Show HN: ABC Classic 100 Rankings visualised

A lovingly made visual guide to Australia’s Classic 100 rankings should have been a calm little celebration of orchestras, composers, and long-running listener favorites. Instead, the comments quickly turned into a gloriously messy salon argument about what even counts as “classical,” why some titles are impossible to copy, and whether movie soundtracks have any business sitting beside Mozart. The project itself is simple and charming: one page tracks how famous pieces moved up or down in popularity between 2001, 2010, and 2021, with dots, lines, and clickable highlights. The creator even pointed out the neat joke that “The Lark Ascending” fell, then rose again. The internet, naturally, had thoughts.

The strongest reactions came from people treating the chart like a cultural battlefield. One commenter was baffled that Lord of the Rings, Out of Africa, and Star Wars were in the mix at all, basically declaring the playlist suspiciously Australian. Another questioned whether even composer Ennio Morricone would call The Mission soundtrack classical. On the lighter side, one non-classical listener just wanted to copy song names into YouTube and was foiled by unselectable text — a tiny complaint that somehow became hilariously relatable. Others were delightfully nerdy, spotting a duplicate Marriage of Figaro entry and praising the visual design choices. In short: the chart won people over, but the real concert was in the comment section, where snobbery, curiosity, and accidental comedy played in perfect harmony.