Audio version of Intro is here. Note, there are other mixes at the bottom of the page as part of the intro.
Part 1: Where do I begin? (AKA My resume)
I suppose I begin at the beginning.
I was born in 1976. My Italian grandfather played accordion in a cowboy band in the vaudeville days of the 1920s and had a radio show on NBC into the 1940s and toured the country playing his instrument. My Nona at one point sang opera before becoming devoted to the home and the business. So music is in my DNA.
From my grandparents on both sides I inherited classical, opera arias, and Broadway show tunes, many songs part of “The Great American Songbook”. From the Italian side (my fathers side) specifically, I got jazz. The Ellington, Harry James, Count Basie kind. The kind that was originally dance music for the masses, not the heady music theory “noodling” kind people think of today (though I like some of that too).
My father passed down CCR, The Doors, Cream, & The Rolling Stones. My mother; Peter, Paul, and Mary, more musicals (especially A Chorus Line), and The Carpenters. And then there were the classic holiday albums (John Denver and The Muppets A Christmas Together is my favorite).
My older brother went off to college before I was even in high school leaving behind The Police: The Singles, a-ha Hunting High And Low and probably Kool and the Gang and Earth Wind and Fire. Oh and also the cassette, No Jacket Required by Phil Collins.
I may have been born in 1976 but due to trauma did not really register music and musical memories until around 5th grade, the late 80s. I played clarinet in the school band but because nobody had the foresight to suggest to me that I could play jazz instead of the classical works, I gave that up. Classical works didn’t leave room for a clarinet player to dance or make other people dance, let alone solo wildly.
By the time I was in high school I was listening to what we called, “oldies radio” on local station KFRC, meaning music of the 50s and 60s but without all the heavy stuff we now call, “classic rock”. It was mainly doo-wop, soul, early rock ‘n’ roll, British Beat and music that would now be labeled pop if the genre term had been coined then.
But even at this young age I was all over the map musically. In part because oldies radio was all over the map because well, the 1960s musically was all over the map in terms of hits and styles. But also as history marches on, the decades blur, and our teenage selves evolve to have wider tastes. So in the 60s on the radio; Soul would’ve had it’s own format and country it’s own format and then rock, easy listening etc. But now so much time has passed that it’s all lumped together as one era called 60s music. Whereas in the moment the northern soul crowd might have wanted very little to do with the psychedelic rock crowd and neither were hanging around Greenwich Village with folk folks. It was also many micro eras and local scenes.
High school was when I really registered the power of music and it’s effect on me, especially to dance. And weirdly this time was also the period I began regularly feel music hit that nostalgia button that ignites your soul in the way only music can. I recall even songs of the early 90s and late 80s would hit that zone as if calling from some other time space or energy of the universe. One example being, Brenda Russell’s, “Piano In The Dark.” A great 80s ballad that ignited my DNA calling me to connect to the music and to the generation of songs that came before.
So while I may have been an “old soul” I seemed to have strong nostalgia for music that wasn’t even that old. And during those teen years that are so formative for many people’s musical resume I really started to notice this calling from so many kinds of music. A feeling I could never and still have trouble putting in words.
So for my peers who were discovering things for the first time and experiencing that mind blowing excitement of say Nirvana, what I was experiencing was not a mind blown but something that felt far more primal and ancient even in some of the mainstream pop tunes of the day. As if I had heard this before somewhere else decades or centuries before. Maybe even in a different idiom and life. And this feeling certainly was true and is still true for those first album obsessions. Albums that I would have on repeat because back then you had to buy the music and with limited money you had limited music so replayed the stuff you owned. Here is the short list of albums I turned to repeatedly during those formative years of middle and high school:
Paula Abdul & Amy Grant I came to on my own with my own money possibly from me seeing the music videos, and more likely because of radio. My family was not into “pop music”.
Gloria Estefan came to me because well, she made me dance with many of those 80s hits and by the time I was going to gay clubs, she was one of our queens. And Gloria! is straight up disco bangers back to front and her best English language album.
