For many years during the 50s and 60s the song played last in each hour on Top-40 radio was an instrumental. These stations did not have their own news departments, so news reports at the top of the hour came from national broadcasters (e.g., the Mutual Broadcasting Network). It was far too much trouble to time the song prior to the news handoff to end precisely at 59:59 and awkward to truncate a vocal performance before the song’s end. The solution was to end the hour with an instrumental, allowing the DJ to talk over the song (‘… that does it from me, but Johnny Dark will take over, right after the news’) and for the engineer to fade it out as the news report began.
Aren’t you neglecting one small detail? Popular music from the 1920s through the 1940s was primarily DANCE music. One doesn’t need a vocalist to dance. A reason Big Bands bothered employing a vocalist was to give the people dancing a rest.
Many genres of contemporary electronic music — like Drum ‘n’ Bass, IDM, Dubstep, J-Core, Synthwave, and Glitch — are dominated by instrumental tracks, some to an almost overwhelming degree. Maybe some of these artists and their productions don’t fit in the “popular music” category, especially in the context of Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, etc. Perhaps the paucity of vocal performances is part of the reason. But collectively this music does have plenty of fans around the world; I’ve been to crowded Synthwave dance parties in Boston, and D’n’B ones in Vienna and Budapest, in the last year alone. So there is still plenty of appreciation for instrumental performances among today’s music enthusiasts, and not only in established styles like Classical and Jazz.
Instrumental hits. They come few and far between and I'm hard pressed to think of anything recent. Star Wars music from 1977, Vangelis's Chariots Of Fire from the 80s. Love Unlimited Orchestra from the 70s. I just googled the last number one instrumental. It was “Harlem Shake” by Baauer in 2013.
Not that there aren't those who try. Shameless plug... I recorded an album in 2020 with Grant Calvin Weston, drummer for Ornette Coleman, drummer for John Medeski, student of Billy Cobham, drummer for Vernon Reid of Living Colour, drummer of serious power grooves. But trying to get any airplay or traction without backing? Tough indeed. One NPR station played a track or two, and a wee bit of internet play but really nothing.
There were two tracks... what the heck I'll share (on Band Camp... free to stream)
Track 10) WARP, a synth rock with a serious, unrelenting groove
Track 2) TAURMENI, an ode to ELP organ rock
I was reading about Herb Alpert. The only musician to ever have an instrumental Number One (Rise) and a Number One vocal song (This Guy's In Love With You). And just gleaned this... his instrumental albums outsold the Beatles in 1966 with 13M albums sold. Instrumental Music!
Let's hope there's another golden age of instrumental hits!
Rick Beato just introduced me to a gorgeous Genesis tune called "Ripples" that has long stretches of instrumental music (in that song's case guitar and piano). You can find that kind of thing in a lot of 70's and 80's music (my favorite eras) and I'm sad to see it decline. Nothing releases endorphins for me better than a beautiful instrumental moment.
This is quite interesting, especially around the little known strike, but Im not sure about the conclusion. As others mentioned there were a lot of novelty hit instrumentals (telstar etc) in the 60s as well as disco instrumentals in the 70s, not to mention all the krautrock stuff like tangerine dream, Eno, etc. in the 80s you had the entire mostly instrumental genre of techno born as well as more novelty hits like herbie hancock’s Rockit. Techno evolved into a million genres over the next 3 decades. You also had the popular instrumental genre in the 90s of post rock (tortoise, godspeed). And even now you have an enormous bloom of ambient music and music made on modular synthesizers. Not hits maybe but very popular among young people. So really instrumental music has never gone away and is alive and well, though obviously doesnt have the reach of the top pop makers but that also has to do with cult of celebrity/personality. If we’re talking about Virtuosos thats a different thing and that just isnt really what pop music listeners are looking for. No one has really cared about that since, like, eric clapton was god and not a cranky racist. I would actually argue that the closest thing to a virtuoso would be the club DJ, which also incidentally creates mostly instrumental remixes.
It's not just entire instrumental tunes--it's instrumental intros, breaks, solos, etc. The idea of a melodic instrumental section of *any* length has really dropped out of pop music these days.
