This week’s theme is “switch-ups,” meaning an album where the artist dramatically changes their sound. To make the switch-up clear, we listened to one album before and after the sonic change. We then rated those two albums as a single entity rather than separately.

There were many people we could have chosen here. Taylor Swift. Fleetwood Mac. The Bee Gees. Jefferson Airplane. Post Malone. But we stuck to albums that we hadn’t heard before.

#7 Behind the Front (1998) and The E.N.D. (2009) by Black Eyed Peas (Alternative Rap → Electronic Pop)

Here’s a how a user on RateYourMusic described the Black Eyed Peas:

The Black Eyed Peas are a weird group for sure. They started out as a rap group similar to A Tribe Called Quest, then hired Fergie as a fourth member creating pop rap, threw electronic influences into the mix, went back to classic West Coast Hip Hop after Fergie’s departure, then switched to reggaeton in their more recent albums. Even if you don’t like their work, it’s always interesting to poke your head in and see what they have going on at the time.

This is a pretty apt (and humorous) description of the group. Their first album is clearly made in the style of alternative rap groups, like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest. Despite being a bit too long, it’s a quality record. If you’re only familiar with the Black Eyed Peas from their imperial era, you’ll be surprised to learn that every member of the group, including will.i.am, can rap.

But the Black Eyed Peas had loftier ambitions. With some huge singles, including “My Humps” and “Pump It,” under their belt, they went for world domination on The E.N.D. And they succeeded. The first five tracks on the record—“Boom Boom Pow,” “Rock That Body,” “Meet Me Halfway,” “Imma Be,” and “I Gotta Feeling”—were all massive singles.

Had you not listened to the Black Eyed Peas since the late 1990s, your jaw would be on the floor when you threw on The E.N.D. Memorable bars have been replaced by inane catchphrases (e.g., “Focus on this, the ear seductionists / More than lyricists in this rap metropolis / More like an activist, we give it to you all” → “Go out and smash it / Like oh my God / Jump off that sofa, let’s kick it off”). Bleeps and bloops have taken the place of rich instrumentals. (Of note, the Black Eyed Peas of the late 1990s toured with a live band.)

But the worst of it all might be that those first five tracks are the best The E.N.D. has to offer. “Ring-A-Ling” is truly unlistenable. “Electric City” is an affront to the Bo Diddley beat. “Now Generation” is a half-hearted attempted at an indie rock song, Fergie prattling about how “Myspace in your space / Facebook is that new place” and “Google is my professor / Wikipedia the checker” while fighting for her life to find a pitch.

#6 The Fourth World (1997) and Overexposed (2012) by Maroon 5 (Alternative Rock → Pop Rock)

Like the Black Eyed Peas, Maroon 5 started out as an interesting group with some talent but threw all of their taste to the wind for a chance at pop stardom. Also, like the Black Eyed Peas it worked.

This is somewhat inexplicable because Songs About Jane, Maroon 5’s breakthrough album, was a great record filled with great songs. We didn’t listen to that, though. We started with The Fourth World, the group’s record released while still under their original name, Kara’s Flowers.

The Fourth World does not have the songwriting of Songs About Jane, but the instrumentals are all there. In fact, along with his lead vocal duties, Adam Levine plays a mean guitar throughout.

By Overexposed, Maroon 5 had outsourced most of the songwriting to professionals (e.g., Max Martin, Benny Blanco, Shellback). Because of that, each track sounds like it’s aspiring for heavy rotation on your local pop stations. Sometimes it works (e.g., “Daylight”). Most of the time it doesn’t (e.g., “One More Night”).

#5 Lemonade and Brownies (1995) and 14:59 (1999) by Sugar Ray (Nu Metal → Alternative Rock)

You probably know Sugar Ray for their breezy late 1990s hits, like “Fly,” “Every Morning,” and “Someday.” But before they made their way to soft rock radio, they were an aspiring nu metal group.

I am not a nu metal guy, but I somehow enjoyed Lemonade and Brownies—their effort in that genre—more than the hit-spawning 14:59. The problem is that while the hits on 14:59 are fun, the rest is a bit forgettable (e.g., cover of Steve Miller’s “Abracadabra”). Lemonade and Brownies at least feels like a cohesive statement.

#4 Alanis (1991) and Jagged Little Pill (1995) by Alanis Morissette (Dance-pop → Alternative Rock)

Before she became an alt rock queen, a young Alanis Morissette tried her hand at dance-pop. The self-titled record sold well in Canada but was largely erased from distribution when Morissette decided to switch up her sound. That’s a shame. While I won’t be returning to Alanis, it’s a light, fun affair who didn’t deserve the fate of being erased from the world.

Jagged Little Pill, the massive hit that Morissette pretends is her debut, is better than her real debut. But there are many ways that this record could have gone wrong. The heart-on-your-sleeve lyrics could have come across as shallow. The vocal timbre could have come across as grating. Even the mid-1990s alt rock production could have come across as insincere.

None of these things are the case, though. Jagged Little Pill continues to work because Morissette and her collaborators (i.e., Glen Ballard, Dave Navarro, Flea, Benmont Tench) are fully committed. You believe every one of the giant choruses on this album because they do.

#3 New York Dolls (1973) and Buster Poindexter (1987) by New York Dolls/Buster Poindexter (Proto-Punk → Swing)

After David Johansen left the New York Dolls, he wanted to try something new without his old fans bothering him. So, he started performing old time swing and jump blues under the pseudonym Buster Poindexter. By the late 1980s, he even scored hits under this pseudonym, including “Hot Hot Hot.”

While I would choose to listen to the New York Dolls self-titled record over the Buster Poindexter record ten times out of ten, the latter does work. Johansen and his band are clearly having fun in this style.

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As always, if you enjoy this newsletter, check out my book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music that I wrote as I spent years listening to every number one hit in history.

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“Day Tripper - Live” by Otis Redding

“I think of Otis Redding covering ‘Day Tripper.’ In addition to being a great cover, there are the added elements that (1) the bass line in ‘Drive My Car’ reportedly borrowed from Redding’s ‘Respect.’ So the Beatles were aware of his music and (2) Otis Redding at age 25 performing his version live in London in 1967 feels like a clear statement of his own confidence in feeling like he could go toe-to-toe with The Beatles” -

“Strawberry Fields Forever’“ by Los Fabulosos Cadillacs

“Your list has a number of my favorite Beatles covers, but my personal favorite is by the Argentinian band Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. Their 1995 Rey Azúcar was produced by Chris Franz and Tina Weymouth, and they wrangled Debbie Harry to feature on this ska-flavored take on ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’” -

“A Day in the Life” by Wes Montgomery

“Wes Montgomery’s version of ‘A Day In The Life’ is superb. Wes was widely disparaged by jazz classicist critics for covering 1960s pop and rock tunes produced by Creed Taylor, but I hear the signature tone and musicality in those records, and it fits together perfectly. The Creed Taylor arrangement of “Day In The Life” is faithful to the drama of the original.” -

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Bless the Twang Down in Africa

By Chris Dalla Riva

When I first noticed that Dolly Parton was popular in Africa, I wasn’t terribly shocked. I work for the music streaming service Audiomack. Audiomack’s largest markets are in Africa. Most artists on Audiomack see the biggest slice of their listeners in Africa. But as I dug in, the data got weirder.

Despite 15% of Audiomack’s daily listeners being in Ghana, nearly 20% of her plays were coming from the country. In other words, she was over-indexing there. As I poked around, I realized that this was not unique to Dolly Parton.

• 56% of Jim Reeves’ plays were coming from Ghana even though only 15% of listeners were there

• 18% of Kenny Rogers’ plays were coming Tanzania even though only 3% of listeners were there

• 3% of Shania Twain’s plays were coming from Cameroon even though less than 1% of listeners were there

It seemed American country music was popular throughout Africa. Unexpected but not unbelievable. American popular culture has been exported around the globe for generations. There was no reason country music couldn’t find a home in Africa.

But then something even stranger happened. I took a look at Morgan Wallen’s listeners. Morgan Wallen is the biggest artist in contemporary American country music. 88% of his plays were coming from the United States. Very few were coming from Africa.

The same held for other contemporary country stars, like Jason Aldean and Luke Combs. While country stars of yore had fans in Africa, the current generation wasn’t crossing over. I wanted to find out why.

John Denver is Forever, Luke Bryan is for Today

Country music first came to Africa just as it was being recorded. In fact, some of country’s earliest stars, like Jimmie Rogers and The Carter Family, found an audience on the African continent.

But this largely isn’t the country music that you will find Africans listening to today. It’s the Nashville sound and its practitioners that found fame from the 1960s through the end of the 20th century. This sound traveled across Africa in a few ways.

• Colonialism: Along with many horrors brought by colonial powers in Africa, cultural ideas were also exchanged, especially on work sites. Gold mining companies, for example, would occasionally screen westerns for workers, often as a means of propaganda.

• Radio: Throughout the 20th century, radio became much more pervasive throughout Africa. Radio is one of the easiest ways to transmit music.

• Christian Missionaries: Missionaries, especially those from the American south, came to African in droves throughout the 20th century. They brought along cultural pieces from their homes.

Regardless of the forces that brought the music, nothing would matter if Nigerians, Ghanaians, Tanzanians, South Africans, and others didn’t care for the genre. But they clearly identified with it. And there are two reasons as to why.

First, country music from the first half of the 20th century shared some overlap with some indigenous African music. The aforementioned Jimmie Rogers, for example, made a name for himself with his blue yodels. Some indigenous African styles used similar vocal approaches.

Second, Africans were able to identify with many of country’s lyrical themes. To understand why, we need to turn to China for a moment. John Denver, as author Yi-Ling Liu told me a few months ago, is huge in China because of how people were moved by his words in a time of social upheaval:

“Country Roads” is the [John Denver] song that really took off in China. I think people identified with the nostalgic simplicity of the song at a moment of rapid urbanization and economic upheaval.

We see a similar effect throughout the African nations that took to country music. In 1960, about 15% of Sub-Saharan Africans lived in urban areas as defined by the World Bank. By 1990, the urban share of the population had doubled and showed no signs of stopping.

Just as country music arrived, Africans were beginning to leave rural areas for opportunities in the city. Country lyrics (almost stereotypically) focus on longing for the old ways—small towns and better days. That’s something you can identify with whether you’re from Nashville or Nairobi.

This phenomenon also explains why newer country acts, like Morgan Wallen and Luke Bryan, have not crossed over. Because they arose post-urbanization, their music doesn’t evoke nostalgia in the same way.

The Don Williams Effect

As I dug into the success of African country music on Audiomack, the ubiquity of one name surprised me: Don Williams. Don Williams is not obscure. He’s a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. But in certain parts of Africa, he’s as famous as Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton.

When Williams died, comedian Ted Malanda quipped to The Standard, the oldest newspaper in Kenya, “Moment of silence for the thousands of Kenyan kids who were conceived with Don Williams crooning in the background.” When I asked my Nigerian coworker about Williams, he noted that his father “literally brainwashed us with his songs.” Beyond the positivity of much of his music, what was the appeal of Mr. Williams?

Many of the American country stars beloved by Africans never made a trip over to the continent. The two outliers were Jim Reeves and Don Williams. Reeves performed in South Africa in the early 1960s not long before dying in a plane crash. Williams performed in Zimbabwe in 1997 and documented his trip in a concert documentary, Into Africa.

When Don Williams sat down to write “Tulsa Time,” I doubt he was thinking about how it would connect with millions in Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Nigeria. I’m sure John Denver gave just as much thought to how “Take Me Home, Country Roads” would become an anthem in China.

But the success of those songs internationally is a great reminder of how powerful music can be. Unlike almost any other art form, music can easily transport across time and place. Its success is also a great reminder that when artists go on a “world tour,” they should look beyond the borders of North America and Europe. Your biggest fans may be hiding in the most unexpected places.

