Hear the hits sung live, not mimed

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  1950s

  Rock and roll gets its name

  Rock and roll took shape in America across the late 1940s and early 1950s, built chiefly on rhythm and blues, with swing, jazz, gospel and boogie-woogie stirred in. The name stuck in 1954. Piano or saxophone led the earliest records before the electric guitar took over, and a snare-drum backbeat made it dance music first of all.

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  1960s

  Hits from a Detroit label

  Motown began as Tamla Records, founded by Berry Gordy Jr. in January 1959, and its name blends motor and town, a nickname for Detroit. Its pop-leaning soul crossed over to white audiences, and 79 Motown songs reached the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 between 1960 and 1969. Harmony groups and sharp choreography make it natural stage material.

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  1964

  The British arrive

  The British Invasion was the mid-1960s moment when rock and pop acts from the United Kingdom took hold in America. It grew from British teenagers' love of American rock and roll and blues, and from Liverpool's Merseybeat. Its landmark is the Beatles' February 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, seen, by Nielsen's estimate, by 45 percent of American television viewers that night.

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  Carolina

  Beach music and the shag

  This coast has its own chapter. Beach music grew from the rhythm and blues and pop of the 1950s and 1960s and belongs with the shag, which both North and South Carolina have adopted as their state dance. Most accounts place its strongest pull at Ocean Drive in North Myrtle Beach, among vacationing teenagers and college students.

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  Country

  Fiddles, steel and a chorus

  Country music took shape in the American South and is believed to descend from British folk music carried over in early waves of immigration. Its place in popular music was settled in the 1930s, the early days of recording. Ballads and dance tunes ride on fiddles, banjos, harmonicas and many kinds of guitar, steel among them.

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  1980s

  Synths and the video age

  The 1980s pushed digital recording and synthesizers into the mainstream, with synth-pop and dance-pop alongside big rock. MTV launched in 1981, and by the middle of the decade the music video had become central to how pop was sold. That is one reason tributes to the decade lean so hard on costume, hair and choreography.

Drawn from English Wikipedia, read November 2026: the articles on rock and roll, Motown, the British Invasion, beach music, country music, the 1980s in music and the music video.