Billboard Breakdown: 1961

This Blog Post is primarily meant for entertainment purposes

I’m still alive.

So yeah, my last Billboard Breakdown got immensely popular and I didn’t mean to just leave this by the wayside for all that time. I’m going to approach this fresh as if I haven’t been gone for months.

So. 1961. A year for pop music. One of the years of music in fact. While we had some incredible classics come out of this year (Runaway, Stand By Me, Take Five’s pop chart debut, Apache), as with the past few years we also ended up with fucking “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby”, which is a… song… alright.

This was a year of some technical developments, including the incredible development of Nashville and Country Pop music. Also, the rise of a very new genre which we’ll talk about later.

I’m not gonna do any supergenre overviews as that will be a waste of time, but they’ll come into play as I cover the smaller genres and explain why they’re popular and what they are.

Without further ado, let’s get into this thing.

Traditional Pop (13 songs)
Pop
Stylistic Influences: Tin Pan Alley, Vaudeville, Vocal Jazz

Traditional Pop is a very old genre, like so old the first Traditional Pop song was recorded on wax cylinders. While Tin Pan Alley is technically included within Traditional Pop, Tin Pan Alley, with its slightly jazzy sound moreso laid the groundwork for this particular iteration. Traditional Pop is generally slow Pop that’s easy to listen to, inoffensive, and is so white it would never dare to admit that Jazz laid the groundwork for it.

Traditional Pop is one of the most bafflingly popular genres, the same crooners sing all the songs, they all use nostalgic strings, and brushes. It is also impossible to kill.

If you read my last few Billboard Breakdowns, I brought up Adult Contemporary Pop. That’s what Traditional Pop is. It makes me want to roll my eyes with how absolutely prominent it is. That’s not to say all Traditional Pop songs are bad. If I’m not mistaken, Elvis even has a Traditional Pop song somewhere. However, what most Traditional Pop is is heading into a music program, copying a song you wrote for someone else 2 weeks ago and changing the homework a little.

Now in the beginning of the 60’s, some Traditional Pop artists were attempting to crossover with the Rock and Roll crowd, and we’ll get to that genre, but it also facilitated the genre of Pop-Rock, which I’m not even gonna mark down because it was about to get a massive flip on its head in a few years. Most Traditional Pop either crossed over to the Brill Building scene, or just kept on going. You really could just keep on going as Traditional Pop wouldn’t lose its dominant position until, in a few years, when the British Invasion happened.

After that it’d quickly cannibalize itself and become Adult Contemporary, which is somehow even worse. Traditional Pop is not around today, not to any measurable degree. Adult Contemporary however? Everywhere.

Rock and Roll (12 songs)
Rock and Roll
Stylistic Influences: Western Swing, R&B, Boogie-Woogie

If you read my Billboard Breakdown for 1960 (most people did), you’ll probably notice that Rock and Roll has doubled in size and Hi-Lo is nowhere to be seen. Well, I determined that Hi-Lo was too specific and also I’m attempting “real genres” (listed in a genre database) this time. All genres are fake, but that’s besides the point. This entire series is meant to cover popular genres anyways.

Rock and Roll was the British Invasion of the mid 50’s, a genre so different that it pretty much rewrote popular music as it was. Rock and Roll was music that was upbeat and directed specifically towards teenagers to the great ire of all the adults listening to their Traditional Pop music. It was fast, it was dirty, and it was unusual.

While kids loved this, parents decidedly did not. Famously, Elvis was declared a moral enemy because he did pelvic thrusts. However, by this time in 1961 people were more or less used to Rock and Roll and White artists started playing it, so therefore it’s family friendly again.

Rock and Roll, which had once shaken the popular music zeitgeist was now just another form of popular music, a lot like Alternative Rock. However, despite some polish, Rock and Roll was still fairly the same, but it was clear it wanted to be dancing music. This year starts off a shaving of the inherent swing of Rock and Roll into more “straight” music. We’ll talk about that later.

As of right now, Rock and Roll was still perfectly fine to continue enjoying its time in the spotlight, although it was diluted by now.

It wouldn’t last much longer, not because it didn’t have steam, but because a bunch of silly British folk decided that they were gonna do Rock and Roll 2. However, it would make a comeback in the 70’s, and is still around today, although you’d be hard pressed to find popular Rock and Roll anymore. It’s more just so legendary you just emulate it if you’re going for a 50’s sound (see: Coinky-Dink World).

Doo-Wop (11 songs)
R&B
Stylistic Influences: R&B, Vocal Jazz

Doo-Wop is a music genre that’s pretty much synonymous with the early 60’s, probably because it’s one of the only newish popular genres from around this time with a unique character.

Doo-Wop, despite having its roots in poor Black vocal groups from the 40’s such as The Ink Spots, is actually incredibly professional. It portrays a humming nostalgia to the sound of perfect harmony and breezy rhythms.

Strings are not uncommon in this genre, and 6/8 time signatures are also not uncommon, however, if a song has the signature backing vocals it’s Doo-Wop. You know, your sh-booms, doo-wops, ba-dangs, bomp bomp bomps.

Actually let’s talk about that one.

Who Put the Bomp (In the Bomp Bomp Bomp) by Barry Mann is a bit of an interesting record. It’s Satire… kinda. Allow me to explain.

In the 60’s, people, especially for manufactured genres like these, didn’t write their own music. In fact, there was an entire building dedicated to writing (and producing) music for other people. It wasn’t really looked down upon, even when it came to Rock, like it is nowadays.

Who Put the Bomp (In the Bomp Bomp Bomp) is a shining example of this phenomena. The entire song is about a singer who apparently sang a song and got a girl. The song in question is explicitly stated to be written by someone else, and the singer doesn’t even know who wrote it or what the song’s even about. Instead it’s just relegated to a bunch of common Doo-Wop harmonies. There was a bomp bomp bomp, a ram-a-lama-ding-dong, a bop sh-bop sh-bop, and a dip dip dip dip. That’s all we know about this song.

It serves as an interesting look into both how formulaic some music was in this time. After all, if you write a hit, why change it for the next go-around? It also serves as an interesting look into how songs were manufactured back in the late 50’s and early 60’s, some guy does it all for you, sometimes an established songwriter and other times not. Doo-Wop, however, is not the most formulaic genre on this year end.

As mentioned, if it has the signature Doo-Wop harmonies, it’s Doo-Wop. That’s all what’s required for this genre, despite it coming in all shapes and sizes.