I don’t recall exactly the origins of Tom Petty in my collection but it was probably a mix of MTV/VH1/KFOG and my own love of the sound of his records.
Sting, The Police, and a-ha were all handed down on cassette before I ever got the CD versions. I know I wore those tapes out.
Enya was gifted to me by a co-worker at Blackhawk Cinemas named Frank who liked my artwork and thought the music had a similar swirling liquid feel to my style.
Vanessa-Mae came to me because I caught a broadcast of The World Music Awards on TV by accident and she was getting an award for doing rave versions of classical music. I played that CD so much my mother complained.
Jazz pianist Keiko Matsui was the result of my own curiosity and a listening station at Barnes & Noble. She was also the first live show I saw on my own with my own money. The same with Lhasa’s La Llorona, album of Mexican folk songs done in a jazz style with Mexican folk instruments. And both of those albums I did not like much at first but again with limited money they were the CDs I bought and took a chance on and so it was what I had to listen to and eventually I came to love both and through taking that risk and the time expended my musical horizons greatly.
Side Note: It cannot be understated just how much listening stations contributed to my musical growth and loving wide varieties of stuff from all across the globe. I first heard the debuts of The Dixie Chicks and Norah Jones on listening stations and I new they would be smash hit albums and artists. It was also where I first heard Jamaican soca and people like Olga Tanon and other Latin genres that were not US born Salsa.
And it also cannot be understated the countless soundtracks I’ve devoured over the years that expanded my musical horizons and helped educate me on the music of the past. My love of film is very much connected to my love of music. Not surprising considering how all films have music and many use popular songs to great effect. Some of my best loved and most played soundtracks include:
The Braveheart score I bought with my own money because I LOVED that movie and was partial to James Horner’s scores. He had also done the scores for Willow and Krull two films of my youth that hold a special place.
The film soundtracks were either gifts from family or passed on by my brother. And film soundtracks are the very reason my favorite type of music in all of music is not a genre or era but are anthologies and compilations; Dreampop, City-pop, Ye-ye, Zouk, Latin jazz of the 60s… the more niche the better! It is the main way I have expanded my musical curiosity over the years.
That last one is a soundtrack in a roundabout way. It is compositions by Dennis Hysom laid over nature recordings from the Cloud Forest in the Amazon. Very much what one might consider yoga music of the time but for some reason I bought the CD and wore it out. I suppose curiosity once again driving me to explore anything.
Once I got into the gay clubs in the mid nineties at 18 I was buying CD singles for the remixes of pop hits of the day and songs that only got played in clubs. By my thirties I was deep into new wave and even more so into country music.
My top three favorite genres of all time are:
1. Big Band Jazz (20s-50s)
2. Country Music
3. New Wave
My favorite artists of all time (in nor order):
Ray Charles
Roy Orbison
Everything else I love, love, love and that I call a favorite I can’t for sure include in the all time category. It is a rare echelon and so to add much more I feel would be watering it down and would remove the weight of the word, favorite. Also I see “favorite” as different than “greatest”: which I will address later.
That is the condensed musical resume of my youth.
And all of those sounds and more were added to the cauldron of magic brew that got me to where I am at this moment- about to embark on a musical adventure listening to every Billboard top 40 hit from 1960 to 2016. I put it here because I want it to be clear I am devout music fan. It is my spiritual path. And the only cult I have ever joined. And because of the times I was born in I have seen the biggest eras of pop come and go. I have witnessed the a stubborn music industry refusing to change in the face of napster, and how streaming and algorithms then turned much of the music monoculture into a monogenre with less and less music fans on the same page. But really I just want to know once and for “What was the BEST decade of music?” At least in terms of the top 40.
But if I am going to take this journey I need some standards, I also know myself well enough that I will also need a LARGE spread sheet because I’m going to have things to say.
Part 2: What Was The Best Decade Of Music?
The music history available would have you believe the mid 60s to mid 70s was the best decade of music. An era that saw The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, Steely Dan, The Grateful Dead & Bowie all arrive on the scene. So it’s not a specific decade as we think of it in more historical terms.
