Songs
The record itself. Three minutes, a hook, a chorus you knew by the second time, from the Brill Building through Motown, disco, the eighties, Britpop and whatever is on the radio this year, heard as the thing people actually played.
Part of Pop
90 moments in this segment.
- - Aileen Mavourneen, ballad. The words by Mrs. S.C. hall, the music by A.D. Roche -…. Title: Aileen Mavourneen, ballad. The words by Mrs. S.C. hall, the music by A.D. Roche / on stone by A. Newsam; P. S. Duval lith. Abstract/medium: 1 print: lithograph; sheet… Photograph/scan dated 1840.
- - Mina - Che vale per me. A recording from the peak of Mina's imperial run as Italy's dominant pop voice.
- - Fairuz - Al Bostah. The Rahbani Brothers' comic bus song, one of Fairuz's most widely known recordings.
- - Kishore Kumar - Tum Bin Jaoon Kahan (Pyar Ka Mausam). R.D. Burman's score for Nasir Hussain's Pyar Ka Mausam, with Majrooh Sultanpuri's lyric.
- - Dalida sings Il venait d'avoir 18 ans on Domino. Dalida performs the song that became her biggest European hit of the decade on French television.
- - Fairuz - Konna Netlaka. A Rahbani Brothers composition from the Lebanese singer's most productive period.
- - Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody. The 1975 promo film often cited as the first true music video, made to avoid a Top of the Pops mime.
- - ABBA - Money, Money, Money. A cabaret-inflected single from Arrival, a number one across much of Europe.
- - ABBA - Fernando. ABBA's best-selling single, originally written in Swedish for Anni-Frid Lyngstad.
- - ABBA - Dancing Queen. ABBA's only US number one and the record that fixed Swedish pop as a permanent export industry.
- - Johnny Hallyday sings La mort d'Ophelie on French television. Hallyday performs the song on ORTF-successor television during his mid-1970s reinvention.
- - Donna Summer - I Feel Love (official visual). The Moroder-Bellotte production presented with the estate's official animated visual.
- - Bee Gees - Stayin' Alive. The Saturday Night Fever single that defined disco's commercial peak.
- - David Bowie - Be My Wife. A single from Low, the first of the Berlin albums, with its deliberately blank promotional film.
- - David Bowie - Heroes. Recorded at Hansa Studio by the Wall in Berlin with Brian Eno and Robert Fripp.
- - Kraftwerk - The Model. The Dusseldorf group's Die Mensch-Maschine track, which topped the UK chart when reissued four years later.
- - Fairuz - Wahdon. A Ziad Rahbani composition for Fairuz, marking her shift toward jazz-inflected arrangements.
- - Anita Mui - Debt of Heart. Mui's debut hit, the theme to TVB's drama, composed by Joseph Koo with lyrics by James Wong.
- - Anita Mui - Debt of Heart - the audio-only release. The studio recording that launched Cantopop's most versatile female star.
- - Michael Jackson - Billie Jean. The Thriller single whose Steve Barron video broke MTV's colour barrier.
- - Wham! - Club Tropicana. The single and video that fixed Wham!'s early image, filmed at the Pikes hotel in Ibiza.
- - Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want To Have Fun. Lauper's rewrite of Robert Hazard's song, from She's So Unusual.
- - Michael Jackson - Thriller. The fourteen-minute John Landis short film that turned the music video into a cultural event and helped make Thriller the best-selling album ever.
- - Prince and the Revolution - When Doves Cry. The lead single from Purple Rain, recorded without a bass part.
- - Wham! - Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. George Michael's Motown pastiche, the duo's first UK and US number one.
- - Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time. Lauper's first American number one and a standard covered ever since.
- - Wham! - Last Christmas. George Michael's self-produced Christmas single, one of the best-selling records in British chart history.
- - Cyndi Lauper - She Bop. A top-three hit whose subject matter put it on the PMRC's Filthy Fifteen list.
- - Modern Talking - You're My Heart, You're My Soul. The 1984 German single that became the biggest Euro-disco export of the decade, selling in the tens of millions across Europe and Asia.
