Visit a year for 6 minutes: The Nineties (Spirit of the time analysis)

So the next video project out there plans to use tsort's extensive top hits database to document the top 20 hits in each year in music history, from 1900 to 2009.

Below follows every year of the 90s decade (click on the year to watch the respective youtube video):

1990 
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998 
1999

Some early observations: A huge rise in hip hop and rap scenes, as well as an increase in boys bands/girl bands in the late 90s (1995-1999). We also see rising music genres created within the decade itself appearing the top 20 positions, like Trance, Eurodance, with older genres also gaining momentum, such as House and Techno. The Grunge genre that spawned in the late 80s only goes so far as the first half of the decade (1990-1995).

In a subjective analysis of the general feel of the decade, it almost sounds as if there is a certain laid back, almost naive sound of the late 90s, with more pop and soul acts entering the top 20 positions, in contrast to the more experimental, aggressive and intense sound of the early 90s, featuring more developed forms of rock, and new experimental electronic music.

My main point with this series was, and will be, to show how common complaints of current contemporary music do not fit the stereotype that a certain decade is inherently better than other, especially when looking at their top 20. There are subjectively good and bad songs in this top 20 list, as well as songs less memorable than others. If you think, for some reason, that the past decade and the current one (00s and 10s) is inherently bad, it is worth a reminder that many of the great hits of the past sometimes don't even make it in the top 20.

The Evolution of Popular Music By Year (1950-2010) (U.S.A.) (Source: Billboard "Hot 100")

Another music history video, this time exploring Billboard's source. I won't comment on the video itself, since its quite similar to the previous one, using Musicoufitters as a source.

However, any conclusion drawn from the Musicoutfitters video is to be taken with a grain of salt, as it only gathers one source.

Right now I ham finishing the most complete and well sourced video. I will save any comments to when I post it.

The Evolution of Popular Music, by year, in the U.S.A. (1890-2009)

After some good feedback from my historical look at dances, I decided to turn my attention to popular music. It turns out there are a generous amount of websites which have recorded, or uploaded recorded data, on the most popular music, during a given year. The main websites I used for sources were "Musicoutfitters" and "Popularsong.org". This link will explain how Musicoutfitters compiled all the information regarding their pop charts.

However, Musicoutfitters only got me so far. For older data, which I should stress out, was very difficult to compile, besides that I cannot guarantee with 100% certainty that it was THE most popular song, only that it was one of THE most popular songs, I had to resort to several other websites and more google searches than I had wish for in order to make sense of it all.

Below then follows the finished youtube video, reaching an incredibly 15 minute size, to which I thank YouTube's new size limit policies.