Though the classic country style has lost some favor in Africa over the last few decades, some artists are clearly still influenced by it. Dusty and Stones, an Eswatini duo, not only works in the style, but don all the required garb, cowboy hat included. Their latest single “Ngyakhumbula” has many of the signifiers that you would expect from a typical country song.

Not only did American country music have an impact on African musicians, but the relationship sometimes moved in the other direction too. George Sibanda, for example, became one of the first big recording stars in Sub-Saharan Africa. His “Guabi Guabi” was later recorded by American folk artists, like Ramblin’ Jack Elliot and Arlo Guthrie.

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This week’s theme is “one-off collabs,” meaning when two artists with separate careers get together one time to make an album. Or close to one time. Occasionally, artists will collaborate on a record a few times. As long as they still maintained separate careers, we counted it.

You might also notice that this week we listened to many more albums. Usually we stick to one, or occasionally two, per day. But last Tuesday, Ken suggested three one-off collabs featuring Elvis Costello. This set us off on an unexpected listening journey for the rest of the week. Strap in and let us know if we missed anything.

#14 Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed (2011)

When we listened to Insane Clown Posse’s The Great Milenko back in January, I was confident that it would be the worst album we heard all year. Then Lulu, the inexplicable collaboration between Metallica and Lou Reed, showed up.

Lulu is based on two plays by German playwright Frank Wedekind. In this case, the story is told by Lou Reed mostly speaking over Metallica instrumentals. It is basically unlistenable. In fact, it kind of sounds like both parties recorded their parts without knowing what the other was doing.

#13 Painted from Memory by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach (1998)

Bring together Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach and you are bound to get perfectly constructed songs (e.g., “Toledo”). The problem is that Elvis Costello’s unique vocal timbre clashes with Bacharach’s highly orchestral and ornate arrangements.

#12 Neck and Neck by Chet Atkins and Mark Knopfler (1990)

I was concerned that Mark Knopfler wouldn’t be able to keep up with Chet Atkins on this album. I don’t mean that as knock on Knopfler. There are few better guitar players in the second half of the 20th century. But Chet Atkins puts nearly everyone to shame on the six-string.

My concerns were unfounded, though. Knopfler kept up with his hero. My biggest issue with this collaboration is the production. Nashville-style productions from the late 1980s and early 1990s just don’t do it for me.

#11 Everything Is Love by Jay-Z and Beyoncé (2018)

On Everything Is Love, Beyoncé and Jay-Z ruminate on their riches and their marital difficulties. I mean the couple literally rented out the Louvre to film the video for the lead single, “APESHIT.”

I know this album was acclaimed, but there’s only so much I can take of rich people singing about how rich they are. Plus, if you want marital ruminations, I think the couple’s respective efforts from around the same time—4:44 and Lemonade—are much stronger.

#10 The Atkins–Travis Traveling Show by Chet Atkins and Merle Travis (1974)

Just as Mark Knopfler got to play with his hero (i.e., Chet Atkins) on Neck and Neck, Chet Atkins got to play with his—in this case, Merle Travis— on this record. In terms of the guitar playing, The Atkins-Travis Traveling Show is on par with Neck and Neck. We rated it a bit higher because it seemed like Atkins and Travis were having a ton of fun.

#9 44/876 by Sting and Shaggy (2018)

A Sting and Shaggy collaboration kind of makes sense. Shaggy has been making reggae and dancehall for decades (e.g., “It Wasn’t Me”). Sting’s work with The Police was also clearly influenced by those styles (e.g., “Walking on the Moon”). And while this collaboration feels strained, if not ridiculous, at times (e.g., “Crooked Tree”), it is also clear that these two are having lots of fun (e.g., “Morning is Coming”). As with the Atkins-Travis record, it’s hard to hate something that a lot of smiles went into making.

#8 Francis A. & Edward K. by Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington (1968)

With Frank Sinatra on the microphone and Duke Ellington leading the band, you know this record is going to sound great. Still, the musical arrangement and production feel relatively standard for Sinatra. I was expecting those things to stand out a bit more with Duke at the helm.

#7 Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim by Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim (1967)

Though there were many consistencies throughout his career, I think people underrate how much Frank Sinatra was willing to experiment. This album is evidence of that. It’s an exploration of bossa nova with one of the great practitioners of the genre: Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Despite never really working in the style, Sinatra sounds at ease on this album. Part of that is the doing of Jobim. These acoustic guitar-led arrangements go down like fine wine. I wish the two had worked together more.

#6 Watch the Throne by Jay-Z and Kanye West (2011)

When you look at the name and gold-plated cover of this album, you know what you are getting in to: This is an album about being rich and famous. (With samples of Otis Redding, Nina Simone, and “Apache,” it also must have taken incredible riches to produce.)

Because of this, Watch the Throne shares some thematic elements with Jay-Z’s collaboration with Beyoncé. But I found the arrangements on Watch the Throne much more interesting (e.g., “No Church in the Wild”) than those on Everything Is Love.

Furthermore, Jay-Z kind of felt lost on Everything Is Love to me. Beyoncé dominated the entire record. Watch the Throne feels like a true collaboration, both rappers trying to out brag each other throughout (e.g., “N*ggas in Paris”).

#5 Collision Course by Jay-Z and Linkin Park (2004)

In the abstract, Collision Course should not work. It’s six mash-ups of Jay-Z and Linkin Park songs. But it somehow does work, tracks like Linkin Park’s “Numb” and Jay-Z’s “Encore” sounding like they are long lost brothers.

The only time Collision Course falls short is when it feels like a mash-up was forced just to pad out the length of the EP. “Izzo” and “In the End,” for example, go together like water and oil.

#4 Wise Up Ghost by Elvis Costello and The Roots (2013)

While Elvis Costello’s aforementioned collaboration with Burt Bacharach falls short because Costello’s vocals clash with Bacharach’s arrangements, things work well on Wise Up Ghost, Costello’s warble pairing nicely with grooves from The Roots. My only complaint is that there’s no rap on this record. There is enough space on some songs for a few verses from Black Thought.

#3 Chester and Lester by Chet Atkins and Les Paul (1976)

On both of the other Chet Atkins projects this week, one person is playing with their hero. Because of that, there is a reverence in some of the playing that holds those records back. That’s not the case on Chester and Lester. It is two masters near the respective peaks of their powers trying to outdo one another. But not in a way where instrumental flash comes at the expense of the song. Both Chet and Les elevate one another’s playing.

#2 Flowers in the Dirt - Reissue - Disc 2 (Recorded: 1989 - Reissued: 2017)

While it would be unfair to say that Paul McCartney had lost all commercial appeal by the end of the 1980s, he certainly wasn’t at the top of his game. To get the creative juices flowing, he teamed up with Elvis Costello. The project was aborted after some demos, though.

This decision is mystifying. For decades, the recordings were locked away. They finally saw the light of day in 2017 as part of the reissue of Paul McCartney’s Flowers in the Dirt. The vocal harmonies that Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney sing are eerily reminiscent of those that Sir Paul did with John Lennon in the early 1960s.

But maybe we’re lucky this album of duets never came out. McCartney recorded a few of them on the canonical version of Flowers in the Dirt, but they seldom approach the rawness of the demos (e.g., compare the two versions of “You Want Her Too”). Maybe this album is better as a “what could have been” than if it were fully recorded.

#1 Madvillainy by MF Doom and Madlib (2004)

When MF Doom raps, he kind of sounds like he’s just talking to you. His laid back voice is very conversational. But then you look at his lyrics and realize that he is utilizing some of the densest rhyme schemes imaginable, a Shakespeare on the microphone.

Because MF Doom is such a skilled rapper, it would be easy for Madvillainy to become masturbatory, the mysterious MC only there to please himself. But Doom has two things working on his side.

First, Madlib’s off-kilter beats are just as engaging as Doom’s rhymes. Second, there’s a ton of humor baked into this album, the duo playing the part of hip-hop supervillains. This is a record that’s fun to listen to passively but rewards you the deeper you look. RIP MF DOOM.

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Should I Listen to Music by Bad People?

Afrika Bambaataa died last week. Along with DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash, Bambaataa is considered one of the forefathers of hip-hop. He was also a highly problematic character. In the last decade of his life, Bambaataa was repeatedly accused of grooming and sexually molesting children through the Universal Zulu Nation, a hip-hop awareness group that he founded in the early 1970s.

When I heard about Bambaataa’s death, my mind went to his “Planet Rock,” one of the most important records in the history of hip-hop. As I went to pull the song up on YouTube, I hesitated. Should I be listening to a song by a bad person?

I did still play the song. But this question kept coming back to me throughout the month. d4vd, a singer-songwriter best known for his track “Romantic Homicide,” made headlines after he was arrested in connection to the murder of a 14-year-old girl whose body was discovered in the trunk of his car. Buzz has also continued to grow around the forthcoming Michael Jackson biopic, a biopic that apparently ignores the troublesome parts of the second half of the singer’s life.

This brings us back to the same question: Should we listen to songs by people who do bad things?

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Along with his biography on Stevie Ray Vaughn, he is one of the leading authorities on the Allman Brothers Band. You should check out his books and his newsletter, Low Down and Dirty.

And if you still haven’t gotten a chance, check out my book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music that I wrote as I spent years listening to every number one hit in history. Now, let’s talk about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees.

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When the Rock Hall is Wrong

By Chris Dalla Riva

Liam Gallagher, the outspoken singer of Oasis, has made it clear that he does not care for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2024, he declared, “Fuck the Rock n Roll hall” on Twitter. A year later, he noted with the similar succinctness, “RNR hall of fame is for WANKERS.”

Naturally, this all leads up to the fact that when Oasis was inducted into the Rock Hall this year, Liam was thrilled by the honor, going so far as to say it was something that he’d dreamt of from the time he “was a little kid singing in the shower.”

Should we take Liam Gallagher’s thoughts on the Rock Hall that seriously? Probably not. As he complained about the establishment in the past, he also joked that should he be inducted, he’d obviously go to the ceremony and say “it’s the best thing EVER.”

Still, I think the English singer’s attitude toward Rock Hall is similar to many other people’s attitudes. Because music awards are stupid, musical lifetime achievement awards are especially stupid. As an artist, it’s nice to be recognized for your life’s work, though. As a fan, it’s also nice to be able to go to a building with tons of memorabilia.

In short, the Rock Hall is controversial because while people like to complain about it, the fact that they are complaining means that it is important on some level. This brings me to an observation that made in his newsletter a few weeks ago:

The annual ritual of inducting several people requires that you occasionally include names that are less worthy, merely for the sake of the yearly tradition. A truly elite institution, the argument goes, might skip a year (or more) if there are no truly qualified candidates. But the ritual’s requirements ultimately outweigh the possibility of higher standards.

A quick glance at the Rock Hall’s induction history appears to support this. The first class was honored in 1986, a full 40 years ago, and it’s all heavy hitters: Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, and Little Richard … And so it went for the next several classes …

I would argue that the Rock Hall didn’t get really dicey with what they chose to include until the mid-2010s … This coincided with the waning influence of Jann Wenner, whose iron grip on the Rock Hall appeared to be slipping as bands like Kiss and Rush — which are outright reviled by critics, then and now — achieved immortality. And then, in the 2020s, this trend accelerated, as the Rock Hall welcomed the critically dubious likes of Foreigner, Bad Company, Chicago, The Moody Blues, Steve Miller, Peter Frampton, Bon Jovi, Dave Matthews Band, and Pat Benatar.

Hyden’s observation got me wondering if we could measure this phenomenon. Are Rock Hall standards really slipping? And regardless of whether they were, could we find the worst induction class?

Where Have the Standards Gone?

A few years ago, I wrote about the 40-Year Test. I created this test after observing that Frank Sinatra’s “Theme from New York, New York” came out in 1980, 40 years after the release of his first important work. That’s a long time. I wanted to hunt for other artists that had released critically important recordings at least 40 years apart.