Coming from R&B and Vocal Jazz groups, it would soon mutate into a mass-produced monster. However, Doo-Wop is actually quite good aside. It conveys nostalgia way better than Traditional Pop does. There’s a reason it’s the primary genre people remember from the early 60’s.

Doo-Wop still exists today, but in the same way that Disco exists today. It’s shameless nostalgia bait with songs like Until I Found You or Bad Days on the Horizon (that’s an SPG original). That being said, nostalgia is fine sometimes, and there’s few better genres to choose for it.

Nashville (8 songs)
Country, Pop
Stylistic Influences: Honky Tonk, Traditional Pop

Country, the eternal traditionalist, got wind of these new, groundbreaking genres like Rock and Roll and decided that it needed to cozy up with its also eternally traditionalist friend, Traditional Pop.

Nashville Country is one of the most iconic forms of Country, so iconic in fact that Nashville is still inextricably linked with Country music to this day. Nashville is almost exclusively produced in Nashville with a very talented set of studio musicians, shocking I know. It’s a more mellow take on Country, which was really the only way to go after it continued getting faster and faster.

The only issue with Nashville is that despite digging its heels in to remain “traditional”, it absolutely obliterated most of Country’s evolution to that point. Some Nashville songs are barely distinguishable from Traditional Pop by ample use of strings, clean melodies, and small productions.

The common accusation thrown at modern Country is that it’s “Pop with a Southern accent”.

Nashville is, quite literally, Pop with a Southern accent.

Nashville was the beginning of the end for Country. It just continued getting more and more polished and losing some of its Country roots to appeal to a faux traditionalism. Country artists singing about how they live on a farm in the middle of God-knows-where when in actuality they’re recording ten-thousand dollar productions in what is likely one of the most expensive cities to live in in the US.

Nashville is still around today in the sense that all Country is descended from it (everything except Americana at least). The style hasn’t changed much in 60 years, and as long as they keep raking in the payments, they’re unlikely to change it much anytime soon.

Brill Building Pop (8 songs)
Pop, Rock and Roll
Stylistic Influences: Rock and Roll, Traditional Pop, Tin Pan Alley

Arguably one of the earliest genres of Pop-Rock. Some might even call this Pop-Rock. I do not because it is more Pop than Rock, really.

Brill Building Pop is also known as “assembly line Pop” and that should give a pretty good overview of what Brill Building Pop is. In New York City, there is a place called the Brill Building. Nowadays, it’s barely used (though it is designated as a landmark), but back in the 50’s and 60’s, the Brill Building was a bustling songwriter and studio conglomerate.

Brill Building Pop is a genre comprising of songs that are meticulously put together to become a surefire hit. All songs have a light Rock and Roll influence, are often written and produced by people who aren’t the artist, bring in strings and Jazz influences from Traditional Pop and Tin Pan Alley, and then mix it all together like a mad scientist in a lab.

Phil Spector started his career here, pioneering a wall of sound technique that is still emulated to this day, and often used in Brill Building Pop to varying degrees.

It is hard to emphasize just how explosive Brill Building Pop was, their formula could not be considered a failure when they ended up with some of the biggest hits of the year. The artists in the Brill Building became teen stars, and it seemed like it couldn’t slow down.

Then some silly British people decided to make Rock and Roll 2.

Brill Building Pop disappeared pretty quickly after that, and Phil Spector would end his career trying to produce Let it Be for The Beatles (oh and he killed somebody but that’s not important)… just over a decade after Brill Building Pop entered the scene.

It isn’t around today. The Brill Building isn’t even really used anymore. What is around today, however, is Dream Pop, Pop-Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Baroque Pop, and dozens of other genres that use the pioneering “Wall of Sound” technique to record their music.

And that’s something that can be appreciated.

Pop Soul (5 songs)
R&B, Pop
Stylistic Influences: Soul, Traditional Pop, Doo-Wop

You have Pop, and you have Soul.

That’s it, that’s the genre, most broadly.

It’s basically a combination of the two to give Soul some mainstream appeal. Because you know, you can’t get anywhere in 1961 if your songs aren’t Pop-influenced, are you crazy?

Unlike Blue-Eyed Soul, Pop Soul is still performed by Black artists and usually has Black music within its DNA. Doo-Wop harmonies, for instance, are present in this genre (The Drifters even being one of the acts). A few years later, Motown would codify Pop Soul through their own unique sound, but Motown isn’t really a thing yet at this time.

Other than that, there is really nothing to write home about this genre. However, the ploy for crossover success seemed to have worked as this is doing better than actual Soul.

The genre would continue living on beyond this, after all, a genre so broad is bound to survive.

R&B (4 songs)
R&B
Stylistic Influences: Jump Blues, Dixie, Traditional Gospel

“But Dashie, isn’t this just a supergenre?”

Yeah. It is. But here’s the thing.

R&B in this context refers to the first form of R&B, the default, the genre which all other R&B genres are descended from.

Way back in ye olde days of American popular music, before the Billboard Hot 100 was even a thing, there were three charts that defined popular music.

First off, there was the Pop Chart. Just the milquetoast Traditional Pop and Tinpan Alley standards basically. Sometimes you might get a White Jazz artist in there, but for the most part, it was music by the comfortable, inoffensive White population.

Then, you had the Country & Western Chart. These charts were for the country folk who weren’t necessarily as clean-cut. Think the folk singers and the Western Swing artists. The music was called Country because it came out of the Country, and the chart was just named after what the country folk were playing.

Finally, you had the R&B chart. However, that name change took a bit and really only happened in the 40’s. Prior to that, it was just called the “race music” chart. It was just all the music the Black people were playing shoved into one chart, the Jazz, Blues, Gospel, and so on. Eventually, Billboard realized that “race music” wasn’t really representative of what Black people played (and also racist) so it was renamed similar to the Country & Western Chart, encapsulating the music Billboard thought Black people performed, Rhythm and Blues.

The general idea of the chart remained the same though.

A few years later, some Black people decided that they were going to do something unique. They were the ones you’d expect, Louis Jordan, Roy Brown, Wynonie Harris. However, nowadays, Louis Jordan and Wynonie Harris are considered “Jump Blues”, leaving Roy Brown as a trailblazer.

What happened, and Roy Brown probably isn’t the first person to have done this, but he was one of the first famous ones. Anyways, what happened is that Roy Brown essentially took every single Black led genre, and just blended them together into something that was the definition of R&B.

This was a big game changer for the popular music scene, which was no longer exclusively for the inoffensive musicians, now Butcher Pete could make it on the Pop Chart, too.

