Sunday, April 30, 2006

What is Top 40 today?

This week I've been living in the past--I spent several days looking at charts and listening to music from 1990? Why 1990? Two reasons--first, it was the year my chart started, and unfortunately I have lost all my charts from that year (my archives go back to 1995, but much of the '90s are spotty), so I'm trying to recreate some of them.

More importantly though, was that it was a great year for popular music, and back then popular music meant something different than it does today, particularly in the U.S. In 1990, there was much more variety in pop, in January alone the top 10 was made up of traditional pop (Paula Abdul/Taylor Dayne/Billy Joel), disposable dance pop (Seduction), Euro dance pop (Roxette), British aging male AC (Phil Collins), American aging male AC (Michael Bolton), Euro techno/rap (Technotronic), R&B dance pop (Janet Jackson), and hard rock (Aerosmith). As the year progressed, rap also made some headway in the top 40, and some more alternative bands too.

The current U.S. top 10, isn't nearly so varied, containing young female pop artists (Rihanna, Shakira, Natasha Bedingfield, and Kelly Clarkson), young male pop artists (Daniel Powter and James Blunt), R&B (Mary J. Blige), hard rock (Staind), and Hip-hop (Fort Minor, and reggae-influenced Sean Paul). For a long time it seemed the top 40 was only comprised of R&B, rap, or "alternative" rock, but that has improved some lately. But variety is still lacking.

That's one of the reasons I like the UK top 40, since it is much more varied than the US top 40.

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