In writing that piece, I had to assemble a list of critically important musical works. To do that, I grabbed 10 lists of important musical works, totaling 3,000 celebrated works from 1860 to 2020. Using that list, we could gauge the caliber of artists being inducted into the Rock Hall.

• Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry

• Grammy Hall of Fame

• Rolling Stone Magazine’s Top 500 Songs of All-Time

• ASCAP’s Top 100 Songs Between 1914 and 2014

• NPR’s Most Important Musical Works of the 20th Century

• Blender Magazine’s Top 500 Songs Since You Were Born

• RIAA’s Songs of the 20th Century

• Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll

• Time Magazine All-Time 100 Songs

• AcclaimedMusic.com’s Top 500 Songs of All-Time

My methodology here was pretty simple. Build a database of every performer inducted into the Rock Hall (e.g., The Kinks (1990), Prince (2004), Sheryl Crow (2023)). Look up how many songs each of those performers had on my critically-acclaimed song list (e.g., The Kinks (4), Prince (10), Sheryl Crow (1)). Plot the average by year.

It does indeed look like standards started to get worse around 2010. From 1986 through 2000, your average inductee had released between 4 and 8 critically acclaimed songs. Since 2010, it’s been closer to 2.

I will note that many of these lists are biased toward older music. But an artist’s first album must be at least 25 years old to be inducted into the Rock Hall. Because of that, the older bias of the songs on my list probably isn’t that important. The most contemporary group inducted this year, for example, was Oasis. Their debut came out in 1994.

So, what’s going on? Is the Rock Hall just inducting more popular acts rather than more critically acclaimed acts? Not exactly. I also plotted the average number of top 40 hits for each year of inductees. Beyond the first few years being packed with artists that were both critically acclaimed and popular (e.g., The Beatles), the number of hits per inductee has been pretty steady.

The change in inductee caliber seems to be driven by two things. First, fans have voted since 2012. Since all fan votes are compiled into a single ballot, it’s not that important, but it likely has some impact.

Second, the Rock Hall has started to induct more people. After a few big inductions to get things started, it looked like the number of inductees was settling around 5 per year. Over the last five years, the number has been creeping up closer to 8 or 9 per year. (Note: In 2012 a special committee decided to induct 6 backing bands (e.g., The Famous Flames, The Crickets), leading to a single-year increase).

WHO DID THEY INDUCT??

It won’t surprise you that the earliest years were undoubtedly the strongest induction years. Because nobody was in the Rock Hall yet, there were a lot of legends to choose from. By my methodology, the high-water mark was 1988, when The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Drifters, The Supremes, and Bob Dylan were all inducted. That’s a tough class to beat.

The worst year is a bit more interesting. If we look at the years where the average inductee has the fewest critically acclaimed song, then the worst induction class is somewhere between 2009 and 2011.

The point here is not that, say, Steve Miller stinks. I love me some Steve Miller. But does Mr. Miller deserve to be enshrined among people like John Lennon and Ray Charles and Eminem? I don’t think so. These are people that reshaped not just popular music but popular culture.

And, yes, I mention Eminem to make it clear that I don’t take offense at the Hall inducting non-rockers. Should the name of the institution be different? Probably. But it effectively functions as a popular music hall of fame. And if it is a popular music hall of fame, then it has still made some serious oversights.

I’m Still Waiting

Looking for Rock Hall snubs, I took my list of critically-celebrated songs, counted up the number of songs each artist had, and then looked for the artists with the most songs that were not currently enshrined.

When you first run this analysis, all of the artists that come up on top are jazz artists. John Coltrane. Frank Sinatra. Duke Ellington. Beyond a few artists, like Miles Davis, the Rock Hall doesn’t do too much to celebrate jazz. I know I just said the institution functions more as a popular music hall of fame—and jazz is one of the most important forms of popular music—but because of the institution’s lack of interest in the genre thus far, I didn’t include any jazz artists on my snubs list.

Though he was inducted as a member of N.W.A, Dr. Dre still has not been enshrined for his solo career. Neither have The Replacements, one of my favorite bands of all-time. Frankly, it seems like the Rock Hall has some issues with alternative rockers of the 1980s. Along with The Replacements, The Smiths and the Pixies have not been enshrined.

The only people that I was surprised to see on this list were Coldplay and Alicia Keys. While both have had long, successful careers, they don’t jump to mind when I think of critically acclaimed artists. That said, even if you don’t love either of them, you likely do appreciate works from their respective discographies: “Viva La Vida,” “Yellow,” “If I Ain’t Got You,” etc.

So, where does all of this land us? Is the Rock Hall a stupid institution that must be torn down? Should acclaimed artists that have not been enshrined show up with pitchforks and torches? In both cases, I’d say, “NO!”

Like many institutions, the Rock Hall is filled with flaws and contradictions. But it is one of the few places trying to preserve our musical history. While I will always take issue with an institution that declares Bon Jovi one of the greatest artists of all time before The Replacements, I salute them for their efforts.

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This week’s theme is “comebacks,” meaning an album that reestablishes an artist. By our definition, there were two types of albums that fit the comeback definition. First, an artist takes over 10 years between album releases. Second, a once critically- or commercially-successful artist spends a decade in relative obscurity before releasing another album that brings them praise and riches.

#8 Supernatural by Santana (1999 - First platinum record since 1981)

With the help of label maestro Clive Davis, Santana put together an album of radio-friendly collaborations to try to climb his way back onto the charts. It worked! And the big hits, like “Smooth” and “Maria Maria,” are quite memorable. But because nearly every track has a different vocalist, this record doesn’t feel cohesive.

#7 Private Dancer by Tina Turner (1984 - First platinum record as a solo artist)

Though her cover of “Let’s Stay Together” was the first single from Private Dancer, it was the second, “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” that put Tina Turner’s solo career on the map. “What’s Got to Do with It” is one of the best cuts from Private Dancer. But there’s a moment on the song that I think captures why I didn’t connect that deeply with the album: the solo.

The short solo on “What’s Love Got to Do with It” is something that could only have happened in 1984. Much of this record is dated to the 1980s. While I like 1980s production in some cases, the production of Private Dancer didn’t do it for me. Still, Tina Turner is so compelling that I enjoyed many moments of this album (e.g., “Better Be Good To Me”). Except the cover of “Help!” I did not find Turner’s rendition of The Beatles’ classic very enjoyable.

#6 Mystery Girl by Roy Orbison (1989 - First hits since the 1960s)

After inventing his own operatic style of popular music in the early 1960s, Roy Orbison fell on hard times—for decades. Starting in the 1980s, a bunch of stars wanted to help one of their heroes get back on his feet. Bruce Springsteen. k.d. lang. George Harrison. Bob Dylan. Tom Petty. Jeff Lynne. Those final four started a supergroup with Orbison, The Traveling Wilburys. The final two helped The Big O write and record a new record.

Though Orbison’s voice wasn’t at its full power on Mystery Girl, it was pretty close. And if you were into Orbison’s work from the 1960s, many of the songs here lean into the motifs that defined that earlier work. “You Got It,” the lead single, stands alone, though. It wears a bit more 1980s’ sheen but in a way I really enjoyed.

#5 Cloud Nine by George Harrison (1987 - First platinum record since 1970)

Right around the time Jeff Lynne was helping relaunch Roy Orbison’s, he was doing the same for fellow Wilbury, George Harrison. If you’ve heard anything on Cloud Nine, it is like “Got My Mind Set On You,” a James Ray cover dressed up for the 1980s. The rest of the album doesn’t lean into that sound as much. It’s classic Harrison. Lots of meditative lyrics and slide guitar. It makes you wish his solo catalog was more extensive.

#4 Wildflower by The Avalanches (2016 - First album since 2000)

In 2000, The Avalanches released Since I Left You, one of the greatest examples of plunderphonics. Plunderphonics is a fascinating genre. Songs in this style are almost completely assembled from previously recorded material, or samples. The Avalanches stack hundreds of samples together on Since I Left You. While they do the same on Wildflower, they also get some help from featured vocalists, like Danny Brown and MF Doom. Because of that, recordings on Wildflower resemble traditional songs a bit more than those on Since I Left You.

Still, the instrumentals are all composed of stacks of samples from 1960s and 1970s gold. And those samples give this record a warmth that feels like a hug. Honestly, it almost made me cry.

#3 American Recordings by Johnny Cash (1994 - First critically acclaimed album in decades)

Outside of his work with the Highwaymen, country legend Johnny Cash was not at the forefront of everybody’s minds in the 1990s. Then Rick Rubin came along. The genre-bending producer brought Johnny Cash into the studio to record 13 acoustic songs, some original and some covers.

While this isn’t my favorite of the sessions Cash would do with Rubin over the last decade of his life, I could listen to Johnny Cash sing the phone book. His rich baritone pulls more out of a song than nearly any other vocalist.

#2 Black Messiah by D’Angelo (2014 - First album since 2000)

Often compared to Sly & the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On, D’Angelo’s final record is a murky soul record. Whereas you can hear every word that Johnny Cash intones on American Recordings, you won’t be able to make sense of almost anything that comes out of D’Angelo’s mouth on Black Messiah. That’s okay, though. Even though the words that D’Angelo sings are powerful, his message is clear through the dense, layered texture of this album.

#1 We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your service by A Tribe Called Quest (2016 - First album since 1998)

There are many reasons that this album could have aged poorly. First, it was released just after the death of Phife Dawg. Because of that, the rap legends could have used this record to cash in on his legacy. Second, it was released around the first election of Donald Trump. Independent of your opinions, records steeped in specific political moments can often feel stuck in the past.

Neither of these things hold this record back, though. A Tribe Called Quest’s socio-political commentary transcends the moment it was created. In fact, We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service is as rich as anything else in their catalog. As Pitchfork put it upon the album’s release, “We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service is all just beats, rhymes, and life … [I]t feels like a legit A Tribe Called Quest album. We should be the ones thanking them.”

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Last year, Robinson started her podcast, On The Record. In my humble opinion, it’s the best music industry podcast around. Frankly, the guest list over the first two seasons has been astounding. She’s spoken with hit songwriter Ryan Tedder, Suno CEO Mikey Shulman, Atlantic Record exec Elliot Grainge, popular artist Charlie Puth, and so many others.

Today, she’s taken time out of her busy schedule to chat with me about the catalog purchase craze, why AI might have some benefits, the unexpected rise of Christian music, and a viral debate her recent article set off.

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One of your recent stories for Billboard broke containment. You spoke with Chaotic Good, a notable digital marketing firm in the music business. They told you that, “Everything on the internet is fake,” alluding to the fact that they will use fake accounts and fake interactions to create social proof that people are already listening to an artist.

Many people online were upset with this, especially since some of the artists they worked with, like Geese and Mk.gee, are respected. What was your whole take on this situation? I know Chaotic Good removed some client names from their site after the story started blowing up.

I do believe they removed some artists on their website, but they didn’t remove them on Instagram, which I haven’t spoken to them about. The day the interview came out, they were very happy with it. What’s interesting about that interview is that if you work at a label or are an artist manager, you know that this stuff has been going on for years. It’s kind of how marketing works in 2026. Once people are keyed in on a marketing initiative, then the marketing stops working.

When I asked them about the issues with so much on the internet being fake, they argued that they were pushing songs and trying to get artists to succeed in a crowded landscape. They believe their mission is a good one. But I understand why it is a polarizing topic.

Totally. I was aware of this stuff, and I get why it makes people upset. But part of me also doesn’t care that much as long as the music is good.

That’s the thing, though. This stuff only works if the music is good. I don’t mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but campaigns like these are run for so many songs. Every label is doing it. Many songs that get this treatment go nowhere because they aren’t good. We’re only hearing about the campaigns that worked.

I do think part of what upset people is that many of Chaotic Good’s clients, like Geese and Mk.gee and Dijon, are known as cool indie acts. We expect major label artists to engage in marketing tactics like this. But these acts are held to some sort of higher bar.

At the end of the day, it is really hard to cut through the noise.