- - Mariya Takeuchi - Plastic Love. The 1984 city-pop track that YouTube's recommendation algorithm turned into a global cult hit three decades later; this is the artist's official channel upload.
- - Anita Mui - Like Flowing Water. Kitaro's melody with Cheng Kwok-kong's lyric, the theme to the film Homecoming.
- - Madonna - Dress You Up. The fourth single from Like A Virgin, filmed live on the Virgin Tour.
- - Alan Tam - City Love Song. A track from Tam's album The Root of Love, the record that made him Hong Kong's biggest male star.
- - Lata Mangeshkar - Aisa Sama Na Hota (Zameen Aasman). R.D. Burman's composition with Anjaan's lyric, sung by Lata Mangeshkar for the film Zameen Aasmaan.
- - Scritti Politti perform Absolute on Top of the Pops. Green Gartside's group play their Cupid and Psyche-era single on BBC television.
- - Prince and the Revolution - Let's Go Crazy. The opening track of Purple Rain and Prince's second American number one.
- - Falco performs Rock Me Amadeus on Die aktuelle Schaubude. German television performance during the single's original chart run.
- - Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls. Stephen Hague's re-recording of the Bobby Orlando original, a number one on both sides of the Atlantic.
- - Whitney Houston - How Will I Know. The Narada Michael Walden production that put Houston in heavy MTV rotation.
- - a-ha - Take On Me. The Norwegian trio's pencil-sketch rotoscope video, one of the defining images of MTV-era pop.
- - Madonna - Into The Groove. Written for Desperately Seeking Susan, the record that made Madonna a dance-floor institution.
- - Whitney Houston - Saving All My Love For You. Houston's first American number one, from her debut album for Arista.
- - Madonna - Crazy For You. A ballad recorded for the film Vision Quest, and Madonna's second American number one.
- - Falco - Rock Me Amadeus. The Austrian rapper-singer's Mozart record, the only German-language single to top the US chart.
- - Live Aid 1985: the Wembley broadcast, part three. An hour of the original Live Aid broadcast, restored and released by the official channel for the concert's 40th anniversary in 2025.
- - Prince and the Revolution - Kiss. The 1986 single, stripped to guitar and drum machine, that showed how far Prince would strip pop down and still top the chart.
- - Anri - All Of You. An Anri composition with Yumi Yoshimoto's lyric, from her mid-1980s run.
- - Modern Talking - Brother Louie. The duo's biggest international hit and a defining Euro-disco record.
- - Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me). The lead single from Whitney, a number one in more than a dozen countries.
- - Pet Shop Boys - It's A Sin. The Derek Jarman-directed video, the first of several collaborations between the band and the film-maker.
- - Leslie Cheung performs Wu Xin Shui Mian at the Jade Solid Gold awards. Cheung performs the song that won him top honours at Hong Kong's biggest music awards.
- - Anita Mui - Song of the Setting Sun. Mui's Cantonese adaptation of Masahiko Kondo's Yuhi no Uta, a Cantopop standard.
- - Anri - I Can't Stop The Loneliness. A Kadomatsu-arranged version of Anri's hit, from the album The Anri.
- - Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit. The 1991 single whose MTV rotation displaced hair metal and pulled alternative rock into the pop mainstream.
- - Ace of Base - Wheel of Fortune. An early Swedish single from the Happy Nation sessions.
- - Ace of Base - Happy Nation. The title track of the album that became one of the best-selling debuts ever recorded.
- - SNAP! - Rhythm Is A Dancer. The Frankfurt production duo's Eurodance record, a number one across most of Europe.
- - SNAP! - Rhythm Is A Dancer - the audio-only release. The full-length album version of the Eurodance landmark.
- - Ace of Base - All That She Wants. The Swedish group's reggae-inflected breakthrough, which topped charts across Europe.
- - Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You. Houston's Dolly Parton cover from The Bodyguard, fourteen weeks at US number one and the best-selling single ever by a female artist.
- - Ace of Base - The Sign. The single that gave the group an American number one and named their US album.
- - Amr Diab - Nour El Ain. The 1996 Egyptian single that fused Arabic pop with Spanish guitar and became the biggest-selling Arabic record of its era.