R&B would have an immense expansion and is the root of many genres today. Most notably, it laid the groundwork for Rock and Roll. But R&B wanted to show Rock and Roll who was boss, so it wasn’t going to be overtaken by Rock and Roll like other genres might’ve been.

This genre has many, many derivative forms, it was near-impossible to shake off the idea that R&B was Black music, so all Black music got called R&B. However, the idea of original R&B, that blending of Black culture, is still a wonderful thing to behold.

This classic form of R&B isn’t really practiced nowadays, but we have it to thank for pretty much every Rock genre under the sun. Modern R&B is quite a bit different. Maybe I’ll get the chance to talk about it someday.

Country Pop (4 songs)
Country, Pop
Stylistic Influences: Nashville, Rock and Roll

There’s not really a massive difference between Nashville and Country Pop. Country Pop is still a blending of Country music with Pop music, but this time it was closer to Rock music.

Nashville is the de-facto “Pop” of Country at this time, but a few Country artists didn’t have access to the strings and all those fancy bells and whistles so they got their own musicians and took influence from Rock and Roll instead. Country Pop is defined by that minor difference, that small Rock influence as opposed to that Nashville Pop stranglehold.

However, as mentioned, Nashville basically killed Country music, so Country Pop is still missing that sharper edge of old Country, and instruments are very similar to the Rock and Roll getup.

Steel guitars and fiddles? Don’t need ‘em. You’ve got yourself a half-decent bassist and guitarist, and that’s good enough. Country Pop really broke through this year, moreso splintering off of Nashville because there was only so much Pop those conservative Country artists like Marty Robbins could take. In fact, let’s talk about Marty Robbins, he had a hit this year.

After the famed Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, Marty Robbins’ 1959 effort, he wasn’t done, oh no. You simply have to follow up Big Iron with something. Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, was the epitome of “Western” Country, which I’ll talk about a little later, so Marty Robbins decided to pivot away from those folky storytelling songs and actually released a Country Pop ballad this year, and it hit the year-end.

Don’t Worry is an astounding song, because of an accident. Something happened with the mixing desk, and the whole thing got fucked up, nobody liked it, but they must've been on a time crunch or something because nothing was done.

The noise everyone hated is the sound of a computer catching a virus that makes noises almost vaguely represents a tuba. In other words, there’s a bass solo on this track. This bass solo is widely considered to be one of the first ever uses of a fuzz effect on any popular recording. There wasn’t a pedal for it, but there was a bad mixing desk.

Don’t Worry is actually a very good song though. The fuzz effect would later become Psychedelic Rock cliché later, but now it was a novelty, and novelties didn’t have to be bad.

Country Pop has always been influenced by Rock, then and now. Your favorite Luke Combs song is just as Country Pop as you favorite 60’s Marty Robbins one. It’s a genre that has evolved, but like Pop-Rock, really is just a common classification for an even more popular combination of two current sounds. Quite a miracle this genre name hasn’t been changed…

What’s Bro-Country?

New Orleans R&B (4 songs)
R&B
Stylistic Influences: R&B, Piano Blues, Dixie

So, you may notice a glaring issue with R&B. I said it was a combination of all Black music considered “R&B” to that point, and created something that could only be described as such. There isn’t a lot of obvious Jazz in R&B though, rough for the complete combination.

This is the genre that remedies that.

Spearheaded by Fats Domino shortly after the rise of proper R&B, New Orleans R&B is just R&B with Jazz rhythms and horns.

It cannot be overstated how important Fats Domino is to this genre, actually, his first single was in 1950, and he even holds a song on this year-end. The man took R&B to new heights with his thunderous piano and incredible voice. It’s quite incredible how much adding a piano to a genre can do.

New Orleans R&B can be a little slower than normal R&B, as the interest is all in the rhythmic complexity. However, it really isn’t too different.

There’s not really much else to say. It’s just a very good genre for a little innovation. It’s not really around today, but there are a few people holding on to that New Orleans R&B sound, though most moved on.

Soul (3 songs)
R&B
Stylistic Influences: Modern Gospel, R&B

Again, Soul is its own genre group, but this refers to the default flavor of Soul. Much like Soul food, Soul is primarily Southern, it’s by Black artists… and it takes great influence from both R&B and Gospel. The analogy falls apart at the end there, but you get it.

Imagine you’re living in the American South. Church and Jesus is ingrained into your mind, and you come from a place with intense musical lineage. Mississippi, Louisiana, and so on. But this issue with all that music is that it’s specifically secular music. At least the popular stuff is. But when you’re so attuned to church, that’s not the music you’re that familiar with.

For Black people, especially in the South, music was incredibly important. Most popular music has roots in Spirituals, Traditional Gospel, and Ragtime. All of those are Black genres.

So, a few Black people saw this and wondered what they could do is they took that Gospel and mixed it with the secular. Soul was born.

Soul can be roughly described as Gospel vocals and rhythms with R&B instrumentation. It was actually considered Rock at this time, despite that not really being the case anymore. You can only imagine that this music got its name when some person heard it and went, “That music’s got soul!” (Author’s note: I do not know how the genre got its name).

Soul exploded in the late 50’s and early 60’s, achieving insane popularity rather quickly. As a result, it started fracturing off almost immediately into several genres— you’ll see another one as you descend down this post. The most famous genre of Soul, actually not Southern at all, however, was not yet a thing. But regardless, the idea was that the music had soul, vocals were embellished, rhythms were straightforward, and it sounded larger than life.

Of course, it quickly got watered down into the Pop Soul and Blue-Eyed Soul variants, but those are still Soul too, and as long as as we have the power, Soul will never die.

Girl Group (3 songs)
R&B, Pop
Stylistic Influences: Rock and Roll, Traditional Pop, R&B

Speaking of which, here’s a Soul subgenre right here. Kinda… it’s sort of a toss-up between Pop and Soul is more of a proto-Motown than anything, and actually isn’t really a Soul subgenre, but, it is a genre. It’s basically just a genre in which groups of girls sing songs together (usually with a strong “lead”) that are influenced by R&B and Rock and Roll, with a hefty dose of Pop overproduction.

That’s not a strict style guide and this is a very broad genre. It pretty much distills it down to, “Do girls sing together on this? Is it R&B influenced?”

If you answered “yes” to those two questions, it is most likely a Girl Group song.

Now, Girl Groups really took off with Motown, but that’s not to say there weren’t any beforehand. In fact, Girl Group ticks back to the Chordettes. Because of course it does. I did say it was Pop-influenced. Their harmonies paved the way for something resembling Girl Group to break through, although they are definitely the least interesting act because Traditional Pop is the least interesting.

