I came across this video from a British talk show a couple weeks ago with a guy named Richard Osman.

And he was talking about there are no bands on the charts anymore.

And he was specifically talking about the British charts.

But let's explore this a little bit.

Let me play you the video.

What has happened that is utterly extraordinary in the charts is the complete disappearance of bands.

The complete disappearance of bands.

And so soloists and duos, and you know, collaborations of soloists, you know, Dave and Central Sea, all this sort of thing, are so dominant.

I'll tell you how dominant they are.

We've had half a decade, okay, roughly so far, the first half of the 2020s.

So I looked at the first half of the 1980s.

And in the first half of the 1980s, there were 146 weeks when bands were number one.

Okay, 146 weeks, you had Dexys, you got UB40, KC and the Sunshine Band, Duran Duran, Culture Club, Pretender, Spandau Ballet, Adam and the Outs, loads and loads and loads, 146.

The first half of the 90s, there were 141 weeks when bands were number one, New Kids on the Block, Wet Wet Wet, Erasure, Take That, loads and loads.

So we've got 146, 141.

In the first five years of this decade, three weeks, we've had three number one weeks, one of which was the Radio One Live Lounge All Stars, most of whom were soloists anyway.

One of which was The Beatles, when they had the lovely comeback single, and one of which was Little Mix.

And that's the only, that's the only kind of official band you've had a single week at number one in this entire decade.

Now, Richard Oz was talking about bands that are at the top of the British charts from the 80s through the 2000s.

But historically, starting in the 50s, bands dominated through all genres of music, but especially rock music.

Bands like The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, The Who, The Doors, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd, The Allman Brothers Band, Deep Purple, Queen, KC and the Sunshine Band, Bee Gees, The Commodores, Fleetwood Mac, Earth, Wind & Fire, The Police, Dire Straits, Van Halen, Journey, ACDC, Genesis, Yes, U2, Tears for Fears, Living Color, Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Radiohead, Oasis, Blink-182.

Rap and hip-hop of the 90s also had ensembles.

Artists like Wu-Tang Clan, Tribe Called Quest, NWA, Outkast, Fugees, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Cypress Hill, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, The Roots.

The other amazing thing about these bands is that they wrote their own songs.

Now, you would have artists like The Supremes or The Jackson 5 that were part of Motown that have songwriters like Holland Dozier Holland that wrote for The Supremes or The Corporation that wrote for The Jackson 5, but for the most part, they wrote their own songs.

Now, you would have artists from the 70s and 80s that would actually split off, for example, Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins from Genesis or Sting from The Police that would make their own solo records and have massive hits that they still wrote themselves.

This didn't really change until the late 90s and early 2000s.

This is when you started to have boy bands, for example, Backstreet Boys and NSYNC that would have these co-writer producers or writer producers that would write their huge hits.

This is where people like Max Martin started to come on the scene.

And this also happened in rock music.

I know because I was part of this thing being a producer slash songwriter.

You started to see artists like Aerosmith that had Diane Warren writing their biggest hit they ever had, their only number one, I Don't Want to Miss a Thing, which came out in the early 90s, and rock bands of the early 2000s that would almost invariably have producers, songwriters that would make their record.

And this really happened because the labels got involved, the A&R people.

They were making less money because they were selling less records, and they wanted to guarantee that they had huge hit songs on every record.

So they would actually hire songwriter producers or get multiple songwriters to contribute to the record.

These would be rock bands that would appear to be bands, but they'd actually be co-writers or producers writing and making the records themselves and not even including the band in there.

I've gone over this in past videos.

And this ultimately led to the demise of the bands, in my view.

If you're going to have someone like myself, for example, that the label's going to hire to co-write with the singer of a band, and I play all the parts on it, and I get a session drummer to come in, even though the band's got a drummer, by 2010, it just made no sense to actually sign bands because it wasn't worth it.

And that brings us to where we are today.

If you go to the top 50 chart right now in the U.S., you have Sabrina Carpenter, you have Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, you have Jimin, you have Chapel Roan, Billie Eilish, Post Malone, Morgan Wallen, Shaboosie, Kendrick Lamar, Tommy Richman, Hozier, Zach Bryan, Kacey Musgraves, Benson Boone, Teddy Swims.

It's just literally all solo artists.

So next as an experiment, I put together a list of the top 400 artists in ranking of monthly listeners on Spotify, and I looked to see how many bands on there were created in the last 10 years.

Take a guess, how many?

You might think, oh, I don't know, 25 bands, something like that, in the top 400?

Has to be a lot, right?

It's actually only three.

Only three bands in the top 400 artists on Spotify have formed within the last 10 years.

Three.

Now let me actually just read you off the top of the chart so you know what I'm talking about.

The new number one artist on Spotify is Billie Eilish.

She has 105 million monthly listeners.

Just below that, The Weeknd, 104 million, number two.

Bruno Mars is number three at 100 million.

Taylor Swift has 93 million, number four.

Lady Gaga has 89 million, 638,000, number five.

Coldplay, here's the first band, has 89 million, 598,000.

Now Coldplay was formed in 1997.

Okay, so last century.

To get to the first group that was formed within the last 10 years that's on this chart, you have to go down to 135.

That's Grupo Frontera.

They've got 32 million monthly listeners.

They were formed in 2022.

The next one is Can you remember them from Eurovision from, oh geez, what one is it?

2017 or so, they won that.

They're ranked at 248 with 24 million monthly listeners.

They were formed in 2016.

And then Richie Mitch and the Coal Miners at 328, 21 million monthly listeners formed in 2017.

Those are the only three.

So it's less than 1%.

There's three in 400.

That's really amazing.

So what are some other factors that led to the demise of bands from the 60s through the early 2000s?

One of them is the changing tastes of people.

Rock is just not popular.

It doesn't connect with young people like it did back then, probably because there's no bands out there.

Another reason could be advancements in technology.

With modern technology, a single artist can produce high quality studio grade tracks on a laptop, eliminating the need for a production process.

Band dynamics.

It's hard to be in a band.

Forming and maintaining a band is challenging due to interpersonal conflicts.

That's going to be a cover of Modern Drummer Magazine is going to be devoted to that drum fill.

It's amazing that you could play that in nine beats.

The economics of promotion.

It's cheaper and more efficient for labels to market one individual over a group as solo artists are easier to brand, manage and promote across media.

A solo artist can record a song at their house on their laptop.

They can put it up on TikTok and it can become a massive hit.

And then you'd be like the artist Jake who has 20 million monthly listeners and he's had songs with over a billion plays.

And that's basically from TikTok.

I don't see this changing anytime soon.

I'd be really curious to hear your opinion on it.

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Thanks for watching.