It is. And some of those artists don’t like to post on social media because it creates mystique or they just don’t like it. These are artists who aren’t going to make “Did I just make the song of the summer?” videos on TikTok. This is a way to market music where they don’t really have to be involved.

When you first started at Billboard, your beat was publishing and performance rights. For the last few decades, I feel like that was considered the least sexy part of the business. Now, hundreds of millions of dollars are being thrown around to purchase the publishing catalogs of legacy acts. What is your take on the catalog purchasing craze? Do you expect it to cool off?

There’s no sign of the catalog market slowing down. The prices are still very high. I think everyone has just realized that older songs actually have a pretty predictable rate of return. It’s not a bad place to park your money. The irony is that while these are safe investments for older music, it’s harder than ever to establish yourself financially as an artist.

You’ve written in the past about forgotten hits. So, it’s not like you just have a hit and suddenly your music is generating tons of money for decades. But after a certain point, it does become very predictable how a catalog will continue to perform. Like if you purchased something from 1975, you’d know what to expect in a way you wouldn’t when looking at a song from 2019.

Of course, catalog purchasing is not new. There’s the infamous story from the 1980s where Michael Jackson went behind Paul McCartney’s back to purchase The Beatles’ publishing. But do you think the growing interest in the space is just driven by how much more predictable streaming revenues are?

Yes. Once streaming got embedded in the culture, people started to realize how much data we had access to. Back in the day, when you purchased a CD, you had a single data point. You didn’t know how often people played the CD once they walked out of the record store. With streaming, we get very granular data. Streaming has made the revenue streams for songs much more predictable.

I also think Hipgnosis did a lot for getting Main Street to pay attention to this space. They were overbidding for catalogs, which drove up prices. Those purchases made headlines. They’ve scaled back since then because of some financial difficulties, but they were onto something.

The one part of this space that I’m most skeptical of is letting fans buy fractional shares of songs. Like you could own 0.01% of “Halo” by Beyonce. I feel like you’re just going to get people paying for songs they are emotionally attached to. Something about it just feels sketchy to me.

Royalty streams are also becoming so complicated without involving fans. Like it’s hard enough to get all the money routed to the correct parties already. Getting fans involved will make it more complex. I’m also just skeptical that fans have any interest in this. Some companies have tried, like JKBX. But I don’t think anybody has really cracked the code yet.

Earlier, you noted that while superstar catalogs are predictable investments, it may be harder than ever to make it as an artist or songwriter. When you spoke with Ryan Tedder and David Israelite recently, they brought up how certain format shifts have hurt up-and-comers.

Like back in the day, if I wrote an album cut for Santana’s Supernatural that nobody cared about, I would have made off quite well because everyone was buying the CD just to hear “Smooth.” Packaging brought great benefits to smaller songwriters. Now, unless you’re writing the big hit on, say, Ariana Grande’s album, you’re not going to make off as well. Do you see any way for us to change the system to benefit smaller songwriters?

Unfortunately, I think this is the new world we live in. Even so, I think the rise of social media has opened up the doors for artists and songwriters from places that would not have gotten a shot in the past. The old system was propping up many songwriters, though. Maybe you weren’t rich if you wrote the album cut on the big album, but you could lead a middle class life.

Now, top songwriters will sometimes ask for more to make up for that lost income. I’ve heard that some big writers will only work on a project if certain conditions are met:

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Some Artists are Bad at Picking Singles

By Chris Dalla Riva

Back in January, Harry Styles released “Aperture,” the lead single from his fourth studio album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. Despite charting well in its debut week around the globe, I found it to be a strange choice. The slow burning, LCD Soundsystem-cosplay lacked the memorable hooks that have defined some of Styles other big hits.

This single choice only became more confusing when the full record came out. “Aperture” was outdone by many other tracks on the album, especially “American Girls.” In fact, I couldn’t imagine listening to this record and not thinking that “American Girls” should be the lead single. Many fans seem to agree. It’s looking like “American Girls” will soon outstrip “Aperture” in streams despite its multi-month head start.

I wouldn’t say that Harry Styles is bad at picking singles. The respective lead singles from Harry’s House (i.e., “As It Was”) and his self-titled debut (i.e., “Sign of the Times”) remain the most streamed songs off those records. But he missed with the lead single on Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. Some artists miss a lot more frequently, though.

Wait, What’s the Best Song on My Album?

Historically, the purpose of a lead single was to generate buzz for a forthcoming album. Albums were usually more lucrative than singles, so if you could get people hyped about a song, you’d likely reap a large financial reward. By this logic, you’d probably want to put out your best single first.

That’s not to say every artist follows this chain of thought. If you’re a big enough star, you can likely get away with bending the rules. The lead single from Michael Jackson’s Thriller, for example, was “The Girl Is Mine,” a cheesy ballad that I’d make the case is the worst song on the record. Similarly, Jackson kicked off the Bad album cycle with “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” another ballad far less memorable than classics like “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Man in the Mirror,” and “Dirty Diana.”

Most artists aren’t Michael Jackson, though. Most artists are trying to put their best foot forward with their lead single. (I’m sure Jackson was too, but you get the point.) With some clever data manipulation, we can see which artists are the most and least skilled at picking their lead singles.

This process took a few steps. First, I grabbed the 100 best-selling artists of all-time according to the RIAA. Then I used Wikipedia to look up the studio album discography for each of those artists and the singles from each of those studio albums. That left me with a database of 1,600 albums and 5,200 singles. Finally, I used the streaming service Deezer and the listening tracking service Last.fm to source the current popularity of each single and album track. Using this data, I could see if the lead single from a record was the current most popular song.

Hard rockers Three Days Grace know how to pick a single. On each of their studio albums, the lead single remains the most popular song. Nobody else with at least 5 albums is perfect, but others do quite well. Rockers, including The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and Metallica, have hit rates above 60%. Pop stars, including Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, and Mariah Carey, cross the 50% threshold.

What may be more interesting is artists whose lead singles don’t turn out to be the most popular song on the album that often. For example, zero of the lead singles from each of Outkast’s six studio albums is that respective albums most popular track. What about “Hey Ya!” you may ask? That was (somehow) the second single from Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.

Drake, maybe the biggest star of the 2010s, also missed with his lead singles quite often. His album Scorpion is the outlier. The lead single “God’s Plan” is the only time the lead single from one of his records has remained the most popular.

That’s not to say that he is picking lead singles that end up being unpopular. The lead single from Views was “Hotline Bling,” an absolutely massive song. Drake just had the fortunate problem that “One Dance,” the second single, was even bigger. Take Care has a similar “issue.” While the lead single “Marvins Room” was popular, it was dwarfed by the follow up, “Headlines.”

Some artists do miss big with their singles, though. Arguably the worst miss in recent memory is “ME!”, the lead single from Taylor Swift’s 2019 album Lover. “ME!” is currently the 11th most popular song on the album. The song was not only absent from Swift’s massive Era’s Tour, but shortly after the release, Swift edited the recording to remove the cringy lyric “Hey kids! Spelling is fun!”

Why Don’t You Just Release the Good Songs?

It’s 1981. You’re in the band Journey. After a decade in the trenches, you’re finally starting to score some hits. You think your next album Escape is going to bring you to the next level. The album’s first track, “Don’t Stop Believin',” might be your best effort yet. Naturally, you choose it as the lead single, right? Nope. The lead single from Escape becomes “Who’s Crying Now.”

When you hear a story like this, it almost feels inexplicable. How could Journey not realize that “Don’t Stop Believin'” would be so big that it would transcend the group? This isn’t unique to Journey, though. Sometimes you just don’t know what people will connect with over time. Sometimes listeners don’t know either.

Journey released four singles for Escape: “Who’s Crying Now,” “Don’t Stop Believin’,” “Open Arms,” and “Still They Ride.” While “Don’t Stop Believin'” has outsold those other singles many times over, “Who’s Crying Now” and “Open Arms” actually charted higher on the Billboard Hot 100 upon release. “Don’t Stop Believin'” peaked at number nine. “Who’s Crying Now” got to number four and “Open Arms” made it all the way to number two.

While it’s funny to rag on Taylor Swift for picking “ME!” as a lead single when “Cruel Summer” was sitting right there or Shania Twain for going with “Love Gets Me Every Time” when “You’re Still the One” and “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” were waiting in the wings, history suggests that the art of lead single selection is harder than it appears. No matter how it sounds in the studio, once a song is out in the wild, you never know how people will react.

Unless you’re Three Days Grace. Then you should go with your gut.

In the world of lead singles, I’m really digging “Chance to Bleed,” the lead single from Kurt Vile’s forthcoming record Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me. What I find fascinating about this ode to “old time, lo-fi, DIY, rock ‘n’ roll nights” is that it’s incredibly redundant. And while redundancy is often associated with boredom, Vile manages to make it hypnotic, wading deeper and deeper into the groove as the track rolls on. By the end, you feel like you’re at least four PBRs deep.

Here’s something inexplicable. When Billy Joel released his 1976 album Turnstiles, he picked “James” as the lead single. “James” is almost surely the worst track on this record. The single choice is especially bizarre when a classic like “New York State of Mind” is sitting in the middle of the album.

Would that song have played well on radio in the middle of the 1970s? I’m not sure. But what I do know is that this album contains maybe the most underrated Billy Joel song: “Summer, Highland Falls.” “Summer, Highland Falls” is a wistful number that Joel has often dedicated to “all the manic depressives” when he plays it live. It’s a powerful meditation on the vicissitudes of life that deserved the lead single treatment.

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This week’s theme is “swan songs,” meaning an artist’s final album. While this is a relatively straightforward theme, we had to set up a few rules:

1. The artist must be dead: In 2014, LCD Soundsystem released The Long Goodbye, a live recording of their final concert ever. Naturally, they reunited a few years later and released an album. We decided the only way to assure an album was actually final was if the artist was dead.

2. The album must have been completed while the artist was alive: In 2014, the Michael Jackson estate released Xscape from the late pop star. While The King of Pop had worked on many of the tracks during his lifetime, he did not oversee the creation and completion of this album. We aren’t interested in this. We want an artist’s true last effort that they oversaw from beginning to end.

3. The album must have been released reasonably close to when it was recorded: In 2021, Prince released Welcome 2 America, his 40th studio album. The problem? He’d been dead for 5 years. Though Welcome 2 America was completed during his lifetime, it was shelved for a decade. While we had no inherent aversion to posthumous albums for this theme, we wanted to make sure that the records we were listening to reflected the artist at the end of their life. By this rule, we could have listened to The Notorious B.I.G.’s posthumous Life After Death. When he was murdered, he was already doing press for the record.

Under these guidelines, albums generally fell into one of two categories. First, albums released when an artist was aware that they were near the end of their life. Second, albums released not long before an artist died unexpectedly. Our selections fell pretty evenly across this divide.

#8 All That Jazz by Ella Fitzgerald (1990 - Artist Age: 73)

Had you never heard anything else Ella Fitzgerald ever sang, you’d think this was one of the great vocal jazz albums of all time. But you have heard Ella Fitzgerald sing other songs. While she sounds very good for someone in their seventh decade, this isn’t an album you would like return to, especially since she was re-recording many songs she’d already sang.

I can’t imagine, for example, many people preferring this album’s rendition of “Dream A Little Dream Of Me” when she already done so with both Louis Armstrong and Count Basie decades earlier.

#7 Hypnotic Eye by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (2014 - Artist Age: 63)

While this is, as Ken noted, “a good record to hang your hat on,” it suffers from the same malady of All That Jazz. You know what Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers sound like at their best. Still, there are some nice riffs (e.g., “All You Can Carry”), but I think those are overshadowed by retreading some overdone rock rhythms (e.g., “What’d I Say” by Ray Charles → “Fault Lines,” “Bo Diddley” by Bo Diddley → “Forgotten Men”).