In 1961, the R&B influence was only getting more pronounced to the point where it started taking from Pop Soul. It’s likely that because Pop Soul was popular, people just jumped on, as is human nature. Girl Groups however, occupy a weird middle ground, they’re more of an influence on later Soul than an actual Soul subgenre, despite taking from it around this time.

Music history is complicated, and throwing all this in doesn’t help. To make things even more complicated, despite its broadness, this genre didn’t last past the 60’s with the death of Motown. All the girl groups later came back as “Dance Pop”.

Teen Pop I (3 songs)
Pop
Stylistic Influences: R&B, Rock and Roll, Traditional Pop

Why is this marked as Teen Pop I?

Well, Teen Pop is again, a specific but not really genre. Teen Pop is defined as Traditional Pop (and/or Brill Building Pop) that is influenced by R&B, Rock and Roll, directed to teens and usually sung by teens. That wouldn’t be too complicated except for the fact that there’s a genre called Teen Pop in the 90’s-now (in fact even bigger then!) that takes influence from Pop-Rock and R&B… except the R&B then is not the R&B that exists on the charts in 1961.

So basically, Teen Pop is defined as Pop, Rock, and R&B, but because R&B changes so drastically Teen Pop comes back 30 years later and sounds nothing like this.

This is why I’ve marked it as Teen Pop I because marking all this as R&B makes things excruciatingly difficult and I don’t want to deal with this.

Teen Pop isn’t very good, it never was and never has been. It’s like great, you got a kid on board! Nice to see you’ll be taking all their royalties, forcing them to sing, and putting out a mundane record that’ll sell thousands off of being sung by a teen.

It’s just a marketing ploy of a genre, and of course that means it’s big. After all, you wouldn’t sell out if you didn’t make thousands doing it. Much like Traditional Pop and Brill Building Pop, Teen Pop isn’t really up to the teen. It’s the record label and the teen just so happens to be good enough to perform it. The only difference is that Brill Building Pop is actually pretty good. Some assembly lines are more efficient.

Maybe I’m just mad that Teen Pop is a genre that has changed too much for my liking. Which fucker decided to change what music was called R&B.

Twist (2 songs)
Rock and Roll
Stylistic Influences: R&B, Rock and Roll

You know that silly song The Twist? You know the one by Chubby Checker? The one that’s entirely about a dance?

Did you also know that The Twist is also one of the biggest trendsetters in music history? Did you know that it’s one of the few songs to hit number one twice? Did you know that there’s an entire hyperspecific genre comprised entirely of songs that sound like The Twist?

No? Well let me be the bearer of bad news because this is actually a real thing. Just wait until next year. I’m looking at the 1962 year end and I’m seeing a streak of songs that are all just The Twist.

As for the genre? It’s Rock and Roll without the swing. It’s also high-energy, probably has a sax solo, is around 160 BPM, and is about a dance. I know all this because, like I said, this genre was hyperspecific. The dance was usually The Twist, but we need to give The Fly and The Mashed Potato a spotlight too.

One or two of these songs are fine, but an entire genre? It’s no wonder some silly British guys created Rock and Roll 2 because Rock and Roll 1 was getting throughly murdered, taken out back, routinely kicked, and then shot for good measure. Where’s all the moral panic, the groundbreaking sound? We’re just dancing now? I’m not kidding. The amount of songs on the next year’s year end? You’ll see, I’ll save that for later.

As for right now, the genre wasn’t big yet. It was merely background noise far exceeded in volume by actual Rock and Roll. However, what it was was a ominous signal of what was about to come.

But sure, you can enjoy your silly little dances right now.

Blue-Eyed Soul (2 songs)
Pop
Influences: Traditional Pop, Pop Soul

Blue-Eyed Soul is Soul performed by White people. In theory, at least, because obviously that’s not what Blue-Eyed Soul is. The name was actually coined in the mid-60’s by Georgie Woods, a DJ who was Black, but loved The Righteous Brother’ music. So, he played it, but he had to let his Black listeners know these people weren’t Black, so he said he was going to play “Blue-Eyed Soul”. The Righteous Brothers would in turn name their album Some Blue-Eyed Soul.

The name stuck, but the interesting thing is that The Righteous Brothers actually popularized this genre, but the idea to make Soul a completely Pop affair was not a new idea.

Pop Soul still has some remnant of Soul in there. Blue-Eyed Soul just straight-up changes all Soul into Traditional Pop with some Gospel vocals.

It can barely even be called Soul, really, it’s Traditional Pop. It’s barely different from Traditional Pop, with all the overproduction and lavish, Phil Spector-created strings. May I emphasize that this is usually Phil Spector-produced, too.

Blue-Eyed Soul can be seen as an interesting look into divergent evolution, seeing how so many people decided to whitewash Soul all at the same time without any collaboration with one another. They just said “let’s remove almost all Soul out of Pop Soul” and we got this. Roy Orbison still saves Crying though.

The Righteous Brothers aren’t to blame for this, they performed actual Soul in their early days. It’s everyone who came before them when they recorded “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” that’s the problem.

Yes, this genre is still around today. It’s gotten better since it started taking from actual Soul instead of Traditional Pop.

Soul Jazz (2 songs)
Jazz, R&B
Stylistic Influences: Modern Gospel, Swing, R&B

Okay, now this is the stuff.

Despite the name, Soul Jazz predates Soul. However, when it started getting big after the rise of Soul, people thought it took just as much influence from Soul as it did Jazz. It of course influenced Soul but genre names are oftentimes supremely dumb.

Ray Charles ruled this genre this year with Hit the Road Jack, which is also a very early example of Funky Jazz (when of course, Funk wasn’t a thing yet either), and is also the absolute best song on this entire year end. No, it’s not Stand By Me, it is Hit the Road Jack, the chorus is infectious the moment you hear it.

However, Ray Charles is not even the popularizer of Soul Jazz, that honor would probably go to Grover Washington Jr. or Illinois Jacquet, who was a very good session saxophonist before recording his own music.

Whatever the case, Black people were absolutely repulsed by what they saw as a whitewashing of Jazz with West Coast Jazz, so they took R&B and Swing and completely doubled down. Aside from actual Soul, I’d say Soul Jazz has some of the most soul in music I’ve ever heard. To think, it was created out of spite. A lot of good things are (Something About a Violet for instance).

Soul Jazz is an absolutely incredible genre, and when it started taking more influence from Soul too, it became even better. This is how you create a Soul “subgenre” (remember it predates Soul, but you wouldn’t guess), you take Soul, and you identify what’s so great about it, and you take the money and run.

