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The Rising Compass

Empire State of Mind, Pt. 2

Alicia Keys

First surfaced on iTunes Download Chart - USA

What is this song about?

First-person civic tribute to a major U.S. city, holding it up as the proving ground where ambition gets its shot and anyone can begin again

placeambition

What Might This Song Do to the Listener?

"Empire State of Mind, Pt. 2" installs New York as a mirror for your own hunger. The narrator pours devotion into the city's concrete and neon, treating its survival as proof that yours is possible too.

The effect is a warm, durable pride that stays shallow. You feel capable and electric, but the feeling depends on the backdrop, not on any internal reckoning or growth. Reinvention gets celebrated without ever asking what you're reinventing from or toward.

What Might This Song Do to a Society?

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Audience Vibe The crowd's needle. Readers vote on where this song's needle should sit, and the votes combine into one position that can drift at most 15 points from the compass degree. Where that needle lands against the compass is the finding.

The audience thinks this song should be

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Do you think it should stay where it is, or be pushed further in one direction?

One vote per person per song per year. No single vote can move the needle far — it takes a crowd.

How the Audience Vibe is calculated

The needle is the compass degree nudged by the crowd, never a raw tally. Every "push higher," "push lower," and "agree" vote is recombined into one position each time someone votes:

  • Direction comes from the split. Only the gap between higher and lower votes moves the needle. "Agree" votes pull it back toward the compass degree.
  • It takes a crowd. Early votes move it gently — a handful shifts it only a point or two. The more lopsided the crowd, the further it goes.
  • It's capped. The audience can pull a song at most 15 points off the compass degree, either direction. No pile-on can push it past that.

So a single "push lower" on a song with few votes moves the needle a little (often a point or two), not all the way down — and it can never run away.

Audience Vibe is experimental. Something off? Let us know →

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