C Recap

And so the "C" artists are all in place. Being a large entry, there are some quite obvious trends that took place in the 90's. One of them was songs that had no commercial single, but charted based on airplay. Prior to the mid 90's, if a song was not available as a retail single, it was not eligible for the charts. Too many songs became too big from airplay alone to be ignored and the chart structure was changed. It is clear however, that by looking at how high some songs charted with airplay alone, there would have been a greater impact if the label did release a single. Acts like The Counting Crows, Sheryl Crow and The Cranberries would surely have seen their songs make a greater impression. The change affacted two markets more then any other. Those were the Alternative and Country markets. With these markets, the push was for an album full of commercially recognized hits. Country stars Terri Clark and Kenny Chesney scored huge album sales in their market because customers were forced to buy the whole album rather then just the single. To keep the customers buying the album, more and more songs were released to radio. With the Country and Alternative songs, they were able to crossover into the pop charts with some of the songs.

Dance music makes a big impression in this most recent entry. Culture Beat, C & C Music factory, Corona and Corina scored huge dance hits. While these acts, with the exception of C & C, only scored one hit in the States, they all had mutiple hits overseas. The hits we were left with in the States were very defining of the 90's. "Mr. Vain" for example, is a truly 90's song. Freestyle dance began to fade from the music scene as the Cover Girls ended their chart run with two ballads in the early 90's. Cinderella saw their last hit. Like many 80's hair bands, they could not adapt to the changing image of rock in the 90's.

Mariah Carey enters with the letter "C." Her career started out strong in 1990 with "Vision of Love," and continues to remain strong in present day. Sheryl Crow started her Grammy winning carreer in the 90's and like Carey, holds a solid position in the current music scene. Phil Collins, an 80's staple, faded from the charts in the mid-portion of the decade. Eric Clapton made a brief appearance on the music charts, but like Collins, did not continue with hits. Another 70's group that saw minor hits in the 90's was Chicago.

Exclusive to the 90's? Well, we saw a lot of them here. Color Me Badd, Paula Cole and Coolio were some of the acts unique to the decade. And the one hit wonders? Where to start! Jane Child, Tyler Collins, Edwyn Collins, Cypress Hill, Marc Cohn, Tom Cochran. . . The list goes on.

I have also started tagging the movies a song may have been from. this should make it easy to take a look at the biggest soundtracks. Another change I have started going forward is making the #1 hits bold.

I hope that you are enjoying the trip back.