I’m proud to say that this music has tons of soul.

Sadly, this genre isn’t around anymore. Good things never last.

Light Music (2 songs)
Pop
Stylistic Influences: Tin Pan Alley, Easy Listening

All good things never last including me talking about not boring music.

Light Music is in fact so boring it’s described by its name. It’s light Easy Listening, it’s light Pop, it’s light entertainment, and it’s lightweight. To put it simply, it’s instrumentals designed to cater to the average listener to put music on in the background.

In the background specifically, if there’s one thing Easy Listeners (note: when I say “Easy Listeners, I mean ‘fans of Easy Listening’) like doing, it’s not listen to music any deeper than they have to. They can’t listen or else they’ll realize Light Music is woefully inadequate and they need to feel a sense of superiority and upperclassman-ship by listening to this music. After all, what kind of music needs lyrics? Lyrics are too distracting for the spa house.

Light Music is even pretentious enough to take the light Jazz influence from Easy Listening and throw it away. The Classical influence, too. Light Music is Traditional Pop without the singers, Easy Listening without the Jazz. It’s Light Music, it’s in the name and it tries to be no more than that.

Perhaps that would be more commendable if it didn’t involve kneecapping a genre that was already a thing.

Light Music wasn’t ever a huge genre in the first place. All the Easy Listeners realized that Traditional Pop filled that need for something incredibly pretentious to toss on in the background. That and New Age. It’s not around today, the main players of Easy Listening you’ll find have dedicated themselves to taking the piss out of the genre. Good on them. Light Music had it coming.

Rockabilly (1 song)
Rock and Roll
Stylistic Influences: Rock and Roll, Western Swing

Well it’s one for the money. Two for the show. Three to get ready… four to go go!

Rockabilly. It’s an incredible genre really. I know I’ve complained a lot about the “whitewashing” of some genres like Soul and R&B in this post. I know Rockabilly is not that different. It’s a whitewashing of Rock and Roll to mix it with Country… but there’s something so visceral about Rockabilly that I can’t help but admire it.

First off, Rockabilly isn’t intentionally ripping off Rock and Roll (Hound Dog notwithstanding). Rock and Roll and Country were just incredibly popular genres. Sam Phillips of Sun Records really kicked it off by asking what came to be known as the “Million Dollar Quartet” (Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis) to just, perform as close to Rock and Roll as they could get. Sam Phillips didn’t have fancy studio musicians, or anything like that, so Rockabilly was born.

Rockabilly is an incredibly minimalist genre. Johnny Cash’s early records didn’t even have a drummer, he slid a piece of paper in between his guitar strings and created his own percussion. Rockabilly will almost always have no more than three instruments, guitar, bass, and drums. If you’re Jerry Lee Lewis you get a piano because he always wanted to be the center of attention (especially among the younger generation). Then vocals would be added, and it’d be sent out and distributed. There, you have a genre.

Rockabilly stands out to me because it’s just so pure. Everybody here has great respect for Rock and Roll and they fully accept they’re not surpassing it, so they just do their own thing.

At the end of the day, you’re left with a very unique genre that truly deserves its place in the history of music. I wouldn’t even say it belongs in a museum because Rockabilly is just genuinely good.

When that Rock and Roll Revival came around in the 70’s and 80’s, those artists really took Rockabilly as an influence rather than Rock and Roll. Rock and Roll isn’t a minimalist genre, but taking from Rockabilly helped bands like The Stray Cats prosper, it’s like a proto-Punk almost… if Punk also didn’t involve copious amounts of intentional rebellion. That’s not to say Rockabilly isn’t rebellious, but it’s not intentionally so.

At the end of the day, I like Rockabilly. It’s just such an interesting and pure genre I can’t help but like it. It’s still around today because of course it is, but it proves you don’t need 15 instruments and a Phil Spector production to make waves.

Passion and slapback is all it takes.

Skiffle (1 song)
Country
Stylistic Influences: American Folk Music, Dixie, Jug Band

It’s funny calling Skiffle a Country genre because it’s British… but what else is Skiffle, really?

Skiffle is the catch-all term for the Skiffle Revival, which was in itself a revival of Skiffle. The revival got the name because of course it did. Primarily in the UK, a few artists heard some old American Jug Band recordings and decided that they really liked the DIY aesthetic, so they started emulating them.

Skiffle comes from Jug Band, and Jug Band gets the name because the artists were poor. So poor in fact that they used washboards for percussion, tea chest basses, and jugs filled with water to create their music. It’s a form of Acoustic Blues, making it almost American Folk Music in its own right.

I do not know how the Brits got a hold of Jug Band music, but they did. They started creating all these instruments despite the fact they usually had the money to… not do that. It also takes influence from other American genres like Dixie and Country Blues to just really make this sound as authentically American as possible. It’s authentically American in the same way that Outback Steakhouse is authentically Australian, really, but the Brits loved the novelty.

Lonnie Donegan was the first Skiffle artist to get on record, and when that record got released, the island was set alight. It was as if London had a fourth fire.

Skiffle absolutely exploded, at least among the local populace. Very few of these records got recorded, but Skiffle bands started forming, and Skiffle started to become a very big draw for live crowds.

Skiffle is one of the biggest genres in British history. Aside from the obvious one, at least. It is ground zero for tons of famous British genres and groups. One particular Skiffle group was known as The Quarrymen, who… oh that appears to be a spoiler. You’ll have to wait for that one.

Now Britain is only so big. Eventually, too many Skiffle groups formed and the genre collapsed because they all sounded the same. Also because the genre wasn’t very American at all, but I don’t think the Brits ever realized that.

By 1961, Lonnie Donegan was hitting the charts with a novelty/Music Hall song about fucking chewing gum of all things. Well, specifically whether chewing gum loses its flavour on the bedpost overnight. Truly, a question that is the most pressing of our generation.

Skiffle was never really a recorded genre, but it even collapsed as an unrecorded genre, too. While a few Skiffle groups stuck together, several went on to do bigger and better things. We’ll talk about those Quarrymen later.

Cool Jazz (1 song)
Jazz
Stylistic Influences: Bebop, 20th Century Classical

Cool Jazz is the Jazz genre that is, “Just too cool for your vibe, man”.

Cool Jazz is Jazz that is almost obsessive about keeping itself cool. Slow, laid-back, classical, classy, all that and a bag of chips.

