Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

by Derek Thompson

Second, the rise of rock shook American culture in a decade otherwise known for its languid complacency. It’s well known that white bands mainstreamed a genre created by black musicians. But the creative exploitation of black artists was even more explicit than that: The most popular songs of the 1950s were often white covers of melodies originally performed by black artists, like “Sincerely” by the McGuire Sisters (originally by the Moonglows) and “Ko Ko Mo” by Perry Como (originally by Gene & Eunice). In 1955, Billboard finally declared “the emergence of the Negro as a pop artist in the disk field”; but, like Billboard’s 1991 consecration of hip-hop, this was a rather tardy acknowledgment of something that had been true for a decade or more. As the rock-and-roll pantheon became crowded with Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Holly, critics still referred to it as “jungle music.” The magazine True Strange featured Haley on a 1957 cover with an illustration of several naked African tribesman dancing and beating drums. This was not just adults pooh-poohing loud music and performative hip gyrations. The music itself was an omen that white America was losing its cultural monopoly, and even suburban families would be forced to confront elements of a black culture that many did not want to acknowledge.