From the ’50s to the ’00s: Which Decade Rocked the Most?

70. 1951

1951 gave us Johnnie Ray’s “Cry” which was crowned as one of the biggest, if not the biggest song of the year. However, the top-ranked album was “Genius of Modern Music: Volume 1” by American jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk.

A studio portrait of Johnnie Ray.

Photo by Maurice Seymour/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Other than that, we had Tony Bennet, Nat King Cole, Perry Como, and Eddy Howard as the year’s top artists. As great and romantic as this year’s music was, it still came out at the bottom. In general, music from the ’50s is ranked lower, but that’s also because there was less music produced back then, and part of the ranking on this list has to do with the number of great albums in a year.