When the Adults Pick the Hits
Sometimes, the tastes of grown ups dominate the top of the Hot 100. They're usually not remembered as great years for pop music. One of those times is right now.
Think Sixties music. What songs first come to mind?
A Viet-Nam era Creedence Clearwater Revival track?
A Jimmy Hendrix jam?
An Acid Rock anthem from The Jefferson Airplane?
What you probably didn’t hear in your head were Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Lawrence Welk, a Country star’s song about hobos, or a 1920s Vaudevillian revival blaming bad love on a church building. However, all of these artists had #1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 during the 1960s.
Creedence Clearwater Revival and Bob Dylan famously only reached #2.
That discrepancy is exactly what my favorite podcast recently explored: Chris Molanphy’s Hit Parade episode “Singing Nuns and Tambourines Edition” shows how the 1960s sounded very different than what younger generations think it did. (If you’re not listening to Hit Parade, seriously, stop reading Graphs About Songs and subscribe to it now.)
Two things struck me about those forgotten hits Molamphy spotlighted:
Their success came not from those tie-die Hippies, but from the grey-flannel guy in the Buick; Easy Listening, pre-rock Standards, instrumentals, and even comedy records.
Furthermore, these genres—reflecting the tastes of adults who came of age before Elvis—seemed particularly prevalent during the early 1960s. Molamphy called this era the “Prologue To the Sixties,” noting that what we now consider the 1960s didn’t begin until after the Kennedy Assassination and the British Invasion of late 1963.
Typically, high school teens and college-aged young adults determine which songs ultimately become hits. Quite often, their tastes eventually influence what older adults like—think of all the mons and daughters at Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Sometimes, they don’t. Back when Billie Eilish was briefly actually cool, 40-something parents of Gen Z teens reacted to “Bad Guy” by grumbling, “why is she whispering?”
However, there are songs that become huge hits primarily because people with mortgages like them. Sometimes, they’re from artists who grew up with their fans—think Chicago, Rod Stewart, Elton John, Bryan Adams, Maroon 5, or even Taylor Swift. Other times, they’re from artists who always appealed to adults: Dionne Warwick, Barry Manilow, Dan Fogelberg, Air Supply, Anita Baker, Michael Bolton, Céline Dion, Toni Braxton, Faith Hill, Uncle Kracker, Adele, and Lizzo all had multiple top 10 hits without ever having relevance in youth culture.
Are there years when the tastes of adults have more influence than other years? Is there a pattern to these periods? Most importantly, is there anything we can deduce about today’s hits by examining that pattern?
Spoiler alert: Yes, yes, and yes!
What is an “Adult” hit?
My criteria are objective and subjective: I examined every top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 from the chart’s inception in 1958 through 2024. I labeled a song as an “Adult” hit if:
it charted higher on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart than it did on the Hot 100, or
The song clearly had more cultural relevance among adults than it did among teens and young adults at the time it was a current.
That last part is critical: There are older songs today we now think of as staples of Adult Contemporary radio but were relevant to young people when they were new. I’ve only tagged songs as “Adult” hits if they primarily appealed to grown-ups when they were new hits. Rod Stewart’s "Tonight's the Night" is NOT “Adult” because it did have some youth relevance in 1976, while I can assure you no high school kid in 1989 was jamming to Rod Stewart’s "My Heart Can't Tell You No,” which is tagged “Adult”
With those benchmarks in mind, here’s the data.
The Four Eras of Adult Hits
This graph shows the percentage of “Adult” songs each year that reached the Hot 100’s Top 10, regardless of how long they stayed in the Top 10: The dashed line indicates 17%—the percentage of adult-oriented hits in a typical year throughout Hot 100 history.
This graph shows the percentage of “Adult” songs in the top 10 in a typical week in each year—meaning it does consider how many weeks each song was in the Top 10:
By both measures, four eras emerge as peak adult:
1962-1963: After original rock ‘n’ roll and right before the British invasion.
The reign of the original Rock ‘n’ Roll, immortalized in The Day The Music Died, was long over. The kids were surfing with The Beach Boys and Jan & Dean, digging early Motown classics from The Miracles and Martha & the Vandellas, and spawning FBI investigations with frat party favorite "Louie Louie" from The Kingsmen. By 1963, almost a third of the Top 10 hits were for their grown-up siblings and parents.
