For music from an individual year in the 1940s, go to 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49

In the developed world, swing, big band, jazz, Latin and country music dominated and defined the popular music of the 1940s. After World War II, the big band sounds of the earlier part of the decade had been gradually replaced by crooners and vocal pop.

The U.S. and North America

Pop

Ragtime, a genre that first became popular in the 1890s, was popular through about the 1940s. After its best-known exponent, Scott Joplin, died in 1917, the genre faded. As the 1920s unfolded, jazz rapidly took over as the dominant form of popular music in the United States.

In addition, a new form of popular music, crooning, emerged during the early 1930s. Technology played a large part in the development of this style, as electronic sound recording had emerged near the end of the 1920s and replaced the earlier acoustic recording. While singers such as Al Jolson and Billy Murray had recorded songs by yelling into a Victrola horn, as this was the only way to get audible sound with acoustic recording, the new electronic equipment allowed for a softer, more intimate style of singing. Many of the older singers such as Jolson and Murray consequently fell out of favor during the 1930s with changing tastes (although Al Jolson managed a successful career comeback after World War II).

Bing Crosby was the leading figure of the crooner sound as well as its most iconic, defining artist. By the 1940s, he was an entertainment superstar who mastered all of the major media formats of the day, movies, radio, and recorded music. Other popular singers of the day included Cab Calloway and Eddie Cantor.

Bandleaders such as the Dorsey Brothers often helped launch the careers of vocalists who went on to gain popularity as solo artists, such as Frank Sinatra, who rose to fame as a singer during this time. Sinatra's vast appeal to the "bobby soxers" revealed a whole new audience for popular music, which had generally appealed mainly to adults up to that time, making Sinatra the first teen idol. Sinatra's music mostly attracted young girls to his concerts. This image of a teen idol would also be seen with future artists such as Elvis Presley and The Beatles. Sinatra's massive popularity was also one of the reasons why the big band music declined in popularity; major record companies were looking for crooners and pop singers to attract a youth audience due to his success. Frank Sinatra would go on to become one of the most successful artists of the 1940s and one of the best selling music artists of all time. Sinatra remained relevant through the 1950s and 60s, even with rock music being the dominant form of music in his later years. In the later decades, Sinatra's music would be mostly aimed at an older adult audience. Sinatra remains one of the most respected and critically acclaimed music artists of all time.

Big band swing could variably be an instrumental style or accompany a vocalist. In comparison to its loud, brash, rhythmic sound stood the "sweet" bands which played a softer, more melodic style. The most notable of these, in no small part thanks to a long postwar TV career, was the band of Lawrence Welk. Also noteworthy were performances on the radio by the Shep Fields Rippling Rhythm Orchestra and by Guy Lombardo's Royal Canadian Orchestra, which performed a sweet jazz rendition of "Ault Lang Syne" for decades on both radio and television.The Big Bands - 4th Edition George T. Simon. Schirmer Trade Books, London, 2012 "Shep Fields Biography" on Books.google.comEncyclopedia of Recorded Sound. Hoffman, Fred. 2004 Shep Fields at the Empire Room of the Palmer House Hotel on Google BooksAmerica's Music Makers: Big bands and Ballrooms 1912-2011 Jack Behrens.AuthorHouse, Indiana, 2010 p. 95 Shep Fields society band broadcasting on radio from the Palmer House on Books.Google.com Shep Fields Obituary - United Press International Feb. 23, 1981 on UPI.com/Archive

While swing bands could be found in most major cities during the 1930s–1940s, the most popular and famous were the bands of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw, which had national followings and sold huge numbers. World War II brought an end to big band swing as many musicians were conscripted into the armed forces and travel restrictions made it hard for bands to tour. In 1944, Glenn Miller was killed when his plane crashed into the English Channel en route to a USO show in France. His death is widely considered to mark the close of the swing era.

After the war, a combination of factors such as changing demographics and rapid inflation made large bands unprofitable, so that popular music in the US came to be dominated instead by traditional pop and crooners, as well as bebop and jump blues.

Best selling records

Before the Hot100 was implemented in 1958, Billboard magazine measured a record's performance with three charts, "Best-Selling Popular Retail Records", "Records Most Played By Disk Jockeys" and 'Most-Played Juke Box Records': However, since the latter two charts were not implemented until mid-decade, we focus on 'Best-Selling Retail Records of the 1940s.' Since it consisted of ten positions for most of the decade, only ten per week were recognized. Each week fifteen points were awarded to the number one record, then nine points for number two, eight points for number three, and so on, with one point for number ten. This system balances songs that reach the highest positions, as well as those that had the longest chart runs. Calculations are unaffected by year-end cutoffs as with Billboard (see discussion).