But the history texts are wrong. I know that the best decade of music is the music that was around you when you hit puberty. That truism has played out time and time again as I see in comment sections people in their 30s saying they were so glad to grow up with the music on the 00s because it was the best era for music. Meanwhile my peers are praising the mid nineties while I have friends who swear by the late 70s early 80s new wave era. The only common thing is that all these folks were teenagers at the time or at the most in their early twenties probably going out to clubs.
But even if we go just with what history says, that decade leaves out so many great artists and so much great music starting with say Mozart and then Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith, Rodgers and Hammerstein etc.
So how did we arrive at this consensus? Why did we just swallow it like some medication you are given as a child? And how and why did the charts and the hits come to be this benchmark for, if not for quality, at least a sign of influence and success in the broader music world. Ultimately driving many music fans to be condescending about anything mainstream or on the other end totally insecure and defensive about loving the glorious mega-hits they love.
But right out of the gate, as any educated music fan knows, many of our greatest icons never had many hit singles, if they released many singles at all like Tom Waits for example.
So if these icons were not logging hits then I want to know who was there in their place?
What decade had the most variety of styles of artists in the Top 40?
Is modern music really worse?
Is the percentage of dreck higher today than say the 60s or 70s?
Who decides what is and is not dreck at the end of the day?
Also, some of you might be asking, “Why top 40 and not the entire Hot 100?”
My answer: Time.
But more directly, Casey Kasum counted down the top 40. And today the majority of people only ever really talk about top 10 singles anymore when in battles over chart stats. And as the years have gone on people more and more only remember the ten hits. But that the top 10 hits t offers little insight and not much to work with. I want to have the broader scope of the charts in each year than just the monster hits. And the top 40 was the common cultural barometer most people knew and were tapped into for decades, in party thanks to Casey Kasum.
Why 1960 -2016?
The Hot 100 started in August of 1958. I felt that the last breath of the fifties was not really relevant to my journey as genres/styles do not just up and die when a date changes. The late 50’s sound very much lived on the in early 60s. Also I like the nice round number of starting with 1960.
And in 2016 I turned 40.
But mostly, I am stopping at 2016 because I have to stop somewhere. And I chose this because it is about the time streaming & Stans really start to pick up traction and in some ways game the system, with every song from an album landing on the charts and singles having less importance. It is also about this time Billboard starts changing the chart rules willy-nilly to try an adapt to the changing culture and how people consume music. They still haven’t figure it out yet if they ever really had it figured out.
But mostly I picked 2016 because that is the year the song, “Dancing On Glass” by St. Lucia was released. And that matters only because it is one of my all time favorite songs of the era and possibly of all time. So yeah 2016 it is.
Haven’t the charts always been gamed or bought and sold on some level all along with tactics like Payola in the 50s?
People have been gaming the charts in various ways over the years. So yes, in a way they have always been kind of BS and I think we all know it. For years there was a chart called the, “Black Singles Chart” which had many names changes over the years. And that to me implies the Hot 100 is the, “white singles chart”. It was never called that because it was assumed for years “white” is the default setting in the US so no need to spell it out. Also, you have charts like dance club play charts started in 1976 to catalog what people actually danced to the most at you know clubs on a night out. So Madonna has the most #1 Billboard singles technically but… nobody talks about the dance charts at a dinner party. Also, just like what you like yadda yadda… Yes. Fine.
But on the flip side DJs on radio in the 60s and 70s and even into the 80s and 90s used to have more say and control in what they played. So you got regional hits and regional scenes that didn’t escape those little bubbles. But sometimes a local station would make somebody or some single into a national or worldwide hit. For example in my local area KFOG helped KT Tunstall land some big hits like, “Black Horse And A Cherry Tree” in the 00s.
So with things like I Heart Radio all owned by the same three corporations all with the same playlists of the same fifty songs, or algorithms sending people in circular echo chambers of music you would never get KT Tunstall on the radio today but she’s played on classic pop stations because “back in the day” she had hits through organic means.
