding covid-19-related data journalism, from a prescient piece on February 3rd about how airlines fare during pandemics, through covid-adjacent takes on booms in baby-making and bread-baking, to our interactive charts and maps tracking the spread of the virus and excess mortality around the world. But we felt that readers might want a break from relentless covid coverage at this time of the year. So we have selected a handful of our favourite non-covid articles that you may have missed. We’ll reveal a new one every day this week.

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In February, we analysed song data from Spotify for 30 countries around the globe. Using the streaming service’s “valence” algorithm—a formula that classifies how happy a song sounds on a scale from 0 to 100—we were able to identify the peaks and troughs of each nation’s musical mood. Most countries experience a dip in listening to happy-sounding songs in February and a sustained surge in July. But there were surprising regional differences. Lively Latin music seems to lift the mood of many South American countries all year round while Scandinavians have gloomier listening habits than the global average. A daily chart from the archives suggests that they make up for it at Christmas: one in every six songs streamed in Sweden and Norway in December 2016 was a festive tune; in Brazil, a country with a similar proportion of Christians, it was just one in 150.