#6 Expression by John Coltrane (1967 - Artist Age: 40)

As he was battling terminal liver cancer, John Coltrane decided to record one final album, Expression. I was admittedly a bit out of my depth with this record, but it seems like a continuation of ideas that the Coltrane had been exploring at least since A Love Supreme. Expression is a bit more impenetrable than A Love Supreme, though.

#5 Death Race for Love by Juice WRLD (2019 - Artist Age: 20)

Before his unexpected death, Juice WRLD was on the verge of being one of the biggest stars of his generation. And there was good reason for that. He was bursting with ideas, Death Race for Love packed with more memorable hooks than many could create in a lifetime. There is one problem, though. Like many albums of the streaming era, it is too long. Cut the track list in half, and his combination of woozy rhymes with emo aesthetics would hit even harder.

#4 The Wind by Warren Zevon (2003 - Artist Age: 56)

When Warren Zevon made his last appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, the talk show host asked the songwriter how his terminal diagnosis had shaped his life. “You put more value in every minute,” Zevon noted. “It’s more valuable now. You’re reminded to enjoy every sandwich.”

This attitude is apparent on Zevon’s final record, The Wind. You get playful songs, like “The Rest of the Night,” paired with devastating numbers, like “Keep Me in Your Heart.” Few could combine wry wit with sincerity so easily.

#3 Pearl by Janis Joplin (1971 - Artist Age: 27)

Listening to Pearl made me very upset. I wasn’t upset because the album was bad, though. I was upset because it was so good. Janis Joplin had assembled a band that matched her vocal skills. They had selected the perfect songs to suit her skills. And just months before the album was released, the singer was dead, another member of the tragically, mythic 27 Club. I don’t think any other album forces me to ask, “What could have been?” more.

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Last week, Hild—a Georgia Tech-trained historian—stopped by to talk about all things Olivia Newton-John. We touched on the unexpected evolution of her sound (i.e., country → pop), how she paved the way for a generation of female pop stars, why nobody has a bad word to say about her, and so much more. If you are a fan of Olivia Newton-John or late-20th century popular culture, this book is a must read. Grab your copy at the link below.

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What drew you to writing about Olivia Newton-John? Of course, she was a huge pop star, but she was never someone that struck me as a deeply interesting character.

She was huge. People of all ages remember “Physical” and Grease. I mean who hasn’t seen Grease? But even some stuff of hers that initially bombed, like Xanadu and Two of a Kind, have achieved a cult status.

Before I wrote this book, I wrote a biography of Andy Gibb. Many of the people that I spoke to for that book also knew Olivia. Plus, the last true biography of Olivia came out in 2008. And most stuff written about her stops at her big hits. I thought she deserved a biography that looked at her entire life and impact. And I think she had a bigger musical impact than most people acknowledge. Plus, there’s the other side to her focused on humanitarian and environmental efforts, along with her cancer advocacy. Most pop stars don’t branch into so many fields.

Were you a big fan of hers beforehand? Or did you come to appreciate her more as you wrote the book?

Of course, I knew her. I was a kid when big hits like “Hopelessly Devoted to You” and “Physical” came out. I wasn’t a huge fan of hers back then, though. I was into heavier rock. But I came to appreciate her music more as I worked on the book. There’s a lot of stuff of hers that holds up really well.

Were there any particular less known tracks that you came to appreciate during your research?

I think many of the songs she wrote or cowrote after her commercial heyday are underrated. Those songs spoke to her life experiences more than much of her earlier work that she didn’t have a hand in writing. Some that come to mind are “Not Gonna Give Into It” and “Stronger Than Before.”

Let’s jump back to the beginning of her career. Olivia Newton-John is often associated with early MTV, especially because of how provocative the video for “Physical” was, but it strikes me that image was always part of her appeal. Much of her early career is littered with talent contests and television specials. Were visuals always important to her?

It would be foolish to deny that her image was important to her success. Everyone had a crush on Olivia Newton-John. She was beautiful. By the time she got famous, she resented this to some degree. Most of her early promotion was just about how she looked. In fact, the label only focused on how she looked when promoting her first single, a cover of Bob Dylan’s “If Not For You.” One MCA Records ad read, “Olivia Newton-John lives in the country in England and sings for the country in America and is as pretty as her newest single.”

By the mid-1970s, she acknowledged that people commenting on her looks was both a compliment and not a compliment. It implied that she was only successful because of how she looked. That’s a dynamic that’s played out for women in the pop world forever.

Even so, there was always a visual element to her career. And she changed those visuals often. You had the girl-next-door look during her country era in the mid-70s. You had the black leather Sandy look during Grease. You also had the spandex-and-headbands look during the Physical era and her “Physical” video in particular. And I think Olivia, along with people like Jane Fonda, helped launch the fitness craze in the 1980s.

One thing I found most fascinating about her life is how many unexpected characters she crossed paths with. You write extensively about her early career was shaped by the British rock star Cliff Richard.

Olivia met Cliff Richard in England in 1966 while she was working with her Australian duet partner and friend Pat Carroll. Cliff was a regular on British television in those days, and he gave Olivia a lot of TV exposure. It was through Cliff that Olivia met his band member Bruce Welch. Bruce and Olivia became romantically involved, and he co-produced and played on many of her early records. The co-producer was John Farrar, an Australian songwriter and guitarist who married Pat in 1969 and became Olivia’s longtime collaborator. He produced her on his own after Olivia split with Bruce. John wrote many of her songs. He also played on most of her records. As one of Olivia’s band members told me, John was like George Martin as a producer, John Lennon and Paul McCartney as her songwriter, and George Harrison as her guitarist all wrapped up in one for her.

But Cliff Richard and Bruce Welch were both important in getting Olivia’s career off the ground. Olivia never forgot how Cliff helped her along. Cliff was huge in England but not so much in the US. Because he helped get her career going in England, she eventually duetted with him on an American TV special and the Xanadu soundtrack after she became big. They looked out for each other.

The idea of her lending a hand to Cliff Richard highlights this idea that comes up a lot in the book: Olivia Newton-John was very nice. It seems like you couldn’t even find a person to say something bad about her.

Many people I spoke with would have to specify that some things that sounded too good to be true about her were actually real. Many of them were adamant that I not say anything bad about Olivia in the book. And I didn’t. She really was that kind.

There is a man named Greg Mathieson who played with Olivia during the 1970s. They lost touch, but when he heard she was sick near the end of her life he reached out via email. He told me that they just had the nicest email exchanges. Since he was a session player, he met lots of stars over the years. And he was clear that there was really nobody nicer.

As you noted, Olivia Newton-John’s career is so interesting because she transformed her sound a few times. Was she actively involved in those sonic switches, or were they pushed on her by the label?

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One of my favorite things to do in this newsletter is to write about places where we interact with music without thinking of them as musical places. In the past, for example, we’ve looked at music in supermarkets. Today, I want to go to a different place, though: the baseball stadium.

Take Me Out To The Ball Game

By Chris Dalla Riva

If you want to own a World Series ring, you probably assume you only have two options:

1. Get so good at baseball that you make the major leagues and win a championship

2. Get very wealthy and find a championship-winning baseball player that is willing to sell you their ring

Most people don’t realize that you have another option, though: Play the organ. While DJs and recordings have taken over many spaces that were historically occupied by live musicians, some baseball stadiums still employee organists to fill dead space in between pitches and innings.

If the team that employs you is good enough, you’ll likely find yourself with a World Series ring. Long-time New York Yankees’ organist Eddie Layton got five during his tenure. According to his obituary, Layton “wore only the smallest one, from 1978, fearing that he might play a wrong note if encumbered by the heavier ones.”

Baseball is my favorite sport. And one of the many things that I love about baseball is how important music is to the game. No, not every stadium still employs an organist, but baseball is a rare sport with a theme song, namely “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Plus, some teams have song-specific traditions.

• The Red Sox play “Sweet Caroline” before the start of the 8th inning

• The Dodgers play Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” after a win

• The Yankees play the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” in the middle of the 6th inning with the grounds crew miming along to the dance as they maintain the field

On top of all of this, each team uses walk-out songs. These are recordings that are played as a pitcher trots out from the bullpen or a batter walks up to the plate. While some songs can become staples, like Yankees’ closer Mariano Rivera making his entrance to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” most are changed every now and again. Because the baseball season just kicked off, I decided to take a look at what players were walking out to.

So, What Are Players Walking Out To?

For many editions of this newsletter, I need to go spelunking for data around the web, gluing multiple datasets together over a matter of days. That wasn’t the case here. Major League Baseball includes walk-out songs on each team’s website. Well, almost every team. But outside of the White Sox and Athletics, each team listed walk-out songs for most of their starters.

Let’s first start by looking at the top five most popular walk-out songs. The most selected were “God’s Country” by Blake Shelton and “Loud and Heavy” by Cody Jinks. Both were selected by four players. This shocked me. While neither of the songs is obscure—both have been streamed hundreds of millions of times—they weren’t huge hits. Maybe baseball players just have different taste than your average person.

Still, to make the top five songs, you only had to be selected by three players. That’s less than 1% of our database. Trends might be a bit clearer if we roll things up to the artist level.

And they are. The top artist is Bad Bunny, arguably the world’s biggest star. He doesn’t appear near the top of the song list because while ten players currently walk out to one of his songs, none of those players have chosen the same song. We see a similar pattern with other top artists, like Travis Scott and Morgan Wallen.

This top five also suggests a trend: MLB players are into country, rap, and Latin music. This would align with some of the league’s demographics. According to a recent report, 40.8% of Opening Day players in 2025 “came from diverse backgrounds.” Among that cohort, 28.6% were Latino, the largest subset.

Top artists don’t tell the full story, though. When we roll things up to the genre level, we see that that hip-hop/R&B and rock account for 51.6% of walk-out songs. Hip-hop/R&B appearing at the top isn’t much of shock given the presence of Travis Scott, Gunna, and Lil Wayne near the top artist list. But rock is unexpected, especially since it outpaces Latin selections.

Rock does much better at the genre-level because there is more variation in the selections. Myles Straw of the Blue Jays is the only player to walk-out to“Mr. Brightside” by The Killers. Kyle Finnegan of the Tigers is the only player to walk-out to “Song 2” by Blur. Kevin Ginkel of the Diamondbacks is the only player to walk-out to “Built By Nations” by Greta Van Fleet. Those solo selections won’t show up at the artist-level, but they do at the genre-level. Latin selections, on the other hand, are very concentrated around major stars, like Bad Bunny and Daddy Yankee.

Even so, when we compare walk-out song genres to the genres that people streamed in 2025, we see that the percentage of Latin walk-out song selections outpace the percentage of streams coming from Latin songs. According to Luminate, 7.8% of streams in the US were of Latin music in 2025. Compare that to the 19.2% walk-out songs being Latin.

In general, MLB player tastes skew toward hip-hop/R&B, Latin, electronic, and gospel more than your average listener. By contrast, players are significantly less into pop music. 12.4% of US streams in 2025 were of pop songs. Only 6.7% of walk-out songs turned to the genre.

We can run a similar analysis for when walk-out songs were released. While nearly 78% of walk-out songs were released after 2000, MLB player tastes skew a bit older than your average listener. In 2025, 47.9% of streams were from music released in the last 5 years. Only 33.1% of walk-out songs came from that period. By contrast, 22.2% of walk-out songs were released before 2000 as compared to 12.4% of streams.

Weird Walk-Out Song Facts

As when I was writing about the evolution of classic rock, I made a bunch of stray observations while working on this piece. Rather than letting that knowledge rot in my brain, I figured I’d share it with you here.

• The oldest walk-out song is “Mambo Italiano” by Dean Martin. Texas Ranger Sam Haggerty currently walks up to the plate with the 1954 song playing.

• No player has turned to a song released in 2026 yet.

• The Pirates’ selections skew the oldest. Their average walk-out song was released in 1999, a decade earlier than the league average.

