Spotify celebrates The King’s birthday showing how he influences music

This week, Elvis would have turned 80. While he’s no longer with us (or is if you believe the conspiracy theorists, or subscribe to the belief that every Elvis impersonator is a living continuation of The King), Spotify is this week showing just how much music loves The King with an app that you can use on your phone, tablet, and even your computer.

Online in time for his 80th birthday, Spotify is celebrating the occasion by playing Six Degrees of Separation, except with Elvis, and it’s not even six degrees.

Rather, Spotify’s “The Elvis Influence” is a nifty little web app that will let you throw in the name of an artist you love (or hate) and see how they connect to Elvis.

As an example, this writer listens to New Orleanian artist Trombone Shorty, and he connects to Elvis by way of Galactic, James Brown, Lou Reed, and then Elvis Presley.

We’re told One Direction was influenced by Take That were themselves influenced by The Bee Gees, and they in turn were influenced by Elvis, while Ben Folds has a fairly short run being influenced by Elvis Costello who himself was influenced by the Elvis of the Presley name.

It’s a fun little app that you can try to stump, and so far, we’ve been unsuccessful, with The Dear Hunter, Yothu Yindi, Yanni, Aphex Twin, Matmos, Philip Glass, and Mozart all connecting to Elvis in some way or another.

If Spotify’s little game isn’t all the Elvis connections you can grab, it’s worth checking out “The Elvisualisation”, a chart that sets out how the artists connect to Elvis through other artists, with hints of the music when you click on their names.

We’re not sure how long these will all be online for (it’s now or never), but if you need a little less conversation and a little more action, this will certainly waste some time.