- - Spice Girls - Wannabe. The 1996 debut single, shot in one take at the Midland Grand Hotel, that made the Spice Girls a global phenomenon.
- - Tarkan - Şımarık. The 1997 Turkish single, known worldwide as 'Kiss Kiss', that became one of the very few Turkish-language records to chart across Europe and Latin America.
- - Faye Wong - Red Bean. Faye Wong's 1998 ballad, written by Lin Xi, one of the most covered songs in Cantopop and Mandopop; official channel upload.
- - Britney Spears -...Baby One More Time. The 1998 debut single and schoolgirl video that opened the teen-pop era and made Spears the defining pop star of her generation.
- - Backstreet Boys - I Want It That Way. The 1999 single that defined the boy-band peak and remains the group's signature record.
- - Jay Chou - Nocturne. Official MV from the artist's own channel for the 2005 single that anchored his dominance of Mandopop.
- - Nancy Ajram - Ya Tabtab. Official video from the Lebanese singer who became the biggest female pop star in the Arab world in the 2000s.
- - A.R. Rahman - Jai Ho. The Slumdog Millionaire song that won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and made Rahman the most visible Indian composer worldwide.
- - Schallplattencover "Elektri-Grammophon" 28072018. Schallplattencover aus vergangenen Zeiten. Photograph/scan dated 2018.
- - How the 12-inch single made pop songs longer. Vox traces how disco DJs and the 12-inch single format stretched the length of the pop record in the 1970s.
- - The 1949 format war between the 45 and the LP. Techmoan tells how RCA's rivalry with Columbia over disc speeds settled the shape of the single and the album.
- - 2022 Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Music Division Chief Sue Vita present 2022 Gershwin Prize for Popular Song recipient Lionel Richie with a facsimile copy of sheet music from a 19th century Af… Photographed/dated 2022.
- - Feid 2022. Feid for the music video for his single "Castigo" Photograph dated 2022.
- - Stromae - Fils de joie. Official video from Multitude by the Belgian artist whose staging and songwriting made French-language pop a global concern again.
- - Beyoncé - TEXAS HOLD 'EM. The Cowboy Carter single that made Beyoncé the first Black woman to top Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart.
- - Dua Lipa - Training Season. Official video from Radical Optimism, from the artist who did more than any other to revive disco-facing pop in the 2020s.
- - Billie Eilish - BIRDS OF A FEATHER. The Hit Me Hard and Soft single that became one of the most-streamed songs of the 2020s.
- - Jack Antonoff on producing Sabrina Carpenter. Variety's Behind the Song has Antonoff walk through his collaboration on 'Please Please Please'.
- - Peak positions of Miley Cyrus' Flowers in charts. Peak positions for Miley Cyrus 's song Flowers in national official charts. Countries in which the song peaked at number 1 on the official chart. Countries in which the song pea… Photograph dated 2025.
- - Sabrina Carpenter - Manchild. Lead single from Man's Best Friend, from the artist whose 2024-25 run made her one of pop's biggest new headliners.
- - Zach Bryan headlines BST Hyde Park. Zach Bryan performing Pink Skies at his BST Hyde Park headline show on 29 June 2025, from the festival's official channel.
- - Chappell Roan - The Subway. Official 2025 single from the artist whose theatrical drag-inflected pop made her the breakout act of the mid-2020s.
- - A decade of Super Bowl halftime shows. The NFL's own compilation of ten consecutive halftime shows, useful as a record of how the format became pop's largest single stage.
- - Taylor Swift - The Fate of Ophelia. Lead single and video from The Life of a Showgirl, released at the height of Swift's commercial dominance.
- - Diljit Dosanjh - Ranjha ft. Sia and David Guetta. A 2026 Punjabi-language collaboration from the artist who became the first Punjabi singer to headline stadium tours in North America and Europe.
- - Jay Chou - I Do. Jay Chou's 2026 single on his official channel, showing the Mandopop star still releasing at scale twenty-five years into his career.
- - Faye Wong - The Lead (Zhujiao). A 2026 release from Faye Wong's official channel, a television drama theme, her first major new recording in years.
- - Olivia Rodrigo - stupid song. A 2026 official music video from Rodrigo, who went from Disney television to three Grammys in a single cycle.