• MLB players like the Jay-Z song “Young Forever” much more than your average listener. Jacob Young of the Nationals, Jared Young of the Mets, and Connor Wong of the Red Sox all walk out to the song, making it the fifth most popular song among all players. On Spotify, it’s the rapper’s 28th most popular song.

• I have no proof, but given that 6.2% of walk-out songs are gospel as compared to 2.1% of streams, I would bet MLB players are more religious than your average person.

• New York Yankee Amed Rosario walks out to “Elly De La Cruz,” a song named after Cincinnati Red Elly De La Cruz. De La Cruz has eschewed the narcissistic route and chosen to walk out to “Real Guerrero” by Secreto ‘El Famoso Biberon.’

• For my money, the strangest walk-out songs are Elton John’s “Circle of Life” (Fernando Cruz), Michael Bublé’s “Feeling Good” (Tyler O’Neill), Grover Washington’s “Just the Two of Us” (Sean Manaea), and Eminem’s “Square Dance” (Matt Strahm).

If you are a baseball fan, I hope you enjoy the 2026 season. May your team win many games, and may your team’s players choose good walk-out music.

Because no MLB player is currently walking out to a new song, I can’t recommend something from our dataset. Instead, I’ll turn to “poem,” a track from the up-and-comer overtonight.

Though he clearly takes some cues from the diverse world of internet rap, overtonight lives in the under-produced rock universe, his songs sounding like they were tossed off at a moment’s notice. I mean that as a compliment, though. The off-the-cuff nature of his short tracks come across as earnest rather than unprepared.

I was thrilled to see both the Guardians’ Shawn Armstrong and the Dodgers’ Emmet Sheehan walking out to “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” a posthumous song released by Johnny Cash. Albeit under different names, “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” is a folk song that goes back a long way. But when you hear Johnny Cash intone line after line about God’s judgement, you’ll think that everyone else had been doing it wrong. His trembling voice could send shivers down the spine of the staunchest non-believer.

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This week’s theme is “artist heirs,” meaning we are listening to albums by artists whose parents or grandparents were also artists. The only rule here is that the heir (i.e., child or grandchild) could not be more famous than the progenitor.

I should warn you that this was probably the worst batch of albums that we’ve heard, which was a good reminder that nepotism is probably less of a thing in music than you think. Yes, if your dad is Carlos Santana, it’s probably easier to get a record deal. But stardom cannot be inherited unless you have the chops.

#8 Harper Simon by Harper Simon (2010 - Son of Paul Simon)

When I heard the opening track on Harper Simon’s debut album, I was worried. The dreary “All to God” might be the worst song we’ve heard so far on this album quest. Luckily, the rest of the album wasn’t that bad.

Harper Simon has some of the lyrical gifts of his father. I couldn’t really get into the record because there was something slightly off-putting about the singer-songwriter’s voice, which is odd because it is reminiscent of his father’s. If anything, this album was an illustration of the particularities of voice.

#7 Seven Year Ache by Rosanne Cash (1981 - Daughter of Johnny Cash)

This pick was inspired by my recent trip to Nashville, upon which I saw a Rosanne Cash exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame. That exhibit gave me high hopes for this album, her popular breakthrough. I was grossly disappointed.

Seven Year Ache has some stuff going for it. Cash’s band rips and her two compositions—“Seven Year Ache” and “Blue Moon with Heartache”—are probably the strongest on the record. That said, I didn’t find Cash’s voice that compelling and thought many of the other song selections were subpar. Here for example, is the first verse on track four, “What Kinda Girl?”: “What kinda girl am I really am? / I like some turkey but I don’t eat lamb / No sweet potato but I do like ham / What kinda girl am I really am?”

The most interesting thing I learned about this record is that it was one of 52 albums released with something called “Extended Copy Protection,” a digital rights management scheme rolled out with select Sony CDs in 2005. The problem? This software had significant security vulnerabilities. Sony eventually had to recall all the CDs.

#6 Keyboard City by Salvador Santana (2009 - Son of Carlos Santana)

As the name of this album suggests, there are lots of keyboards on this record. And I’m happy about that. Salvador Santana is quite good on the keys. His bandmates are good on their respective instruments too. This album is stacked with great grooves. Things fall apart when the vocals come in, though. Most lyrics are platitudes that you might find on signage available to purchase at a Home Goods.

#5 South of Reality by The Claypool Lennon Delirium (2019 - Son of John Lennon)

What do you get when you bring together Sean Ono Lennon and Les Claypool, the bassist from Primus? A proggy, psychedelic album with lots of bass. I am generally averse to anything that veers too far into prog rock territory, but Lennon and Claypool have a sense of humor that makes these songs a bit more palatable.

#4 Tal Bachman by Tal Bachman (1999 - Son of Randy Bachman)

Tal Bachman deserved all the radio play that he got with “She’s So High,” the lead single from his self-titled debut record. That song’s got a chorus for the ages. The rest of the record fails to match the quality of “She’s So High,” but it does have some nice moments. As notes in his review of the record:

Living up to the legend of Randy Bachman might not be as overwhelming as living up to the legacy of John Lennon, but Tal Bachman does something neither Julian nor Sean Lennon did—he made a debut album that has nothing to do whatsoever with his father’s music.

#3 Chroma by Mt. Eddy (2017 - Son of Billie Joe Armstrong)

One thing that was off-putting about many of these records is that these heirs were often working in a similar genre to their parents. Rosanne Cash makes country music. Harper Simon lives in the singer-songwriter world. If my parent were a famous musician, and I was trying my hand at the family trade, I think I’d choose to work in a genre that wasn’t reminiscent of how my forebears established themselves. Unlike many on this list, Mt. Eddy agreed with me.

Mt. Eddy is fronted by Jakob Armstrong, the son of punk legend Billie Joe Armstrong. I won’t pretend that Jakob wasn’t influenced by Billie Joe. Mt. Eddy’s Chroma is a guitar-based rock album. But instead of living in the punk universe, Chroma is more indebted to Stokes-adjacent indie rock of the 2000s and 2010s. While Jakob does not know his way around a riff like his father, he can indeed write a big chorus.

#2 Nancy & Lee by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood (1968 - Daughter of Frank Sinatra)

Few characters fascinate me more than Lee Hazlewood. After making his name as the producer of the spacey guitar maestro Duane Eddy, he carved out a unique career making what some have dubbed “cowboy psychedelia.” A 2007 article described it as “a genre of one.” It goes on, “No one else has ever sounded quite like [Hazlewood].”

Nancy Sinatra was probably Hazlewood’s greatest muse. Along with writing and producing her signature song, “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” Hazlewood made three albums with Frank’s daughter, the first of which—the aptly named Nancy & Lee—is delightful.

Neither Nancy Sinatra nor Lee Hazlewood is a great singer. But their voices work oddly well together. They breathe new life into classics, like “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” and “Jackson.” They get playful on pieces, like “Greenwich Village Folk Song Salesman.” They even rip your heart out on others, like “Elusive Dreams.”

But what makes Nancy & Lee special is when they lean into that signature psychedelic cowboy sound. Recordings like “Summer Wine” and “Some Velvet Morning” are like nothing you’ve ever heard, the duet partners making you feel like you’re a character in an old western set somewhere in the future.

#1 Come Away With Me by Norah Jones (2002 - Daughter of Ravi Shankar)

This is the album that we were least sure of. That unsureness had nothing to do with the quality of the record, though. Comes Away With Me is worth every one of the 27 million copies that it sold. But we stipulated that to fit this theme, the child couldn’t be more famous than their parent. Was Norah Jones more notable than Ravi Shankar?

We decided no. Though Jones has sold a gazillion records, her father won numerous awards on his way to becoming one of the most important Indian musicians in history. That’s no knock on Norah Jones, though. Ken and I were in agreement that Come Away With Me was our favorite record this week. And it’s a quiet, jazzy record, Jones’s voice barely rising above a whisper. But Jones is a serviceable singer, her song choices are excellent, and her band breathes life into each of those choices.

Shout out to the paid subscribers who allow this newsletter to exist. Along with getting access to our entire archive, subscribers unlock biweekly interviews with people driving the music industry, monthly round-ups of the most important stories in music, and priority when submitting questions for our mailbag. Consider becoming a paid subscriber today!

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• Is AI music actually fooling people?

• How often do hit songs not contain their title in the lyrics?

• Why do people stop discovering music as they age?

• How many one-hit wonders topped the charts?

• How often do number one hits have samples?

• Who’s the biggest solo artist that started in a successful group?

• What was the first song with a fade out?

• Are there any genres other than reggae where the biggest artist is much more well known than anyone else?

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider ordering a copy of my debut book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music covering 1958 to 2025.

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Have you seen the gospel soul AI versions of “Thong Song” by Sisqo or “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees? They were all over my TikTok and while I do think it’s fun to listen to, I can’t help but think of the consequences. Sienna Rose is a completely AI neo-soul singer and claims to have 3.3M monthly listeners. How many “listeners” are bots and how many people actually believe she’s real? - Abby

Earlier this week, a friend sent me a video of an older gentleman playing an emotional song on America’s Got Talent. The judges, including Simon Cowell, were crying during the performance. Tears were also flowing in the audience. And it looks like the same thing is happening in the comment section of the video. Scores of people are recounting broken relationships with their parents and children. The problem? The video and song are AI generated.

If people are moved by this, I don’t really have an issue with it. My biggest problem with AI, as I’ve outlined previously, is when it is used to deceive. If you want to use AI to make a powerful piece of art, I don’t think I have grounds to complain. But if you are using AI to flood streaming services with songs to hopefully siphon off royalties from other artists, then I will condemn you until end of time.

I can’t be sure whether all of Sienna Rose’s listeners are real. But I can tell you with certainty that many people probably think she’s real and that many of these AI-generated artists are being played by bots. Just last week, a man pled guilty to multi-million dollar fraud powered by AI-generated music and bots.

Can you tell me a bit about songs whose titles don’t appear in the lyrics? - Huck

Someone asked me about this a few months ago. That person mentioned the Buffalo Springfield song “For What It’s Worth” in their question. I’ll repost my answer below:

This is one of those questions that is shockingly hard to get a firm answer on. The reason is that the data is a mess. For example, in my dataset of hit song lyrics, Blue Swede’s classic is listed as “Hooked on a Feeling,” but the lyrics always read “hooked on a feelin’.” That slight difference causes tremendous issues in an exercise like this.

But even with these issues, it seems like well over 90% of hit song lyrics contain the title. That rate has also been pretty consistent over the last six decades. In other words, “For What It’s Worth” is an outlier in the pop world.

Why does everyone think that music was better when they were growing up? - Alex

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Still, only a portion of my subscribers here have bought the book. If you enjoy this newsletter, I’d love if you picked up a copy of the book. It makes it possible for me to do more writing like that. If you’ve already made a purchase, thank you again! Now, let’s talk about nostalgia.

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Nostalgia Isn’t New

By Chris Dalla Riva

I’m always astounded by how popular The Beatles remain. Despite breaking up in 1970, they are currently the 150th most popular artist on Spotify. That longevity is mind-boggling, especially when you put it in context like this person did on Twitter a few weeks ago:

Listening to The Beatles and The Beach Boys in the 2020s would’ve been the equivalent of listening to Scott Joplin or stuff like “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” or “You’re a Grand Old Flag” in the 1960s.

Though this tweet is ostensibly about the long-term popularity of The Beatles, it is making an indirect comment on the current state of culture. The fact that we are still listening to The Beatles today highlights (a) how revolutionary they were and (b) how little our culture has moved on.

When The Beatles were at the height of their powers, people weren’t listening to music from 60 years earlier. Scott Joplin, as the tweet points out, wasn’t a pop star when Let It Be was on the charts. The odd thing is, he kind of was.

The Ragtime Revival

Ragtime is a syncopated style of piano music that found great popularity in the late 1800s and early 1900s. With popular compositions like “Maple Leaf Rag” and “The Entertainer,” Scott Joplin was the king of the genre. Ragtime came to an end with the pianist’s untimely death in 1917. Then he was largely forgotten for decades.