From the listener perspective, I blame the through-line from the Walkman to Spotify. From the producer perspective, I blame the through-line from multi-track reel to reel studios to studio-in-a-box computer-based audio production suites. Recording and creating music is easier now than it's ever been, resulting in too many music creators chasing listeners for whom the experience of listening to music is relegated to the background of whatever they're doing at the moment. Hard to stand out in that context. I remember in the early aughts seeing a wonderful solo performance by Jane Siberry in a small club. At the end, she said she was backing away from making records because there was, in her words, too much music out in the world. With music production now in the hands of anyone with a laptop or tablet, and music consumption overtaken by the predominance of online streaming services, this is more true than ever before.
Not sure how you can write and article that involves today's "music" and not allow for the influence of studio trickery. Singers who couldn't carry a tune in gunny sack are recording Top 10 songs like they were going out of style. The whole thing has become a running joke. And don't even get me going on the hutzpah it takes to call rap music, music. While I suspect the the technology exists to "fix" instrumental gaffes, the performers who occasionally "clam up," are still highly skilled musicians. Not so the singers.
There are other reasons contributing to the decline . The decline of parlor music after radio ,including the encouraging audience for kids not gifted with an improvable voice but able to work at an instrument . These kids looked for instrument hero’s . Then , there was the decline in household income during the Great Depression . Post WWII saw a great decline in public school music education and school performance opportunities resulting from baby boom facility overcrowding and school tax support opposition . The Change in the allowable number of radio stations owned , consolidated song choice to far fewer industry managers . The music industry including performance venues became more consolidated and the economic value of having fewer musicians along with higher ticket prices became more dominant . Recall how the Michael Jackson practice of selling tickets in blocks of eight or more ate up household entertainment budgets . The industry learned to use the top acts to push out the lower end of the venue business. The operative value is the efficient passing of our earned income to the astoundingly wealthy .
Tommy Emmanuel and Leo Kottke confound the question… Both guitarists, both *brilliant* instrumentalists. Neither spends much time singing (Kottke once, accurately, said his vocals sounded like “geese farts on a muggy day.)
Great article - thanks. Whenever I hear, e.g., “Green Onions” I think, damn, why doesn’t anybody do this anymore?
For many years during the 50s and 60s the song played last in each hour on Top-40 radio was an instrumental. These stations did not have their own news departments, so news reports at the top of the hour came from national broadcasters (e.g., the Mutual Broadcasting Network). It was far too much trouble to time the song prior to the news handoff to end precisely at 59:59 and awkward to truncate a vocal performance before the song’s end. The solution was to end the hour with an instrumental, allowing the DJ to talk over the song (‘… that does it from me, but Johnny Dark will take over, right after the news’) and for the engineer to fade it out as the news report began.
Aren’t you neglecting one small detail? Popular music from the 1920s through the 1940s was primarily DANCE music. One doesn’t need a vocalist to dance. A reason Big Bands bothered employing a vocalist was to give the people dancing a rest.
Many genres of contemporary electronic music — like Drum ‘n’ Bass, IDM, Dubstep, J-Core, Synthwave, and Glitch — are dominated by instrumental tracks, some to an almost overwhelming degree. Maybe some of these artists and their productions don’t fit in the “popular music” category, especially in the context of Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, etc. Perhaps the paucity of vocal performances is part of the reason. But collectively this music does have plenty of fans around the world; I’ve been to crowded Synthwave dance parties in Boston, and D’n’B ones in Vienna and Budapest, in the last year alone. So there is still plenty of appreciation for instrumental performances among today’s music enthusiasts, and not only in established styles like Classical and Jazz.
Instrumental hits. They come few and far between and I'm hard pressed to think of anything recent. Star Wars music from 1977, Vangelis's Chariots Of Fire from the 80s. Love Unlimited Orchestra from the 70s. I just googled the last number one instrumental. It was “Harlem Shake” by Baauer in 2013.
Not that there aren't those who try. Shameless plug... I recorded an album in 2020 with Grant Calvin Weston, drummer for Ornette Coleman, drummer for John Medeski, student of Billy Cobham, drummer for Vernon Reid of Living Colour, drummer of serious power grooves. But trying to get any airplay or traction without backing? Tough indeed. One NPR station played a track or two, and a wee bit of internet play but really nothing.
There were two tracks... what the heck I'll share (on Band Camp... free to stream)
https://ralphdiekemper.bandcamp.com/album/collaborations
Track 10) WARP, a synth rock with a serious, unrelenting groove
Track 2) TAURMENI, an ode to ELP organ rock
I was reading about Herb Alpert. The only musician to ever have an instrumental Number One (Rise) and a Number One vocal song (This Guy's In Love With You). And just gleaned this... his instrumental albums outsold the Beatles in 1966 with 13M albums sold. Instrumental Music!