Crooners who ignored Rock ‘n’ Roll: Andy Williams, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gormé, Al Martino, and Johnny Mathis—all had hits. (They’re the artists your kids think are “Christmas” music.)
For the slightly hipper grown-ups, there was Folk (and Faux Folk) from Peter, Paul and Mary, The Kingston Trio, Trini Lopez, and The Rooftop Singers.
Country Crossovers were huge, from Jimmy Dean (yes, the sausage guy), Burl Ives, Ned Miller, Bill Anderson, and Bobby Bare. Even Ray Charles ditched Rock and went Country—even if Country stations refused to play him.
For folks who were high schoolers when Original Rock ‘n’ Roll emerged, Gene Pitney, Johnny Tillotson, Bobby Vinton, Lenny Welch, The Duprees, and Pat Boone kept that late Fifties back seat sound on their radios.
There were lots of instrumentals, from Mr. Acker Bilk, Bent Fabric, David Rose and His Orchestra, Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen, and Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass. You might not know the names, but you’ve heard the songs—even if ironically.
The most unusual song, however, was a French language ode to a saint from an actual Catholic nun: "Dominique" by The Singing Nun. It hit #1 immediately after President Kennedy’s assassination. Ask an older Boomer and they’ll tell you they pulled out the transistor radio they weren’t supposed to have at school to hear that shocking news.
Perhaps the nation needed 'Sister Smile' as she was known to help us grieve.
In 1964, The Beatles invaded, The Beach Boys and The Jersey Boys (a.k.a. The Four Seasons) reached their peak, and Motown was on fire with The Supremes. By 1965, Adults hits fell to just 13% of the year’s Top 10 hits.
1980-1981: After Classic Rock and Disco and right before New Wave
You can blame a Rock DJ on one hot Chicago night for creating the early 80s.
94.7 WDAI fired Steve Dahl when they dropped Rock for Disco. His new Rock employer, FM 98 The Loop, let Steve turn his bitterness into a promotional stunt: Bring a Disco record to the White Sox’ double-header and get in for 98-cents. We’ll blow up those Disco records between games, because “Disco Sucks.”
It made Dahl’s career—and wrecked Comiskey Park
In reality, Steve Dahl didn’t personally kill Disco. He simply got in front of the parade:
After over-exposing Disco to the point of rebellion, radio overreacted by gutting anything Black and funky. Even Rick James’ “Superfreak” only reached #16 on the Hot 100. George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog” or “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash didn’t have a prayer.
What was left for teens and young adults on the radio was Rock: Queen, Tom Petty, Pink Floyd, The Police, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, and Journey had songs from this era that remain Classic Rock regulars. But almost half of the hits on Top 40 radio were for the adults:
The Urban Cowboy Country fad: Kenny Rogers, Pure Prairie League, Johnny Lee, Eddie Rabbitt, Dolly Parton, Juice Newton, The Oak Ridge Boys, and Ronnie Milsap
Lingering 70s Adult Hit-makers: Captain & Tennille, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow, and Neil Diamond
Aging Boomer Icons, Smokey Robinson, The Spinners, Diana Ross, Paul Simon , George Harrison, and John Lennon
Artists made for adults, including Little River Band, Cliff Richard, Rupert Holmes, Kim Carnes, and the intelligent reflective folksy Dan Fogelberg
Yacht Rock adjacent Christopher Cross, Gino Vannelli , Grover Washington Jr., and Robbie Dupree, who stole that Doobie Bounce verbatim.
Finally, there’s the group that is a category, Air Supply. From 1980 to 1983, they had eight top 10 hits that cumulatively spent over a year in the Top 10.
Beginning in 1982, British New Wave acts such as The Human League, Soft Cell, and (sort of British) Men at Work were gaining a fan base on MTV and starting to take over the radio. By 1983, Culture Club and Duran Duran joined them, while Michael Jackson and Price became legends. By then, only 13% of Top 10 hits were for adults.
2000: After Grunge and Gangster Rap, but before Crunk
We’d had enough of Slackers’ whining. Jeremy speaking in class and inner-city gangster life was too much reality. By the late 1990s, Quirk replaced Grunge, Twerk replaced Gangster Rap, and younger teens re-embraced Boy Bands, Girl Groups, and actually enjoying their lives.