That changed in 1970 when pianist Joshua Rifkin recorded an album of Joplin’s compositions. The album sold over 100,000 copies in the first year, and set off a short-lived ragtime revival. “Scholars,” Harold C. Schonberg wrote in The New York Times after seeing Rifkin perform in 1971, “are going to have to get busy on Joplin.”

And busy they did get. Not only did critical interest in Joplin grow, but his compositions also featured prominently in the Oscar-winning soundtrack for the 1973 box office smash The Sting. In fact, Marvin Hamlisch’s recording of Joplin’s “The Entertainer” for the soundtrack climbed all the way to number three on the Billboard Hot 100. (It sadly could not get past Ray Stevens’ “The Streak” and The Jackson 5’s “Dancing Machine.”)

The ragtime/Joplin revival is one of many examples of older musical styles catching a second wind long after their initial popularity. Let’s run through a few others from the last century.

The Gay Nineties Revival

Between WWI, the Influenza Pandemic, and the Great Depression, the beginning of the 20th century was characterized by deadly societal upheaval. Because of that, many people longed for the era before all of this began, namely the 1890s.

From the 1920s to the 1950s, popular culture of this decade—affectionately referred to as “The Gay Nineties”—was very popular. Weekly radio programs exclusively played hits of the day, many Hollywood pictures focused on the era, and record labels released popular compilations of songs written in that era.

“Old songs these days never really grow old. Somebody always keeps bringing them back and back and back,” Hugh A. Mulligan wrote when covering nostalgia releases for the Meriden Record in 1957. “Faced with an even more awesome dearth of first-class material than television, record companies have been forced to rake deep into the musical ashes of yesteryear for some mighty moldy old chestnuts.”

Many of those “mighty moldy old chestnuts” from the 1890s have proven quite durable. “America the Beautiful,” “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two),” “Maple Leaf Rag,” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever” were all released during the 19th century’s final decade.

The Music Hall Revival

The 1960s might be the decade associated with more revolutionary popular music than any other. As I noted at the beginning of this piece, we’re still listening to The Beatles, that decade’s crown jewel. But even as rock music matured, the charts were rife with nostalgia.

Throughout the decade, the influence of music hall—the British equivalent of vaudeville in the United States—was everywhere. Multiple number one hits, including Herman’s Hermits’ “I’m Henry VIII, I Am” and The New Vaudeville Band’s “Winchester Cathedral,” pulled heavily from this early 20th century tradition.

The Beatles’ Paul McCartney was especially influenced by this 60-year-old music. “When I’m Sixty-Four,” “Honey Pie,” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” among others, lean on music hall tropes.

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival

While artists of the 1960s were nostalgic for music from over a half-century before, those of the 1970s were looking back much more recently in the past. Along with the Scott Joplin revival, the 1950s were en vogue during the 1970s. Most people point to television shows, like Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, and films, like Grease and American Graffiti, when discussing this nostalgia, but it was also readily apparent in music.

Nostalgia acts like Sha Na Na kicked off shockingly long careers around this time. Many 1950s hitmakers, like Neil Sedaka and Chuck Berry, also found themselves at the top of the charts again.

Much of this nostalgia would only grow stronger at the beginning of the 1980s. Queen would top the charts with an Elvis Presley-inspired tune, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” The Stray Cats would score multiple hits the year after with an exceedingly retro sound. Billy Joel would also get into the mix around the same time with his doo-wop-inspired project An Innocent Man. “Tell Her About It,” the lead single from that album, even went to number one.

The Swing Revival

If it wasn’t enough for Brian Setzer of The Stray Cats to push rockabilly back into the mainstream, the guitar savant felt the need to bring swing—a genre that died in the 1940s—back in the 1990s.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, the swing revival is one of the movements that made the 1990s such a strange musical decade. While it was short-lived, the revival did have a legitimate moment. Along with Brian Setzer, groups like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Squirrel Nut Zippers, and the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies were selling millions of records, scoring legitimate hits, and playing the Super Bowl. Advertisements and films even came to rely on the genre.

So, What’s the Deal with Revivals Today?

These earlier musical revivals are a good reminder that nostalgia is not new. We’ve been reviving sounds for at least the last century. In that sense, it’s not that strange that people are still listening to music from the 1960s today. Even so, it’s important to remind people that the scale of that listening is very small.

In 2024, Luminate reported that 0.7% of streams were on music from the 1960s. Nearly 90% of streams were on music released after the year 2000. In other words, people are mostly listening to recent hits.

You might notice that there is a clear difference between our current musical nostalgia and that which came before, though. When ragtime and music hall and any other musical style was revived during the 20th century, new songs were being made in those styles rather than people listening to the original recordings.

Nobody, for example, in the 1990s was listening to Louis Prima’s original recording of “Jump Jive An’ Wail.” They were listening to Brian Setzer’s cover. That’s not what’s going on today. When “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac resurged in 2020, it wasn’t a cover of the song. It was the original recording that was climbing the Billboard charts. Why?

This comes down to an idea that I have discussed before: recording quality. When artists in the 1970s were looking to the early rock ‘n’ roll era for inspiration, those original recordings were lower fidelity than those being produced at the time. In other words, those original recordings sounded older even if the music felt fresh.

This is the case with nearly every revival of the 20th century. The original recordings of the music being revived would have sounded very old. That’s not the case anymore. Since the middle of the 1960s, recording fidelity hasn’t changed that much. A song released in 1982, for example, might sound dated because of the production choices, but the actual quality of the recording won’t be much different than something made today.

In short, don’t feel guilty if you are still drawn to songs of the past. This is an urge that’s been with humans since the dawn of recordings. Nevertheless, you should still check out some new stuff too. You might miss out on your next favorite song.

When I wrote about country music a few weeks ago, I noted how the country crossover hits of the 2020s have often taken cues from hip-hop. What’s interesting is that at the same time, some artists have opted for a more classic sound that harkens back to the 1980s and 1990s. Chandler Walters is one of those artists with that throwback sound. His latest single “Break Your Heart” mixes a song that could be from the George Strait songbook with a bit more edge.

While there isn’t a style that I am dying to see resurge, I would do anything for popular music to have some tasty solos again. So much of the pop universe is driven by vocalists that I think some musical breaks could go a long way. And these solos don’t have to be virtuosic. They just need to work with the song.

Olivia Newton-John’s smash “Physical” is a good example of this. Though it rocks a bit more than your average pop record, it is still certainly a pop record. And it’s got a nice guitar. Yes, the solo is played by guitar savant Steve Lukather, but he’s not doing anything too flashy. He’s just playing to the song.

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This week’s theme is “albums released before 1950.” This theme was not only the most difficult we’ve undertaken but also the most insightful. Let me lay out a few reasons as to why:

• Album names used to be more direct: Before 1950, you were not getting something called Dark Side of the Moon or In Utero. You’re getting stuff like A Xavier Cugar Album of Latin American Music or Bing Crosby Sings Songs by George Gershwin. The title is a perfect description for what you are about to hear.

• Albums before 1950 were more akin to collections of songs than singular artistic statements: As my first point makes clear, albums in this era usually fit a theme, but they had a very different feel than those after 1950. As writes in his book Sinatra! The Song is You, it wasn’t until after 1950 that Frank Sinatra “became the first pop singer to perceive possibilities for record making that went beyond individual songs … Sinatra sequenced the songs [on his albums] so that the lyrics created a flow from track to track, affording the impression of a narrative, as in musical comedy or opera.”

• Albums were not common before 1950: What we know as the “album era” really only began after Columbia Records invented the 33⅓ rpm long-playing record, or LP, in 1948. Before that, an “album” was a collection of 78s sold in something that resembled a photo album. (That’s actually where the term album comes from.) But because of this technological limitation, albums were not common.

• Even if a pre-1950 album exists, it’s likely not on streaming services: Because popular music pre-1950 was more focused on individual songs, many of those original collections have not made it to streaming. To be clear, the songs are on streaming services, but they are usually packaged as retrospectives or greatest hits records.

On top of all of this, we limited ourselves to albums recorded and released before 1950. As much as we wanted to listen to Benny Goodman’s famous 1938 Carnegie Hall show, we couldn’t. The first recording wasn’t widely available until 1950. Let’s dive in.

#9 Bing Crosby Sings Songs by George Gershwin by Bing Crosby (1949)

This album makes it clear why Bing Crosby was the best-selling musician of the first half of the 20th century: The man’s voice feels like a warm hug. My friend Ken described this album as “background music at a family party,” and he meant that as a compliment. I agree. I can’t imagine disliking Bing Crosby.

But that’s also the issue with this record. There is nothing audacious here. Crosby sings these Gershwin melodies exactly as they are notated. Because of that, you’ll likely prefer other versions of these classics. “Summertime” is a great example of that. While there is nothing wrong with Crosby’s version, I’d throw on at least ten other renditions of the famous song first.

#8 Music Out Of The Moon by Les Baxter & Harry Revel with Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman (1947)

This record was made as a vehicle for Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman to show off his skills on the theremin, a weird instrument that can be played without physical contact. The spacey arrangements are actually quite nice, though. And if you don’t let this album just act as sonic wallpaper, you’ll notice some nice guitar work too.

#7 A Xavier Cugat Album of Latin American Music by Xavier Cugat (1939)

The title here says it all. Catalan bandleader Xavier Cugat records selections of Latin American music with his orchestra. Maybe the most rhythmically exciting songs of this week, they really pop on the opening selections where Dinah Shore is on the microphone.

#6 Negro Sinful Songs by Lead Belly (1939)

Folklorists John and Alan Lomax discovered Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter at the Louisiana State Penitentiary while they were collecting local musics for the Library of Congress. Impressed both by the inmate’s skills as a performer and knowledge of folk music, they began recording him. Over the years, many of those recordings were packaged and released.

Negro Sinful Songs is one of those early releases. And it is more of a collection of songs than a true album. The first two tracks, for example, are just different takes of “Frankie and Albert,” an old murder ballad sometimes referred to as “Frankie and Johnny.” Even so, you can see why the Lomaxes were so entranced by Ledbetter all those years ago. His voice sounds like it was pulled from the Earth.

Others have felt the same. Led Zeppelin reimagined Lead Belly’s rendition of “Gallis Pole” on Led Zeppelin III as “Gallows Pole.” One-hit wonder Ram Jam did much the same when they set Lead Belly’s acapella “Black Betty” to music.

#5 Dust Bowl Ballads by Woody Guthrie (1940)

Part reportage, part folk song collection, Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads is a socially conscious album that captures the economic upheaval caused by ecological disaster in the American prairie during the 1930s. You can feel the dust in your lungs as you listen to Guthrie tell these tales.

And many of those tales remain as vital today as they were back then. “Oh, the gamblin’ man is rich and the workin’ man is poor,” he sings on the back half of this record. “And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.”

#4 South Pacific by The Original Broadway Cast (1949)

Some of the best-selling albums before 1950 were cast recordings of Broadway shows. Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, along with their Oklahoma!, set the standard for what a Broadway musical—and a Broadway musical cast album—could be.

South Pacific still feels fresh both thematically and musically. In regard to the former, the play confronts issues surrounding interracial relations head on. In regard to the latter, the songs are still tons of fun. That goes a long way when engaging with songs that are 75 years old. My favorite piece was “There is Nothin’ Like a Dame,” a risqué number where the soldiers in the south Pacific long for their women.

#3 At the Piano by Count Basie (1948)

Another album whose name tells you all you need to know. This is Count Basie at the piano. In fact, nine of the ten songs feature no vocals. It’s only the Count and his band ripping through some joyful numbers. Basie does sing on the opening song, “Boogie Woogie (I May Be Wrong).” And while I do love listening to his piano work, I almost wish he sang more. Across an album of fun, that vocal number may be the most fun.