Bebop was created from the fallout of Swing when they decided to make Swing less intense, and Cool Jazz is just the logical conclusion of consistently making Jazz less intense. Well, for now anyways. I probably won’t get the chance to talk about Nordic Jazz here, but look up “relaxing Jazz music” on YouTube and you’ll have so much Nordic Jazz you won’t know what to do with it.

Cool Jazz is heavily influenced by Classical music, specifically 20th Century Classical. The groups are oftentimes relatively small, and the music takes tons from non-experimental forms of that music. Miles Davis is one of the earliest performers of Cool Jazz, because it’s always Miles Davis, and his record A Kind of Blue, combining Cool Jazz and Modal Jazz is still the bestselling Jazz album to this day.

Speaking of which, another bestselling Jazz album also happens to be Cool Jazz, the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out. That’s where the entry on this list comes from. It’s Take Five. Everybody knows Take Five.

Overall, you can expect a laid-back experience with Cool Jazz. It’s music that you listen to and go “hmm, how intriguing” instead of “come on let’s fucking wreck the dancefloor”. It’s not too different from Easy Listening, except Cool Jazz actually knows how to stay cool and knows what to do when it’s cool. It knows it can make things interesting and still remain laid-back, hell, Take Five even has a drum solo.

No Jazz music ever really dies, it just retreats into the underground and emerges every so often for a quick flash in the pan. Cool Jazz is no different. It’s just one of the most commercially successful Jazz genres out there, and this is proof of that.

Space Age Pop (1 song)
Pop, Downtempo
Stylistic Influences: Lounge, Easy Listening, Traditional Pop

These genres are roughly organized by influence. Space Age Pop would definitely not be this high on its own (there’s still a lot of genres to go over), but the song is Apache… so…

What is Downtempo first off? Well, it’s basically Ambient music, and music inspired by Ambient music. If it’s not absurdly complicated, and it’s trying to entrance you (and not called Trance), it’s likely Downtempo music. Downtempo music is also music created as art, and these ideas have a shocking amount of overlap.

Space Age Pop is such a genre. Inspired by Lounge, Elevator Music, Easy Listening, and all those very desirable genres, Space Age Pop combines that with a growing optimism about space travel being on the horizon. It sounds spacey, obviously, filled with synthetic strings and instrumentation. It’s not averse to using Rock and Roll instruments as well, which makes this genre already way better than its Easy Listening brethren. In fact, Apache is basically a guitar solo. Pretty much only a guitar solo with copious amounts of tremolo, but a guitar solo.

It’s meant to be music you put on in the background, but also meant to bring awareness to space through its artistry, and look, I don’t really care it’s fine. Nobody really cares about Space Age Pop enough to be a problem. It’s a pretty small, inoffensive genre.

Apache, on the other hand, is a song that has a tremendous legacy of its own.

This recording of Apache, by Jørgen Ingmann, was a cover of the song originally by Bert Weedon, but the song itself if pretty good. Despite it finishing halfway down the 1961 charts, it was indicative of this song’s coming popularity. First off, Ingmann is Danish, which shows the power music has to link people together, but more importantly, The Shadows.

In the mid-60’s, The Shadows recorded their own version of Apache, and that became a big hit. A little while later, a band known as the Incredible Bongo Band would record their own Deep Funk cover of Apache. About a minute and a half through the song, the guitar and drums start trading off bars, and they didn’t know what would come of it.

After the guitar goes for a bar, the drums then perform what is known as the Apache Break. It’s short and comparable to the Amen Break, but it laid the bedrock foundation for Hip-Hop and is one of the most sampled breaks of all time.

It really shows how universal music can get.

Easy Listening (1 song)
Pop
Stylistic Influences: Tin Pan Alley, Classical, Big Band

If you’re asking whether the default Easy Listening is better than Light Music… kinda? It’s not great regardless, but this genre has some merit.

First off, Easy Listening has an obvious Jazz influence. It’s slathered all over a Traditional Pop template, but Big Band is certainly jazzier than Vocal Jazz. It also has a Classical influence, and I don’t like Classical very much but at least it adds something to these milquetoast songs.

However, the real draw of Easy Listening is that it’s easy listening. Yes, it’s shaped like itself, the name is as uncreative as the music. If you’re paying attention to Easy Listening you’re doing it wrong. It’s music put on in the background to expressly not listen to. It’s just supposed to give this veneer of quality, until of course you look into it.

It’s usually all standards, pop music and the like. Heaven forbid it be anything different because then it can’t be Easy Listening.

Easy Listeners absolutely don’t care about splitting Easy Listening up into further genres. After all, that would be paying attention to Easy Listening. This is the reason why the genre is still around today, and probably sounds wildly different now. Just more music to not pay attention to.

Western (1 song)
Country
Stylistic Influences: American Folk Music, Traditional Country, Spirituals

The Western is a very particular style of music.

Really, they’re all particular styles of music, but Western lives between Folk and County. Allow me to explain.

Country comes directly from American Folk Music, for the most part. This is where we get Traditional Country. However, Traditional Country really didn’t have the folky storytelling overtones to it, so Westerns just slide those back in and there’s a brand new genre.

Westerns have a whole mess of influences, including Spirituals and Minstrel Shows, which is certainly… a choice. They also have a symbiotic relationship with the genre of Western movies. When the movies were made based off the stories Westerns were telling, and the movies became popular, Westerns got engulfed by the almighty Nashville to cater to the mainstream audiences. This didn’t really work and instead the idea of a Western is still closely tied to that strong Traditional Country influence.

If you want an idea of the “Western”, look no further than Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs. If you can’t understand Traditional Country with a storytelling aspect, that’s all that album is. Big Bad John by Jimmy Dean is a continuation of this Western ideal, even after Marty Robbins moved into more central pastures. It’s actually a pretty good song, telling an interesting story.

But what Big Bad John is is a continuation of the Death Disc. If you read my 1960 overview, I did in fact mention the Death Disc as a 1960 trend. Basically, it’s a story about some hero who dies at the end. It’s a contemplative look at our own morality yadda yadda yadda, whatever I shan’t bore you with the details. If you made it this far you can read the opening of the 1960 post. Big Bad John isn’t the only Death Disc on this year-end but it is the best as our other options include fucking Perry Como.

Basically, there’s this man. He’s a massive hulking man, and he dies in a mining accident and that’s the song. 1961 lyrics could leave something to be desired.

Big Bad John however is a continuation of a popular trend that wasn’t really going to slow down in popularity, and even had a few callbacks in the future after the trend had run its course.

Western music isn’t an immensely popular genre, but it is a cornerstone of Country music. It can’t not be talked about. Marty Robbins still does it the best though, Ain’t I Right?

