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The top 40 singles for each year in the 60s.
Follow Ups:
If you look at the top 20 from 1960, you'll find rock, ballads, movie tunes, country-western. I was amazed to see Percy Faith "Theme from Summer Place" as the #1 hit of 1960; the best Elvis could do was #6.The top 20 from 2001 are almost exclusively pop rock (not sure 'cause I don't even recognize most of 'em).
My take is that music buyers of the 60's were much more interested in enjoying the music than being cool.
Maybe they thought it was cool at the time :~)Cheers
John K
It shows how simple and small the market used to be. Other than the mid 60 through the early 70s most of the stuff I see on these top 40s list is a bunch of rubbish. Like if we had theme from "Friends" or the soundtrack to "Spiderman" on the 40 list today it would indicate a greater musical diversity. There are many different musical genres today, music is much more diverse and I personally find so much good new music I have a hard time finding time to listen to oldies - and I doubt anything I like ever shows up on a top 40 list at all. Top 40 is a silly childish concept that was neat when I was a kid but these days it's not worth a damn.
Give me rhythm or give me death!
music in today's Top 40 is hardly diverse.
Whether or not the music on the list is diverse or not isn't really my point. My point is that there is so much diversity in music today that there is no way that a top 40 list can represent the diversity of available music in the same way it could in the 60s. I'm only responding to the original post the concludes that the list somehow is representative of a dearth of musical diversity by stating that the opposite is the case and there is no way the list can represent this diversity. The proper perspective on this, IMO, is that in the 60s the list was useful to a wider range of music fans, and today the list is useful to a much smaller range of music fans - not because of lack of musical diversity but because of it.
Give me rhythm or give me death!
Hey, it was the Beatles, Dylan and album oriented "head music" which killed the pop music industry.Before that it was mainly singles and they had to be minor masterpieces to get radio time, a little payola, helped too.
I'm old enough to remember buying 45's because 1. Couldn't afford too many albums on my paper route
2. Not many albums were that good all the way through. I mean three or fewer good songs were too expensive on an album.It was only with some of the folk groups, then later Dylan and then the Beatles that whole albums became worthwhile.
Well, I did buy three early albums. Buddy Holly and the Chirpin' Crickets, The Everly Bros. and Ricky Nelson's first. And that's the order of musical worth today. Ricky was a bust, altho he sang some good songs. Everly's not bad. Chirpin' Crickets: still great after all these years.
BTW, never bought too many pop records, although my dad bought a few. I was shocked when he bought "Love is Stange"--what a great R&B song, ditto "Since I met you Baby" by Ivory Joe Hunter. He also bought stuff like Gogi Grant's "Wayward Wind". Well that was ok, I preferred Hibbler's "Unchained Melody". God, has it been that long?
"My take is that music buyers of the 60's were much more interested in enjoying the music than being cool."So true.. The promotional folks back then were also more interested in talent then just a pretty face. Also seemed there was alot more talent available and lyrics you didn't mind the kids listening to..
mike
I'm certain there's no lack of talent today. It just rarely gets through the assembly line of the contemporary music business that puts 99% of the effort into packaging and 1% into musical performance.
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