The year 2000 had some groundbreaking songs for teens and young adults: Eminem’s "The Real Slim Shady" sounded like nothing else. Nelly’s "Country Grammar (Hot Shit)" hinted at mainstream Hip Hop’s direction, as did Destiny's Child’s "Say My Name" for R&B. Teen artists were still recording future classics, such as Britney Spears’ "Oops!... I Did It Again"
But three out of ten songs in the Top 10 were for the grown-ups:
Aging Adult Contemporary Staples: Whitney Houston, Céline Dion, Toni Braxton, and even Kenny G scored Top 10 hits in 2000
Teen Bands gone Soccer Mom: The Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync, along with Marc Anthony and Enrique Iglesias who were part of a mini-wave of Latin artists, all released soft ballads that appealed more to moms than to teens.
Country Crossover. While it wasn’t another Urban Cowboy fad, Lonestar and Faith Hill both had massive hits on the Pop charts. Started by Shania Twain in the late ‘90s, it was the first time Country returned to the top 10 since Nashville retreated into New Traditionalism during Reagon’s second term.
The biggest sound geared towards adults were Rock songs that embraced the aesthetics of 90s Alternative superficially but had none of the lyrical merit or musical innovation. Artists like Matchbox 20, Vertical Horizon, and later Nickelback were designed to appeal to Xers who came of age with Grunge, but had outgrown the angst.
No song in 2000 exemplified this sub-genre more than Creed’s "With Arms Wide Open", It hit #1 and stayed in the Top 10 for 18 weeks. But Creed is as far from Nirvana as Florida is from Seattle.
As music critic Tom Breihan wrote,
After the wave of grunge excitement died down, the American public still evidently had a hunger for a version of stadium rock that scratched some of those same itches. If a band had churning riffs and a deep-voiced bellower out front, that band could get airplay.
After we’d finally forgotten about that Y2K panic, Outkast, Usher, Ja Rule, Ludacris, and 50 Cent evolved Hip Hop with Crunk for the club. Meanwhile, Millennial teens embraced an emo version of Rock, featuring My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy, and Panic! at the Disco.
The decade would ultimately be the last one that Rock would be a genre of hit music. As I noted in Rock is Dead. Long Live Rock, 2009 was the last year a Rock title would regularly appear in the Hot 100’s Top 10. Unceremoniously, the Rock era ended with Shinedown’s “Second Chance”.
2023-2024: After EDM and Trap, but before….?
During the previous decade, EDM became mainstream Pop and almost killed Hip Hop hits. Then, Trap brought back Hip Hop.
This decade hasn’t seen such innovation. Sure, today’s teens appreciate Kendrick Lamar’s astuteness. Chappell Roan’s music might sound nostalgic, but her values aren’t looking back. However, the most enduring hits lately are mundane:
So much Country: Luke Combs remaking an 80s classic, Jason Aldean and Oliver Anthony Music making political statements, Shaboozey’s ode to a bar, Bailey Zimmerman, and so much Morgan Wallen. (While Wallen’s fan base is young by Country standards, it’s typically adults in their late 20s, not high schoolers and college students.)
Aging Millennial Pop Stars: Big artists from the early 2010s aged with their original fans: Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars tendering an old-school ballad, Hozier comparing you unfavorably to aged whiskey, and Miley Cyrus thriving after divorce. And while many teens attended the Eras tour, Taylor Swift’s biggest hits favored their moms’ tastes.
Then there’s Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control.” It’s now the longest-running Top 10 hit in history, with 60 weeks and counting. My wife loves Teddy Swims. My 17-year-old Kendrick Lamar fan has never even heard of Teddy Swims. Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” which is also still in the Top 10, similarly appeals to adults.
If you examined the graph above closely, you may have noticed that in 2024, 30% of the songs that reached the top 10 were Adult-oriented hits, while 46% of the songs in the top 10 during a typical week in 2024 were adult hits.
That’s not uncommon for Adult years, but why was this discrepancy so much wider last year than it was in other :adult-oriented chart years?
You can mostly blame streaming:
On the one hand, streaming amplifies when an artists’ fans binge listen to a new track. This phenomenon means there are a lot of songs that are only in the top 10 for one week. Those songs are not the ones that appeal primarily to adults. (I examined these “one and done” hits in Does The #1 Song Even Matter Anymore).