But in society at large up until about 2014-16 or so there was this monoculture around music. A genuine societal consensus on what the hits were and who was having them even of you didn’t like the music. You may not have liked Mariah Carey’s music but you could not escape it. Now you can go off in any direction you want and never hear a chart hit. Even as recently as 2010 if you didn’t hear a Katy Perry song, you were likely dead.
Still, in this era of endless options the charts are shouted and cited as some kind of barometer of quality and/or merit usually to prop up an artists and demand, “See look at how great the are!” Or to win some music nerd Stan war and claim some record has been broken despite the vast difference in the way charts have been tallied over the years.
Side Note: For me and my circle of music nerds the charts was never about “winning” like a game of sports it was simply fun trivia to spit out in conversation. The charts today in certain circles seem to be taken WAY more seriously than I remember people taking them in the 90s or prior.
I believe should aliens, centuries from now, come down with their archaeologists to study our musical past these charts will definitely be a source that will greatly confuse them and from which they gather info, rightly or wrongly about our musical history in the U.S. and possibly the world. And so why not also add my thoughts to that story so they might dig this up too.
To be clear, my main interest in the charts is not as documents of stats or achievements or trivia. I am interested in it as an artifact of what was supposedly the most popular songs of a given era. And I want to see how and if these songs and artists have stood the test of time and if the charts really do accurately reflect our tastes for as I noted before icons like, Led Zeppelin never charted many hits (in the US at least) nor did critical darlings like Arcade Fire. Hell, ABBA had far less top 40 hits in the U.S. than the current views on them would have you believe. Go to any club or karaoke night where ABBA makes an appearance and everyone in the place knows the words to many songs that were not hits in the US.
So if I am going to listen to this giant catalog of songs I also thought I might as well document on some level how I felt about each song. This might help inform me later when I finish this and give my final thoughts. Also it will be fun to get other’s opinions on my opinions.
Also I feel it important to point out, even though it should be obvious, that I am not listening to these songs in the time of their release. So I am not being bombarded with the repetition of radio play or MTV music videos and the like. So I can’t be sick of a song in the same way I was over and done with, “Who Let The Dogs Out?” or “Blurred Lines” a week after they dropped. I also do not have the culture of the times pushing and pulling me to like or dislike a song even for the years I was alive to hear the music as it was happening.
That may give me some freedom from bias but it also means I am hearing songs out of context of their culture place and pretty much any song before 1989 I will be hearing out of that context even though I was alive for longer than that. And this is important, because it changes the way I am informed about the music. Whereas a friend of mine who was born in the 50s and grew up alongside Bowie’s evolution will view the music in a vastly different way. Or just how revolutionary an artist like Brenda Lee was back in the late 50s and early 60s singing rock ‘n’ roll just as their male counterparts sang it. This is not positive nor negative it is just the headphones, if you will, that I have to listen to this music.
And music from 2000s on that I was very much alive and cognizant for I missed because I was off on different sonic journeys. So even that context is not as direct for me as one might think.
And then there is my age. I am not an angsty teen trying to fit in or, or falling in love with the latest idol, or some youth who hates “old music” simply because my peers hate it too.
Side note: New music, regardless of the date it was released, is any music you have not heard before.
While I will not be reviewing each song formally, there is just not the time nor my own interest I may mark specific songs for review later if I think there is something worth discussing. But even so I felt I need some sort of rating system to document what I liked, loved, and loathed. And that brings me to part three.
Part 3: Rating systems are stupid just like what you like, but…
When it comes to the top 40 my theory is 80% of all top 40 hits are average. Well my real theory is really 80 percent of all music period, is average. Anyway, average is not a negative term despite the way defensive music fans react to the word these days. It is a perfectly fine passing grade. It is the bulk of hits that help define an eras sound. I speculate that of the remaining 20% of hits… Well… 12% of that is below average with maybe 2% of that being just THAT BAD. And the last 8% are, to some degree, above average. With 2% of that MAYBE entering into the transcendent category. But of course who decides what is transcendent? For one person’s Dave Brubeck is another person’s Dave Matthew’s Band is another person’s Diamanda Galás.
