Most popular types of music in the USA over the decades - video

[bloke]

In the USA, classical music and jazz became small percentages of Americans' choices as their most popular music styles, but both fell off the chart by the 1960s.



Personally, I noted that most all of the most popular styles today are those which would prompt me to grimace, if forced to audit. Admittedly, if shoehorned into a concert, I would play them for money.

[Three Valves]

Polka is making a come back!

[bloke]

Polka is making a come back!

If so, without really looking into it, I would suspect that it might have something to do with so many people seeking refuge from tyranny in Texas, where polka is very big.

[TubaRay]

I'm not sure I'd describe polka as being "big" in Texas. There are areas with large populations of German or Czech heritage. In those areas, polka is doing OK(especially with the Czechs). If I'm wrong, and if polka is big in Texas, then most states must not have much at all. All of this is, of course, is my opinion.

[BopEuph]

In those areas, polka is doing OK(especially with the Czechs).

So there's polka in Oklahoma? That song might write itself!

I like this video. Kinda weird to differentiate "jazz," "bebop," and "cool jazz," as they're all really just jazz in general and were the evolution of the genre as much as the way country evolved over time. I'd argue the same way with funk/disco and R&B/Soul.

Other things that were interesting to me is how "averaged out" all genres were around 2005, and how it ends with the top genre being 12%, where country topped out at 55% at a time. I feel technology plays a huge part in this for many reasons (mainly accessibility).

[bloke]

LOL...

re: "various types of jazz"...

moot: "Jazz" dropped off the list.

same as "various types of classical"

[bloke]

I'm glad to ask to delete the thread, if it's just too controversial...

[LeMark]

There were several categories that honestly I had no idea what they meant

[matt g]

Lesson learned is that the marketing of music figured out new categories. Rock and roll was monolithic and then started getting divvied up. Also, classic rock existed in 1966?

Of note with regards to polka: I’d argue that a portion of the “Latin” category is Norteño music which is rooted in polka and employs a decent number of sousaphone players.

[LeMark]

I was alive in the 70's

I think they started the disco era way too early

[gocsick]

It's interesting that country was one category for 100 years while jazz, rock, and different pop genres were all subdivided into very specific units. It doesn't make sense that Western Swing like Bob Willis and commercial POP like Big and rich ( Save a horse ride a cowboy) get lumped together but Jazz and Bebob are different categories.

[bloke]

Disco was short-lived, but it always sells out pops concerts. This YouTube video is one of the earliest ones I remember and I think it's a mid-70s disco hit, even though it's dated 1982 by the person who hosted it. (I'm willing for someone else to investigate further and tell me that it really was in the '80s.)

It's pretty hard to not call this disco:



I remember playing some disco covers at clubs, and being super bored playing the bass lines to so many of them.

[BopEuph]

There were several categories that honestly I had no idea what they meant

I am curious about the genre "chanson," since that literally means "song" in French, does it mean French popular music?

[BopEuph]

I remember playing some disco covers at clubs, and being super bored playing the bass lines to so many of them.

I get a big kick out of disco tunes, because while they're not so technically difficult, the pocket can be so deep when I lock into the drum set.

Funny thing; when I was learning bass in college, I was learning a lot of Earth, Wind, and Fire; Sly Stone, Graham Central Station, Parliament, etc. I was telling my dad about the "funk" bass I was learning, and he said, "when I was your age, we called that disco." I would consider something like the Bee Gees a different thing than Parliament, but I have to wonder how close they could be considered, because they're very close in my mind, as well...though I think the characteristics of the two differentiate them more so than the jazz or soul genres. And, like the other combined genres, they probably played on the same radio stations.

That being said, I do get a kick out of playing that disco 8th note octave thing, like the chorus to "Car Wash." In the polka band I played in last year, the drummer would break out into a disco beat and I'd join in (on tuba). We'd get a good laugh out of it on Beer Barrel every time.