Examine the blue bars below from 2020 through 2024: Over 40% of all top 10 hits each year are only in the Top 10 for one week. Those songs typically aren’t the ones grown folks love.
On the other hand, since streaming shows whenever someone plays a song, those songs that fans keep playing month after month now stay in the top 10 month after month. (I explained this phenomenon in Do You Have To Let It Linger). These songs that people keep streaming and radio keeps playing forever are more likely to be grown-ups’ favorites.
The maroon bars below show the percentage of songs in the top 10 in a typical wee that were in the top 10 for over half a year.
Consider the difference in weekly Spotify streaming between 21 Saveage’s “redrun,” a song appealing to younger listeners, compared to Teddy Swims’ aforementioned “Lose Control.” 21 Savage peaked higher, but fell off the Spotfy 200 after 33 weeks. Teddy Swims peaked lower, but is still on the Spotify 200 after 78 weeks and counting.
We don’t yet know what will end this wave of Adult hits. However, there’s a clear pattern that lets us know something new is coming.
The Generation That Picks the Hits
Why do adults suddenly rule the charts for a year or two about once every 20 years? It all makes sense when you examine which generation is picking those hits.
As I note in The Generational Music Theorem, I postulate that Pop music has regularly occurring evolution: The style of music that’s popular doesn’t fundamentally change (As 1955 moved Pop from Jazz to Rock ‘n’ Roll), but the period does bring new excitement to pop music.
An Evolution typically begins when the oldest members of a younger generation turn 21. The older generation still makes the hits, but the younger generation now picks them.
Take a second look at the Adult Years above:
Note what happened immediately thereafter:
The British Invasion Evolution: In 1964, the first wave of Boomers replaced the Silent Generation. With them, the Beatles were in and Elvis was out.
·The MTV Evolution: Around 1982, Generation X replaced aging Boomers, replacing Yacht Rock with New Wave, Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna.
·The Crunk Evolution: In the early 2000s, Millennials replaced Xers and replaced the coasts with Atlanta as the center of Hip Hop. The Club replaced the streets.
How Generation Z will Soon End this Adult Era
In every case, Peak Adult immediately precedes an Evolution. Why? Because a now aging generation who are now all adults are still in control of which songs become hits. The upcoming generation has not quite reached the critical mass necessary to control the big hits.
In 2025, a new generation is on the cusp of crossing that 21-year-old threshold. We don’t know exactly how they’ll evolve the style of songs that top the charts. But we have clues, based on their traits as a generation, as well as the songs they’re already streaming on Spotify.
Why Country and Adult Songs Peak Together
Common to all the “adult” chart eras is a peak in Country songs crossing over to the pop-oriented Hot 100 chart. Why does Country and adult-oriented songs peak together?
Country has always attracted a much wider age range of fans than other Contemporary genres. Sure, plenty of teens grow up with Country, but even in rural America, it’s not the dominant sound of youth culture. (Don’t take my word for it—Listen to Barbara Mandrell and George Jones):
Unlike Hip Hop or Rock or even Big Band in its day, there’s no period of Country music that adults over 40 outright reject. Sure, they’ll gripe that today’s country isn’t “real” country. But you can bet the boots you bought in Brentwood that in 2049, some newly minted AARP member will grumble, “why don’t they make real Country anymore like Morgan Wallen?”
If this historical pattern repeats, the Hot 100 will soon see Morgan Wallen and Luke Bryan exit the top 10, replaced by Generation Z’s new favorites, while Country retreats to its core fan base.
The 2020s won’t sound like the 2020s
Music critics and casual fans alike most eagerly recall the cutting-edge music that was popular among older teens and college kids. After all, that music typically shapes our identity and influences what’s popular in the future.
It’s why CCR is still among today’s most streamed artists, but The Singing Nun is a trivia stumper.
It’s why you’ll never hear Dan Fogelberg on the radio anymore, but “Come On Eileen” is probably on the radio right now.
When today’s music becomes nostalgia, you’re a whole lot more likely to hear Kendrick Lamar than Benson Boone. However, the music that ultimately defines our time still awaits us in the decades’ second half.
Data sources for this post:
The Billboard Hot 100: https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100
Wikipedia’s Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 singles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_top-ten_singles
Opened my eyes to this! Thanks for this breakdown... Looking forward to what's around the corner. I never paid much attention to the history as a 25y.o. EDM/Anime music/Kendrik fan.