I will say I have never heard a song I out right hate, I dislike many songs but I have never heard anything I HATE. I will also say as time passes some songs I didn’t like at the full hype of their release I now like just fine. We’ll see how I feel as I go forward with the music. But this brings me to a very important point- Bias & nostalgia.
I know people who swear the 80s was the greatest decade simply because that is the decade they came of age. That is nostalgia. Also, I know people who just don’t like certain genes due to the cliches and stereotypes of a genre becoming pervasive, inescapable, and I guess annoying. So they dismiss the entire outright. And other people I know see complexity in music as being what makes one era or genre of music superior to other music. *I wave at jazz, classical, and prog-rcok fans*
But we have DECADES of blues and country that say otherwise. And then we have the penultimate snob who swears by the ethos, “If it is a hit it is horrible”. These can also include the type of music fan that jumps ship because their favorite act is now a “sellout” because they had a hit song, finally.
So what of my own biases? Well I can’t guarantee they won’t factor in. I came of age in the 90s and I HATED most of the nineties music scene as it was happening so I don’t have the same fondness others do even if I like much of the music now.
Also, of the albums above that I played out in high school to the point tapes and CDs possibly broke I would rank them thusly, excluding the film soundtracks:
Average:
Paula Abdul – Forever Your Girl
Amy Grant – Heart In Motion
James Horner – Braveheart Score
a-ha – Hunting High And Low
Vanessa-Mae – The Violin Player
Keiko Matsui – Dreamwalk
Enya – The Memory Of Trees
Above Average:
Gloria Estefan – Gloria!
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Into The Great Wide Open
Sting – The Soul Cages
The Police – The Singles
Bonnie Raitt – Longing In Their Hearts
Two Side Notes:
1. James Horner is a great composer but in a stacked deck of film score composers that includes John Williams, Bernard Herman, Lalo Schfrin, Ennio Morricone… he’s average. Also TBF Braveheart, was an average film.
2. Of the albums listed a-ha, Hunting High And Low is my favorite and my favorite all time album in large part do to nostalgia and how it links to the far less traumatic parts of my childhood. I would call the a-ha album underrated personally but if you look at all of music it concede it is fun average synth-pop music. And the Gloria! album is similarly average overall but in the cannon of dance pop & disco of it’s time I find it above average mainly due to some stellar production work and every song being and out and out banger.
I don’t think any of those albums deserve the overused to point it has no meaning phrase, GOAT. The Police Synchronicity album would be in this echelon of greatness but I was listening to essentially a greatest hits package and that does not and should never count for a greatness award. And I personally think Sting for a time was working on a level above most pop and rock musicians. So I do think the Soul Cages album is above average compared to it’s peers. And again, I am talking about the mainstream. This is not a the place to lob that cliche, “There is always great music you just have to look for it.”
I evolved from Paula Abdul and Amy Grant to other more sophisticated pop artists while still loving those albums and songs. And I understand why they are great even while being average and accept that in such a loaded deck average is itself great. These days everybody wants their music to be iconic right out the gate.
But what I’ve come to terms with is that much of the music I love, if it is iconic, it’s iconic to a tiny number of the music fandom as a whole (mainly me).
So I hope I can go into this as unbiased as possible as I listen to all these songs and try to “play fair”, especially when it is a genre I don’t care for *side-eyes trap and dubstep* or a production style I don’t like *glances hard at overused excessive auto-tune/vocal effects*.
I hate rating systems but in this particular project with so many songs to cover I think it is worth doing just for my own records if noting else. But I wanted it simple as possible but I felt in this case the number system was not the way to go as is felt too vague. So I came up with a lettering system:
Average:
This category as three sub-rankings A+, A, A-. This is because the average category is going to be so loaded I felt breaking it down further would be good because while average overall is average with such a loaded deck not all averages are equal. A+ with the best of the average, then A for straight down the center lane, then A– for veering towards a drive off the bridge into the swamp.
