![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A little more than a year ago I started a project. I had received access to a nearly complete set of the top 100 Billboard songs from 1940 to 2018, and I decided to drip them into my regular daily music listening, year by year, until I had heard all of them. As I do with any new music, I rated some of these songs as I listened so that they would come up more often in the future. So I'm going to make some posts to share those songs and some of the insights that I had during this exercise.
I've included both a YouTube playlist and a song listing at the end of each decade. I've also starred the songs that I gave 5 stars to. I want to quickly note that in general, these aren't the songs from their eras that you hear on the radio all the time. With a few exceptions, I didn't tag songs that I already had copies of or that I can expect to hear when I turn on a classic rock station. So, let's begin!
"Birds cuddle down in their nest
Soon all the world will be sleeping"
To be honest, the set I was listening to actually starts with two small sets of his from the 1920s and 1930s. But as amusing as Rudy Vallee singing the University of Maine drinking song (https://youtu.be/Q6CIDved-bY) is, I didn't feel the need for it to show up more often in my listening than once every couple of years. So the first gems I picked out are from the 1940s.
For all that I haven't tagged many of these, I did enjoy much of this music. There was an issue with the nature of the music industry, though, which is that in the 1940s and for some time after, there wasn't the same emphasis on a particular recording, which means that the same song would chart multiple times in a year with different performers. So "Mairzy Doats" charted three times in 1944, and that wasn't even the song that charted most.
The 1940s were very marked by World War Two, with songs about going off to war showing up as soon as it started, such as "Johnny Zero" about a math dunce who turns out to be a flying ace, so that "Johnny got a Zero" changes from a taunt into a cheer. And then there's all the "romantic" songs about leaving your lover on her island in the Pacific Ocean. Ugh.
One surprise was the dominance of Glenn Miller in the early charts, including a possibly regrettable cover of "Jingle Bells." It drives home what a big deal his disappearance was, as if Taylor Swift had gone missing over the Middle East in 2017.
"Btw 18th & 19th On Chestnut St" by Bing Crosby & Connee Boswell: #10 in 1940
"In The Mood" by Glenn Miller and his Orchestra: #26 in 1940
"If I Loved You" by Perry Como o/Russ Case: #17 in 1945
"Now is the hour" by Bing Crosby: #3 in 1948
I've included both a YouTube playlist and a song listing at the end of each decade. I've also starred the songs that I gave 5 stars to. I want to quickly note that in general, these aren't the songs from their eras that you hear on the radio all the time. With a few exceptions, I didn't tag songs that I already had copies of or that I can expect to hear when I turn on a classic rock station. So, let's begin!
"Birds cuddle down in their nest
Soon all the world will be sleeping"
The 1940s
To be honest, the set I was listening to actually starts with two small sets of his from the 1920s and 1930s. But as amusing as Rudy Vallee singing the University of Maine drinking song (https://youtu.be/Q6CIDved-bY) is, I didn't feel the need for it to show up more often in my listening than once every couple of years. So the first gems I picked out are from the 1940s.
For all that I haven't tagged many of these, I did enjoy much of this music. There was an issue with the nature of the music industry, though, which is that in the 1940s and for some time after, there wasn't the same emphasis on a particular recording, which means that the same song would chart multiple times in a year with different performers. So "Mairzy Doats" charted three times in 1944, and that wasn't even the song that charted most.
The 1940s were very marked by World War Two, with songs about going off to war showing up as soon as it started, such as "Johnny Zero" about a math dunce who turns out to be a flying ace, so that "Johnny got a Zero" changes from a taunt into a cheer. And then there's all the "romantic" songs about leaving your lover on her island in the Pacific Ocean. Ugh.
One surprise was the dominance of Glenn Miller in the early charts, including a possibly regrettable cover of "Jingle Bells." It drives home what a big deal his disappearance was, as if Taylor Swift had gone missing over the Middle East in 2017.
"Btw 18th & 19th On Chestnut St" by Bing Crosby & Connee Boswell: #10 in 1940
"In The Mood" by Glenn Miller and his Orchestra: #26 in 1940
"If I Loved You" by Perry Como o/Russ Case: #17 in 1945
"Now is the hour" by Bing Crosby: #3 in 1948