Actually wait—

Close Harmony (1 song)
Country
Stylistic Influences: American Folk Music, Traditional Country, Vocal Jazz

Yes, it’s an Everly Brothers’ song. They’re the only act with any mainstream popularity in this genre.

The issue with including every genre that appears on these year-ends is that I get crippling little microgenres like this and Twist that still technically played an important part in popular music history. Though I don’t know how much that argument holds water considering Close Harmony really has no follow-up genres and barely has any influence on popular music. It’s not at the bottom because the Everly Brothers are here at least.

Close Harmony isn’t even a style of music, it’s a singing style. It’s just Country songs performed in two-part harmony. It’s usually performed by siblings, but that’s not a necessity. The fucking Ink Spots are a Close Harmony band if you ignore the very obvious Black influence in their music.

Close Harmony really isn’t a bad genre. It’s fairly basic, but I love Folk Music and this is about as close as you can get with being straight Folk Music. In fact, it’s so influenced by Folk that some releases of this genre are literally just Folk music with an additional singer.

In a way it’s actually the best Country’s ever done at achieving its goal of continuing the Folk legacy by making music for the common folk. It wasn’t even cannibalized by Nashville.

Speaking of which, it’s actually still around today, which is absolutely incredible. They found a niche and they stuck to it. It’s not popular, Close Harmony’s biggest moment was with the Everly Brothers, but it’s still around.

I can commend it for that.

Country Gospel (1 song)
Country, Gospel
Stylistic Influences: Traditional Country, Traditional Gospel

Michael, Row the Boat Ashore, is a song by the supergroup The Highwaymen. Johnny Cash didn’t chart on this year end, but that song did.

It’s actually an amazing song. You wouldn’t expect it, but it makes things work. A bit like this genre you could say.

I really don’t know what to say about Country Gospel. I’ve barely heard it, and most of its popularity was in a pre-pop music era. I suppose I’ll start with where it came from.

A lot of these weird Country offshoots are heavily intertwined by Traditional Country, and this is no different, except instead of portraying an “everyman” image, it portrays a “holy man” image. Country and Gospel are very closely related, as this genre easily proves.

Traditional Country is heavily intertwined with American Folk Music, too, so it can be assumed that most of these songs didn’t make it on record.

But those that did, well, they’re very much responsible for the way Country is today. Country Gospel is probably to blame for all the religious shit in modern Country. The genre still exists too. Much like Jazz, any Gospel subgenre really doesn’t die, they just get adapted into the public consciousness and continue lives of their own. To exemplify this, American VI came out in 2010. This is probably the last of Johnny Cash’s American albums, posthumously at least. That’s a Country Gospel album.

Michael, Row the Boat Ashore is also by Johnny Cash, at least he’s one of the singers. That’s an incredible 42 year gap. It’s a genre that refuses to give up, and that’s something that can truly he commended. When every Country genre has joined the giant Nashville machine, it’s great to hear one that hasn’t, that’s still as authentic as the day it was made.

And really, Country Gospel always sounds so much more authentic than modern CCM. That’s the hallmark of a good Gospel song.

Parody, Doo-Wop (1 song)
Novelty
Stylistic Influences: Vaudeville, Satire

I admit I’m cheating on this one. It really should just be Doo-Wop, but this is also probably one of the only Parody songs to hit a year-end in the US at least. It also sucks immensely so I have to talk about it. Parody is obviously changing the words to an existing song into something humorous and witty. Only a few artists can claim to be humorous and witty, and The Four Preps is not one of them.

More Money For You and Me is a medley, it is also a parody of about 6 Doo-Wop and Pop Soul songs of the time, talking about how all they really need is money, so they’re covering these songs that have made millions. It is a riot but I’m not really laughing with the band. First off, it’s a bunch of White people covering mostly black artists, however there is a Kingston Trio and Belmonts parody in there so that’s not a universal thing.

I think the funniest part of the entire song is that they’re dead serious the entire time. It feels incredibly mean-spirited as opposed to Weird Al who you can tell (usually) enjoys the songs he’s parodying. It almost is intentionally tearing apart massive hits to make money. It worked because this is on the year end, unfortunately (least it’s not You Must’ve Been a Beautiful Baby).

While some of these parodies are subversive, for instance, their parody of the Kingston Trio, a parody of Tom Dooley, explicitly states that they’re getting more money, which is an interesting juxtaposition against the general leftist ideals of the folk scene. Meanwhile, their parody of Teenager in Love for instance is about… stealing hubcaps off cars and going to jail. That doesn’t really add to the original in any way.

It also doesn’t help that their parodies are also worse than the original. Like, I’ll listen to Weird Al parodies over the original, but I don’t want to hear some White guys parodying Smoke in My Eyes when I can just listen to Smoke in My Eyes.

All in all, I love Parody, if it’s done right.

This is not done right.

Classical Crossover (1 song)
Classical, Pop
Stylistic Influences: Classical, Easy Listening, Traditional Pop

Classical Crossover is actually another infuriatingly broad genre, as Classical Crossover exists regardless of what you’re crossing over Classical with. However, for our purposes, this is done in a Pop context. Also, most Classical crossover with Metal and Electronic is given a “Neoclassical” moniker. Small mercies.

While the genres here point out Traditional Pop, and Easy Listening, it’s really just a crossover with any Pop sound, including Modern Pop. This particular Classical Crossover song is Asia Minor and is taking things from a Traditional Pop angle.

Now everything I've said about Traditional Pop applies, and I've already mentioned I don't like Classical very much, so this genre has to follow suit, right?

Actually no. This is one of the rare genres in which two negatives make a positive. Traditional Pop is as interesting as watching paint dry, so adding in Classical not only amplifies the rhythm to make it worth something but also adds a new layer to the overdone Traditional Pop sound.

Would I listen to a playlist of this? Hell no. But when I hear it on the radio it's a minor interesting little thing and then I get on with my day. Classical Crossover was pretty small for a while... and then Baroque Pop happened, but that'll help us later.

Cinematic Classical (1 song)
Classical
Stylistic influences: Classical, Orchestral

This genre is literally just Classical.

You've all heard Cinematic Classical. It's those classic sweeping strings and thumping drums that appear whenever the super intense moment is happening in the film. Quite literally, it's just Classical for film scores.

Instead of just piano though, it uses whole ensembles hiring dozens of musicians to score a film.

So it's just Baroque basically.

Now, Classical is actually split into several subgenres and pre-20th century, they're talking about timeframes, so Baroque came after Classical and uses full ensembles more often. I am not a Classical historian so don't put all your trust in me, but I know that was a Baroque characteristic.