Above Average:
Below Average:
Some songs are bad but mostly harmless and some slip into shamefully awful. Nobody ever sets out to release pure dreck so even “bad songs” have their merits. And it should not need to be said, I (and even you) can think a song is bad and still like it.
Hit From Hell:
A term I loving use for the worst of the worst those songs so awful they should be buried twenty feet deep in a swamp. And maybe are buried there until I dig them up for this project again.
Superlative:
Excellent, outstanding, above above average.
Transcendent:
with all the songs there have been some truly GREAT songs but then I’ve heard some songs that transcend adjectives and you can only know their greatness by listening to them. This is a VERY rare category indeed. And remember many of the greatest songs we know of (i.e. Hallelujah, Tiny Dancer, At Last, Jolene) were never top 40 hits. Also some songs that are truly iconic and have stood the test of time might not get a T either. Just because it is long standing hit that refuses to die doesn’t mean it’s transcendent -ahem- “Hit Me Baby One More Time”. Iconic and transcendent are NOT the same. So you may not see a lot of Ts in my scoring. This category, like my favorite artists mentioned earlier should not be watered down. Quality over quantity.
Iconic:
These are songs I think are important to overall history and scope of popular music. I may or may not like then to varying degree but in the context of their era they brought something new or became iconic over time for various reasons. “Hit Me Baby One More Time” is iconic for example. You can also think of these songs as foundational baseline pop music knowledge every music fun should know on some level. And again, iconic is NOT the same as great, or as I said transcendent and certainly not the same as my own personal enjoyment. I plan to pick 10 or so of the most iconic songs for each year and create mixes for them.
Novelty Song:
Those strange one off hits that may not even really be songs. A song that today is seen as corny or bland or uninspired or just WTF, may have been doing something none of the other charting songs were doing at the time. Or may have been a quirky song that was a product of it’s time and makes no sense in today’s music world. *Eyes Dickie Goodman* So while it may or may not have been bad or good it was certainly not an average song for it’s time.
The scoring above it what I have labeled on my spreadsheet as my, “Critic’s Score”. My personal I am labeling “Bear’s Score”, this is on a scale of mainly 1-5, with some room for 0 and 6 (and MAYBE a 7). I wanted to have my own score to separate my personal taste from my more critical side.
Of course this can cause one to get into comparing one score to another ,right? Well, I suggest just taking each score on it’s own not in comparison to the other score or another song that will just give you a headache. Because unless the song is a cover version comparing scores and songs is kinda dumb and unfair. Like on reality TV when people judge one couples waltz against another couples tango. No, no you need them all to do the same choreography before you judge them together.
Finally I have one more labeling system. This is not a scoring system but instead a way to categorize a songs energy. I mainly developed this because I wanted to know just how many pop 40 hits were ballads. And all these labels start with the letter B.
Bop:
A song that stuck with me and made me wanna dance or sing-a-long or bob my head. Your basic catchy song.
Bangers:
Songs that go hard and probably make me lose my shit. AKA “epic”.
Ballad:
Self-explanatory but a ballad can be any of the above. But it has it’s own category because I predict ballads will make up the lions share of hits from every decade, except maybe the 00s. Probably even the lions share of #1 hits. We are a saccharine, sappy, society that like to get it on or cry alone in our bedroom.
Bemusing:
These are the oddball one off novelty hits that may not even really be songs or were so clearly cashing in on a trend. Or defy and logical categorization. They can be in any of the other categories too. And likely will also get a N from my previous ratings system.
Now some pop 40 hits were hits in both album and remix form, especially in the 80s and 90s. In these cases I will go with the version I remember hearing the most. And I will note it as a remix. For example, the hit version I heard on the radio of Madonna’s “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” was the remix.
I do not promise my methods will be perfect but I have tried to set some terms and adhere to them so there is some standard as opposed the lazy standard of, “new music sucks” or whatever arbitrary rules trades like Rolling Stone use for their, “greatest” lists. Or the totally bone-headed way major trades have been misusing the term “one hit wonder”.