#2 Folk Songs Of The Hills by Merle Travis (1947)

This album is part music and part history, Merle Travis first giving a small narrative before launching into one of his folk songs about coal miners and company towns. In that sense, this album shares lineage with Dust Bowl Ballads. The difference is that Merle Travis can play circles around nearly any guitar player, his fingerstyle work so distinctive that most people now call it “Travis picking.”

Yes, a song like “Sixteen Tons” can hit you like a punch in the gut even if someone is just strumming along—the Tennessee Ernie Ford version of the song is good evidence of that—but Travis makes the guitar sound like an orchestra.

#1 Rendezvous with Peggy Lee by Peggy Lee (1948)

As I noted at the beginning of this piece, many of these albums aren’t albums in the way we conceive of the term today. They are mostly collections of songs. Sure, some of those collections are focused around a theme (e.g., dust bowl ballads, Latin American music, George and Ira Gershwin compositions), but there isn’t the narrative arc that we’ve come to expect from great albums. Rendezvous with Peggy Lee isn’t like this, though. It sounds like the future.

We gave Rendezvous with Peggy Lee the top spot this week because every detail was great. Peggy Lee’s sultry voice is emotive. The arrangements are not only expertly crafted, but they paint vivid scenes. Even the cover art is exciting.

That said, what most impressed us was how much more cohesive this record felt than anything else we listened to. Lee was getting at the ideas that Frank Sinatra wouldn’t perfect for at least another seven years.

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News from Inside the Music World

“Live Nation reaches settlement with DOJ in antitrust fight” by Yasmin Khorram (Politico)

Live Nation, the widely hated entertainment behemoth that owns Ticketmaster, has wiggled its way out of an antitrust lawsuit. Kind of. When Live Nation was trying to purchase Ticketmaster over a decade ago, economists and industry insiders warned that it would be bad for fans. The Obama administration still let it through.

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Critics Hate the Biggest Band of the 2010s

By Chris Dalla Riva

A few weeks ago, I reported that “As a popular entity, the band died around 2002.” No, I’m not talking about Levon Helm and friends. I’m talking about groups of musicians being pop stars, like The Beatles or The Police. According to Billboard, between 1970 and 1990, close to 50% of any year’s biggest hits were performed by a musical group, or band. Now, it’s closer to 10%.

If you pay a modicum of attention to popular music, I don’t think you’ll find this change shocking. Nearly any list of popular songs is dominated by solo artists rather than bands. Certain places will make you think otherwise, though.

Last weekend, I was down in Nashville for my bachelor party. As you stroll down the streets of Nashville, you would think that the concept of the band is alive and well. Nearly every bar has at least one entertaining patrons. And these bands are all incredible, ripping through some of the most difficult songs without a second thought.

This got me wondering who the biggest bands of 2010s were. Why the 2010s? Well, it’s easier to pick out the most popular bands from earlier decades because bands were so prevalent in popular culture (e.g., 1960s → The Beatles). Finding the most popular band of the 2010 felt like a more challenging task.

Which Band Won the 2010s?

Let’s get a few things straight. First, we will define a band as any musical act with at least three members. That means rock-oriented duos of the 2010s, like Twenty One Pilots, won’t make the cut. Second, this definition is genre agnostic. If no members of the group play an instrument in the traditional sense, like the three family members in the rap troupe Migos, that is fine. Finally, the band’s first album must have come out between 2009 and 2019.

With these definitions in mind, it’s almost certain that the biggest band of the 2010s is the Las Vegas quintet Imagine Dragons.

I knew Imagine Dragons was popular. But the RIAA lists them as having 127.5 million all-time record sales, more than Ed Sheeran, The Rolling Stones, Whitney Houston, and George Strait. In fact, the second best-selling group of the 2010s, The Neighbourhood, has only racked up 42.5 million, one-third of Imagine Dragon’s tally.

Could this really be right? Maybe my use of record sales according to the RIAA had some bias that I wasn’t thinking of. It doesn’t seem to matter where you look, though. Imagine Dragons always wins out.

If you turn to Billboard’s year-end charts from 2010 to 2019, Imagine Dragons scored 12 hits as a lead artist, more than any other group. Migos, coming in second place, only had 6.

Even if you include every song featuring the trap trio, you still only get up to 10 hits. But to be fair, Imagine Dragons jumps up to 13 by that methodology. They featured on “Sucker for Pain” with Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, Logic, Ty Dolla Sign, and X Ambassadors, an unlistenable song made for the movie Suicide Squad.

If you instead turn to Spotify streams, Imagine Dragons again wins out. Their 23 billion streams not only put them well ahead of any other group, but give them a similar listenership to major pop stars, like Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, and Kendrick Lamar. This is generational popularity.

The Imagine Dragons’ Paradox

When I played my first gig during my senior year of high school, we performed a mix of covers and originals. I think I can still list the covers: “Prove It All Night” by Bruce Springsteen, “Burnin’ Love” by Elvis Presley, “Lonely Boy” by The Black Keys, and “It’s Time” by Imagine Dragons.

“It’s Time” was on Imagine Dragons’ debut EP. Given that we played “It’s Time,” you won’t be surprised that I liked a few songs on that EP. That’s where my Imagine Dragons’ fandom ended, though. Since then, I’ve disliked almost everything they’ve done. Most critics have too.

In 2019, Spin asked, “Is Imagine Dragons the Worst Band Ever?” Two years later, Pitchfork said that their Mercury – Act 1 sounded like the group was “firing their emotions out of a T-shirt cannon.” Listeners on RateYourMusic have also never given one of their albums anything higher than a 2.28.

Critics disliking something that your average music listener enjoys isn’t anything new. But something about Imagine Dragons’ staggering popularity as compared to their critical appeal stuck me as unexpected, especially as poptimism has taken over criticism. I think it’s explained by one final piece of data.

A few years ago, I aggregated a decade of music festival line-ups to see if those festivals were becoming homogenized. I decided to revisit that data while looking for the biggest bands of the 2010s. Oddly, Imagine Dragons is nowhere close to the most frequent headliners of the decade. Groups they’ve outsold by millions of records, like Tame Impala and Haim, book big slots at more major festivals than they do.

If you were organizing a major music festival and wanted to get as many people through the door as possible, wouldn’t you want to book the biggest band of the decade? Other pop stars get booked on these line-ups. The fact that Imagine Dragons doesn’t, says much about their fame.

People who go out to music festivals, especially those that require camping, are a specific breed. They are willing to shill out hundreds of dollars in order to risk bodily harm and dehydration all for the sake of checking out some music. Imagine Dragons’ fandom likely does not inspire that fervor.

My grand theory of Imagine Dragons is that they have managed to hit on a musical formula that maximizes casual fandom. Their songs often move across genre, making it easy for them to fit on streaming playlists of any style. And if you catch one of those songs in the wild, they’re often not offensive enough to bother you. They are a group that has perfected music for passive consumption. They are a group that a money-hungry executive would dream up if they had the chance. They are undoubtedly the biggest band of the 2010s.

Despite what anyone reports, the band—especially the rock band—is not dead. Maybe rock bands don’t have the popular impact that they once did, but they can still make a splash. Indie darlings Geese, for example, parlayed a buzzy album into an appearance on Saturday Night Live just last year.

If we’re talking buzzy rock groups today, few have been getting more love than Angine de Poitrine. Angine de Poitrine is one of the weirder buzzing bands you’ll ever hear, though. They play strange, microtonal music in costumes. And they are oddly compelling.

My friend Ken and I are listening to an album every day this year. Each week has a theme. And I’m documenting our listening in the Tuesday edition of this newsletter. Last week, I got to hear Drive-Thru Booty by Freak Power, an earlier group featuring big beat pioneer Fatboy Slim. That album’s first track, “Moonbeam Woman,” has one of the grooviest basslines I’ve ever heard. And I’m requiring you to listen to it.

Shout out to the paid subscribers who allow this newsletter to exist. Along with getting access to our entire archive, subscribers unlock biweekly interviews with people driving the music industry, monthly round-ups of the most important stories in music, and priority when submitting questions for our mailbag. Consider becoming a paid subscriber today!

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This week’s theme is “before they went solo,” meaning we are listening to groups with at least member that went on to have a notable solo career. In general, we are listening to the group’s first album.

#7 Heroine by From First To Last (2006 - Before Skrillex went solo)

Before Sonny Moore dubbed himself Skrillex and helped popularize dubstep, he cut his teeth as the lead singer of the punk group From First to Last. I’ve never been into dubstep, but I was into this album even less. Too much screaming. Not enough memorable riffs. I did enjoy the time signature change on the first track, though.

#6 No Doubt by No Doubt (1992 - Before Gwen Stefani went solo)

At nearly every college, a group of freshman will start jamming together for fun. Eventually, an opportunity for a gig will emerge. The group then decides to write a few songs for the event. The songs are only half-baked, though. They’re mostly just vehicles to jam. The first No Doubt album sounds like it emerged from a scenario just like this.

Gwen Stefani’s bandmates could clearly play. The arrangements are tight, and there are occasional moments of inspiration. But the songs just aren’t there. Combine that with the fact that these ska-infused jams sometimes take detours into musical theater territory, and you end up with an album that is not very good. Frankly, it’s incredible that they went from writing songs like this to writing songs like “Don’t Speak” and “Just a Girl” in the space of three years.

#5 Rock the House by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince (1987 - Before Will Smith went solo)

Was I expecting this album to be cheesy? Of course. Will Smith’s family-friendly raps are known for their corniness. But they are also light-hearted fun, especially when paired with Jazzy Jeff’s lively beats.

The song on this record that I found most interesting was “Just Rockin',” Smith’s braggadocios ode to his boom box. It hints at the fact that he may have been as dexterous on the mic as, say, LL Cool J before he turned to television and movies.

#4 Hi... We’re the Miracles by The Miracles (1961 - Before Smokey Robinson went solo)

Here is a rough outline of what I was thinking as I listened to The Miracles’ debut album:

• “I can’t believe Smokey Robinson wrote ‘Who’s Lovin' You’”

• [Proceeds to look up Robinson’s songwriter discography] “Wow Smokey wrote a lot of great songs”

• “‘Shop Around’ still kicks 60 years later”

• “Nobody’s voice sounds more beautiful at the top of their range than Smokey”

• “I didn’t realize a woman was in The Miracles”

• “I wish this album had a fewer ballads”

#3 The Runaways by The Runaways (1976 - Before Joan Jett went solo)

The Runaways’ debut album is both precocious and rudimentary. Do some riffs get redundant? Yes. But is there evidence of musical cleverness? Also, yes. That cleverness becomes even clearer when you remember that every member of the legendary band was under 20 when this thing was recorded. That’s really young.

Had I not known beforehand, I probably would have never guessed that Joan Jett was in this group. Her voice doesn’t have the mature husk that would make her a superstar in the 1980s.

#2 Drive-Thru Booty by Freak Power (1994 - Before Fatboy Slim went solo)

Before Norman Cook popularized big beat under the name Fatboy Slim, he was making tasty jams as a member of Freak Power. And those jams are truly delectable. The album’s opener, “Moonbeam Woman,” has a bass line so melodic that it would leave Paul McCartney in awe.

#1 The “Angry” Young Them! by Them (1965 - Before Van Morrison went solo)

If No Doubt’s first album makes them sound like a jam-oriented college band that hasn’t figured out how to write songs yet, then Them is also a similar situation. Their proto-garage sound is also something you are bound to come across on a college campus.

There’s one difference between No Doubt and Them’s collegiate efforts, though. Them sound like seasoned professionals. Not only do I wish these songs went on for longer, but I wish I could hear Van Morrison sing every song in existence. Luckily, he has been doing just that for decades.

Shout out to the paid subscribers who allow this newsletter to exist. Along with getting access to our entire archive, subscribers unlock biweekly interviews with people driving the music industry, monthly round-ups of the most important stories in music, and priority when submitting questions for our mailbag. Consider becoming a paid subscriber today!

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Want more from Chris Dalla Riva? Get a copy of his book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves wherever books are sold.

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