So this is actually just that.

Cinematic Classical doesn't evolve because individual Classical genres don’t. It's been the same for decades, and it's going to remain the same for decades. Of course, people eat this shit up, and it's not bad, but whenever I'm listening to Cinematic Classical, I just can't help but wish I was listening to literally anything else.

Works perfectly fine in the films though.

Polka (1 song)
World
Stylstic Influences: Czech Folk Music

I FUCKING LOVE GERMAN MUSIC wait--

So it turns out that Polka isn't in fact German, it's Czech. In fact it isn't even that popular in Germany, nowhere near as popular as it is in Eastern Europe and the US at least. It's just another one of those cultural things Americans got very wrong.

European immigrants brought Polka over, I don't know which ones, but it became popular in the US very shortly after that. It's even among one of the few genres put on wax in the 19th century.

Polka is a pretty distinct genre, it's always in a cut time, using accordions, tubas, or whatever the artists can get their hands on. The most common drum rhythm is referred to as a "boom chik" it happens to be called that because it’s what it sounds like. Also because it’s as fun to say as it is to play.

It's a very divisive genre, which is probably why Weird Al loves performing it so much. Well, that’s probably not the entire reason, because the main reason is that Polka is goofy. I certainly don’t want to say that about a classic European Folk Music, but I’m sorry, the genre is goofy. The over-the-top dances and wild instrumentation, by American standards at least, is the type of thing that makes you want to laugh. It also doesn’t help that a lot of Polka songs are novelties, stuff like the Chicken Dance simply isn’t serious pop music material.

The Polka song on this year-end is even goofy, and it’s not even Polka really. It’s a cover of a classic German folk tune, Wooden Heart, performed in both English and German. Not the Elvis version though because that wasn’t out yet.

The mechanical thumps and on-off rhythms of Wooden Heart make it sound like the auditory equivalent of a toy soldier. While most Polka isn’t like that, I’d still say that it’s the auditory equivalent of a group of soldiers riding in on a tank in full clown makeup.

Polka’s goofiness is probably what it’s so beloved and derided, I love it, personally. Maybe I’ve read too much Pearls Before Swine.

Polka is still around today, but in the US, it’s still very much a form of Novelty.

Salsa Romántica (1 song)
Latin/Jamaican
Stylistic Influences: Traditional Pop, Salsa

It’s marked Latin/Jamaican because some chuckleheads a long time ago decided that Reggaeton was a Jamaican genre and not the Latin rap that it actually was. So now Latin America and Jamaica get smashed together as if their music has anything in common when they’re actually fairly different.

But that’s not the point here.

The point is that I failed a spot check, but not really. Salsa Romántica is the genre assigned to Wheels by the String-a-Longs, that massive hit that everyone certainly remembers. It’s a 70’s genre. What? Yes.

Salsa Romántica is a 70’s genre. However, the genre itself is actually a mixture of the rhythms of Salsa with Pop, but not Latin Pop as that’s more of a Modern Pop thing. Salsa Romántica takes from Traditional Pop.

So here you go. Wheels is Salsa Romántica. Why? Because it’s Salsa mixed with Pop and genre labels at the end of the day are meaningless.

It’s hard to judge an entire genre based on one song I’ve heard from it, but Wheels is not a very good song, and Traditional Pop isn’t very good. Maybe I’m missing the mark entirely, but I’m not entirely sure. Who knows, maybe it’s actually incredible. I’m American, what the fuck do I know?

Given its Pop roots, Salsa Romántica tends to have singers. Wheels is an instrumental which means it’s closer to Easy Listening, which does explain why the song sucks to its credit. The biggest year for Salsa Romántica was actually in the 80’s, but then Modern Pop started gaining ground and the entire genre was thrown by the wayside. It’s a very small genre and you’re gonna hear more Latin Pop nowadays, but this at least started it.

Salsa’s probably closer to Jazz anyways, seldom recorded, but constantly performed.

Exotica
Downtempo
Stylistic Influences: “Polynesian Folk Music”, Easy Listening

Two fucking Exotica hits. My God.

For those unaware, Exotica, somehow, had a massive hit in 1959 with the song Quiet Village. I’ve discussed that song a little before. This year, it’s the significantly poppier Yellow Bird. These two are not the same.

Well, that’s because Exotica is a fucking hack-job of a genre.

First off, it’s Easy Listening. Bad enough. However, Exotica relies on a more ambient approach and is one of the Easy Listening offshoots that is also completely dead set on making art.

Now, music is art. I like artistic music. Exotica, however, is really not that.

Well, it is artistic music, but the shorthand is that it’s just music meant to sound generically “exotic”. It’s “influenced” by Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, but saying that Exotica really understands those styles of music and utilizes them well is like saying Dominoes really understands the value of authentic Italian pizza. Exotica doesn’t use any interesting Eastern ideas, it’s just supposed to “sound” exotic. These artists legitimately have no idea what the music they want to replicate sounds like.

Now, credit where it’s due, Yellow Bird is a good song. However, Quiet Village is not and really underscores the issue with Exotica as a concept. I’m as much for smashing sounds into nonsense as the next guy (hell, I’m an Industrial fan), but this is just sad. At least understand what you’re replicating. If you’re copying, copy effectively.

The worst part is that even though Exotica started out with “Southeast Asian music”, then moved to trying to create “Hawaiian music”, it eventually just stopped being constrained by region and just started creating “World music”. That’s why Yellow Bird and Quiet Village are so different, because this genre is hungrily looking for other styles of music to “replicate”.

Because why not attempt to create all manner of “exotic music”.

Now, much like most Easy Listening, this had a massive spike in the late 50’s (that’s when Quiet Village was released), and then fell off sharply when people realized that Easy Listening wasn’t great.

Yellow Bird is very good though. It’s probably the Folk Pop gal in me.

---

So that’s my rough 1961 genre list. Everything aside, I like listening to music and I’ve been reading a bit too much Ishkur’s Guide recently (can you tell), so this is more skewed towards entertainment than anything else.

While 1961 wasn’t a strong year for evolution in the non-Soul realm, it still provides a look into the early days of pop music and how it was still finding its legs.

If you want my actual opinion on any of these genres, then feel free to ask! I really don’t hold visceral hatred for much and would love to start a conversation.

Though that also assumes that people read all the way down here, and I’m just dragging it out more and more. I should probably stop.

Until next time; be awesome!
-Dashie

Comments

[Rewan Demontay]

Awesome list of retrospection.