I also intend to select my 25 favorite hits of each year and then whittle that down to my top 50 favorites of each decade.
Part 4: The UK Charts
So I decided as I was gathering my thoughts, I might as well also cover the UK charts while I am at. I just know myself well enough to know I’d finish my Pop 40 Project and the be miffed I didn’t study the UK charts just for funsies with all the crossover.
But why the UK charts? Because after the Hot 100 that is chart we in the US seem to look to most for some gauge of where popular music is. Sorry Canada and Australia. Nobody ever talked about the 1st or 2nd wave Australian invasion. Nobody was ever going around saying, “Alannah Myles was bigger in Canada”. Plus the contrast in size, history, and culture of the two countries might have something to say about the popularity of certain songs or artists. Also, apologies the general region of Asia, I DJ Bear acknowledge that you produced some amazing artists that in some ways have out sold many our or pop stars in your own region. For that matter I apologize the rest of the world for this very western slant on popular music. But It is what I know best. Though I encourage you all to start you Pop 40 Projects in your own countries.
It will be interesting for me to compare the two because I know the UK logged more glam rocks hits, new wave, techno, and Brit pop hits and less hip-hop hits (for obvious reasons). Also they have all those cheesy sports anthems for the world cup series and rugby. Plus the all mighty Eurovision songs!
And some artists were bigger here than there or vice versa, such as Rhianna or Blur. And The Beatles hold the record for most #1s in the US but what about the UK. And why is it the US numbers are the one’s blasted globally as if they are the final word. As I briefly touched on, Asia has some of the biggest selling acts worldwide but we are so focused on English language music we do not ever hear about somebody like Boa selling numbers that would make some of our main pop ladies jealous.
Also with the UK being a smaller country will there be less variety musically than in the vast US?
To that last point specifically I can already tell you the answer is no. And I may even wager a little dollar amount and say they might have MORE variety on their charts being closer to Europe. Musically, the US is kind of an island. Despite being a melting pot, when it comes to the charts it is mostly, “white acts” from the US/UK (with a dash of Canada and Australia) and “black acts” from the US. Pretty much only singing in English.
Also comparing styles and genres that were more popular one place or another will be fun. I know the UK had greater appreciation for reggae and ska than we did for example. I have often said the UK charts have better taste than we do in the top 40. But when they make a stinker a hit it STINKS. But that is my outside perception based only on the minimal amount of UK hits I have heard. So we’ll see if I have the same feelings at the end of this.
But my early predictions are that in the end the UK will win overall for variety of genres. And that in head to head battles year by year I think the UK will win that too. I also predict the 90s will prove to showcase the most variety on the charts overall, while the 70s will will show the most innovation of sounds and styles.
And outside the period my own raging hormones came into effect what do I predict was the best decade of popular music… The 1990s. I believe while it may not have had the innovation and experimentation of the later 60s and early 70s rock era it had the most variety of style and genres for people to pick from. Hip-hop was finally finding getting a bigger share of the pie, electronic music was evolving and hitting the mainstream more than in prior decades. We saw more women fronting band and having successful solo careers beyond just being a pop singer. And the world music scene (especially Latin music was exploding on the charts in a new way). And lastly, all the genres of decades past were still thriving from blues, to country, to metal, punk, synth-pop, and soul.
One last little bit, The Beatles… They are oft sited as the most influential band on the planet. They certainly have the hits and albums to back up that claim. But some of the most influential acts never had major mainstream hits. And so I counter The Beatles claim by saying Kraftwerk are the most influential band of all time because unlike The Beatles they were the launching pad for many genres from hip-hop to house to trip-hop and beyond that are still popular to this day. The Beatles launched essentially more rock bands. But we’ll see how I feel at the end after listening to over 50 years worth of top 40 hits.
Below is a sampling of my musical resume. In for mixes. It was going to be three mixes, my musical evolution since high school started out as one set but became two because I am terrible less is more. Ha! Be prepared to dance and probably sing-a-long to some of these songs. Enjoy!
And hit up part 5 of the intro and the first episode here below.
