Curated playlist
American styles of music
- Punk rapPunk rap fuses punk rock with hip-hop, plus trap, heavy metal and lo-fi. Its songs are short and distorted.
- Rage (music genre)The song "Miss the Rage" turned a word for moshing into a genre name. Trippie Redd longed for mosh pits in lockdown.
- House musicFrankie Knuckles began splicing records because the music ran out before dancers wanted to stop.
- Neo soulNeo soul began as a marketing label, and many of its artists disliked it.
- Soul musicSoul music blended church gospel with dance-floor rhythm and blues. It began in African-American communities.
- Nu metalThree nu metal albums came out on August 18, 1998. Billboard later called it the "Biggest Day in Nu-Metal History".
- Swing musicSwing music took off when young dancers rushed the floor at the Palomar Ballroom in 1935.
- Cloud rapCloud rap got its name from a castle in the clouds. Lil B described the image in a 2009 interview.
- DiscoA loud drum sound in disco began as a recording mistake. Earl Young's hi-hat was pressed too loud on a 1975 song.
- JazzJazz got its name from a wobbly baseball pitch in 1912. A minor league pitcher described his "jazz ball" in print.
- Hip houseThe Beatmasters answered a rival's hip house claim with a song. Tyree Cooper had called his 1988 record the first.
- Rap metalIn 1987, Anthrax became one of the earliest bands to deliberately mix hip hop and heavy metal.
- Rock musicThe Beatles' first Ed Sullivan Show appearance in 1964 drew an estimated 73 million viewers.
- EmoAt Rites of Spring shows in the mid-1980s, audience members sometimes wept.
- Hip-hopHip-hop began at a back-to-school party in a Bronx recreation room.
- New wave musicMTV filled its early hours with British new wave because most American hits had no videos.
- VaporwaveVaporwave took its name from software that was announced and never shipped.
- Contemporary R&BIn 2004, all twelve Billboard Hot 100 number-one songs came from African-American artists.
- FunkJames Brown told his band to hit the first beat hardest. Funk began in African-American communities in the mid-1960s.
- Trap musicTrap music is named after a building where drug deals happen. The Atlanta sound later reached pop charts worldwide.
- Heavy metal musicBlack Sabbath's heavy sound owes something to a guitarist's work accident. Tony Iommi lost the ends of two fingers.
- Industrial musicIndustrial music has a reputation for noise, and in January 1984 that reputation turned physical. The German group Einstürzende Neubauten performed a Concerto for Voice and Machinery at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. They drilled…
- Country musicThe steel guitar in country music traces back to Hawaii, not Appalachia. Country's sound was a braid of many traditions.
- Rock and rollBefore it named a music genre, "rock and roll" described a ship's motion on the ocean.
- Rhythm and bluesRhythm and blues was invented as a new name to replace "race music". Billboard's Jerry Wexler had it ready by 1948.
- Tin Pan AlleySong pluggers at Tin Pan Alley sang one tune thirty times a night to crowds of twenty thousand.