Let's hope there's another golden age of instrumental hits!
Rick Beato just introduced me to a gorgeous Genesis tune called "Ripples" that has long stretches of instrumental music (in that song's case guitar and piano). You can find that kind of thing in a lot of 70's and 80's music (my favorite eras) and I'm sad to see it decline. Nothing releases endorphins for me better than a beautiful instrumental moment.
This is quite interesting, especially around the little known strike, but Im not sure about the conclusion. As others mentioned there were a lot of novelty hit instrumentals (telstar etc) in the 60s as well as disco instrumentals in the 70s, not to mention all the krautrock stuff like tangerine dream, Eno, etc. in the 80s you had the entire mostly instrumental genre of techno born as well as more novelty hits like herbie hancock’s Rockit. Techno evolved into a million genres over the next 3 decades. You also had the popular instrumental genre in the 90s of post rock (tortoise, godspeed). And even now you have an enormous bloom of ambient music and music made on modular synthesizers. Not hits maybe but very popular among young people. So really instrumental music has never gone away and is alive and well, though obviously doesnt have the reach of the top pop makers but that also has to do with cult of celebrity/personality. If we’re talking about Virtuosos thats a different thing and that just isnt really what pop music listeners are looking for. No one has really cared about that since, like, eric clapton was god and not a cranky racist. I would actually argue that the closest thing to a virtuoso would be the club DJ, which also incidentally creates mostly instrumental remixes.
It's not just entire instrumental tunes--it's instrumental intros, breaks, solos, etc. The idea of a melodic instrumental section of *any* length has really dropped out of pop music these days.
One might consider Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull (flute and voice) a transitional figure; or just an anomaly.
No mention of surf music?
This form of Middle Eastern tinged instrumental pop music was poised to break into the big time in the early 60s.
One of my favorite historical what if’s is what would have evolved into if the Beatles hadn’t shown up.
From the listener perspective, I blame the through-line from the Walkman to Spotify. From the producer perspective, I blame the through-line from multi-track reel to reel studios to studio-in-a-box computer-based audio production suites. Recording and creating music is easier now than it's ever been, resulting in too many music creators chasing listeners for whom the experience of listening to music is relegated to the background of whatever they're doing at the moment. Hard to stand out in that context. I remember in the early aughts seeing a wonderful solo performance by Jane Siberry in a small club. At the end, she said she was backing away from making records because there was, in her words, too much music out in the world. With music production now in the hands of anyone with a laptop or tablet, and music consumption overtaken by the predominance of online streaming services, this is more true than ever before.
Not sure how you can write and article that involves today's "music" and not allow for the influence of studio trickery. Singers who couldn't carry a tune in gunny sack are recording Top 10 songs like they were going out of style. The whole thing has become a running joke. And don't even get me going on the hutzpah it takes to call rap music, music. While I suspect the the technology exists to "fix" instrumental gaffes, the performers who occasionally "clam up," are still highly skilled musicians. Not so the singers.
There are other reasons contributing to the decline . The decline of parlor music after radio ,including the encouraging audience for kids not gifted with an improvable voice but able to work at an instrument . These kids looked for instrument hero’s . Then , there was the decline in household income during the Great Depression . Post WWII saw a great decline in public school music education and school performance opportunities resulting from baby boom facility overcrowding and school tax support opposition . The Change in the allowable number of radio stations owned , consolidated song choice to far fewer industry managers . The music industry including performance venues became more consolidated and the economic value of having fewer musicians along with higher ticket prices became more dominant . Recall how the Michael Jackson practice of selling tickets in blocks of eight or more ate up household entertainment budgets . The industry learned to use the top acts to push out the lower end of the venue business. The operative value is the efficient passing of our earned income to the astoundingly wealthy .
Brian Eno, Chemical Brothers, Groove Armada, Kruder and Dorfmeister
Tommy Emmanuel and Leo Kottke confound the question… Both guitarists, both *brilliant* instrumentalists. Neither spends much time singing (Kottke once, accurately, said his vocals sounded like “geese farts on a muggy day.)
The last non-singing mega hit I remember was Samba Pa Ti!