With the recent passing of the great Chuck Berry, I've been hearing the term rock and roll being used a bit more than usual in the past few days, not only because of Berry's pivotal role in the early days of rock and roll but because of his classic song "Rock and Roll Music." Today, also marks the anniversary of Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" topping the Billboard pop charts in 1982. With this in mind, I decided to conduct a search of rock and roll in the lyrics of the songs populating Billboard's year-end Top Ten charts (1951-2016).

In all the phrase occurs 34 times in 9 of the 660 songs of the collection. It appears in songs in every decade of the collection, except for the 1960s and 1990s, and is especially pervasive in the early 1980s, where it appears in three songs: "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" (1980); "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" (1980); and the aforementioned "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" (1982). The other songs the phrase appears in are "The Rock and Roll Waltz" (1956); "Maggie May" (1971); "American Pie" (1972); "Play that Funky Music" (1976); "Boom Boom Pow" (2009); and "Party Rock Anthem" (2011).

Among the many tunes that didn't necessarily chart but include the phrase rock and roll, here are a few classics:

© 2007 WMG. Rock And Roll performed live at Knebworth 1979. www.ledzeppelin.com http://www.ledzeppelin.com/show/august-4-1979 http://www.ledzeppelin.com/ http://www.facebook.com/ledzeppelin http://www.twitter.com/ledzeppelin

TOP POP, 1978

1969 Live at Grande Ballroom Detroit !!!! bob rigg - don hartman - gordy garris - dick wagner.......!!!

Classic

Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black) Recorded on the "Ragged Glory" tour 1991.

Got any other favorite tunes with the phrase rock and roll in them? Let me know in the comments section below.

RSS Block

Select a Blog Page to create an RSS feed link. Learn more

Donate