The Ultimate Video on Top Music Charts, By Year (1900-2009) (Most Well-Sourced Version)

109 years of music history in 11 minutes. Enjoy

This video lists the biggest hit of each year in the 96 source charts. The way that the various charts are combined to reach this final list is described in the described here:


http://tsort.info/music/faq_site_generation.htm

For a list of the music tracks, as well as the source where I got all the information from, check here:

http://tsort.info/music/years0.htm

Source warning: "For years before 1950 the source data is quite sparse, so the results should be treated with some caution. For years before 1920 there is so little source data that the results are close to meaningless."







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So, this being the ultimate video on top music charts/popular music hits, what can we learn through all these three long videos teach us? 


For the most part, I was worried the the early observations for the first video (using Musicoutfitters as the only source) wold be biased precisely because it used only one source. Fortunately, this is not the case. We still see a general lack of racism when it comes to top charts, a general lack of sexism, and the pendulum effect still at work (alternate tops between women and men). Do note that, surprisingly or not, this pendulum effect is not observed during 1955-1976 (only men/men only bands reach the very top). Also, we can note that, once again, the decade with the highest number of top female performers is, once again, the 2000s.


There is one important change though. In this most recent and most complete video, "Queen of pop" Madonna manages to reach a top chart in 1989. There are also a lot more successful bands and acts appearing in the tops. But even though "King of Pop" Michael Jackson does not appear once again in the very first position of a given year, his music echoes through many years in the top 20.


The fact that the top number 1 music is not a good representation of a year, let a lone a decade, prompted me to take the challenge of representing the top 20 music charts from every year, starting in 2001 as a reference (since its exactly 10 years from this present day).


So, for this next project, I will post respective videos by decade. The first post will include years 2001 and 2000, the second will include years from 1990-1999, and so on. Hopefully, after finishing this project, I will be able to analyze popular music in much more detail.