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Best YouTube Music Videos

BestLINKS US: YouTube/VEVO Music Videos links BestlinksUS


Music Videos

These are links to great music available on the web, mostly on YouTube or VEVO.   Click on links to find one or a series of related music cuts.  

  • After watching ONE OR MORE STRINGED VIDEOS, close the YouTube window or press the Back Key to return to this page. You can see other similar videos on the right margin of You Tube's pages.
 YouTube periodically removes the videos on pressure from some of the owners of the music, or the artists protecting their copyright privileges..    If you are interested in hearing particular songs which don't play here, click on youtube.com and search for them manually.) 

NBC coverage of her breath-taking 2024 return to public performance 
of a lifetime by singing "Hymne A L'Amour"



The birth of Rock and Roll

Young people born during WWII who grew up in the 1950s were called the War Babies or bobby soxxers. A small generation, these kids were older teens in the late 50s when rock and roll first became prominent; as young adults, they missed the drugs, the long hair, and for many, even missed Vietnam which came later. Their numbers are quickly falling off since they're now in their late 70s or early 80s.

They were more clean cut and just beginning to be influenced to rebel musically during the birth of rock and roll.

1950s War Generation
Best hit of Each Month of the 1950s after the soldiers came home --, short-clip snippet videos from the Crooners like early Tony Bennett, Doris Day, movie music hits to the advent of Rock and Roll like lots of Elvis, the Everly Brothers, and more.   Boomers now in their 70s will remember most all of these as oldies their parents heard on the radio, but HERE, put faces with the songs.


Mickey Mouse Club March

Johnny Angel - Shelley Fabares

1960 Donna Reed Show
Dusty Springfield, Little Peggy March, Temptations, Elvis
Tammy Wynette, Dion, Del Shannon, Seekers, more videos of 1960

History of Rock Episode 2





Pop Teen Music

Familiar pop music makes them hits.  Starting in the late 1950s, radio changed from half-hour dramas like "Suspense" to Top 40 radio with deejays playing pop music-- appealed mostly to young people and later 1960s boomers;  radio continued then unchanged with each subsequent generation;   What made the AM radio station hits were record sales and stations played them and often introduced them to their listeners.  They played the songs over and over and have been known for short playlists of about 40-50 songs, rotating over and over, sometimes peppered with oldies from the few previous years.

Single artists, boy bands, girl bands sought to break into national attention through radio.  More recently, Justin Bieber became one of the biggest and like many, this Canadian became a teen idol.

Ed Sullivan and Elvis:  One of the First...



American Bandstand 
Themed Pgm Teen Idols w Dick Clark

Entertainment Tonight:  
Show about Teen Idols Then and Now) clips


1960s Boomer Music

Baby boomers were born starting in 1946 after American soldiers returned from World War II.   As children they listened from the back seat to their parents music on the radio--Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, the Ames Brothers and then early Elvis and Be-Bop early Rock.  Boomers were the  Children of television and they rebelled from the stifling 1950s by the early 60s.   Even that decade, music changed from a more mature rock sound from the Beach Boys and Beatles to the influence of drug use in music and society.   (Photo on right from Facebook's "America in the 1960s")

Here is a sampling of the 1960s BY MONTH.



Herman's Hermits   Dandy

Jim Reeves   He'll Have to Go

Peter and Gordon, Nobody I know 1964   




Below are links to popular 1960s hit songs they've uploaded on their FB site, mostly live performances.  Lots of boomers know these songs well but never saw the original artists perform them in concert or on TV before MTV was created. 


Rolling Stones    Time is on my side   

The Beatles    Hey Jude 
Live in Australia  14 mins   Snippets 6 minutes
 
The Beatles broke up in 1970 although the Four some recorded for decades more, except John Lennon who was murdered in 1980.  British groups remained popular, like the Rolling Stones well into their 60s and 70s.

Music and Cars of the 60s

The Hollies  He ain't Heavy

The Troggs   Wild Thing 

The Moody Blues    Nights in White Satin

Led Zepplin     Song Remains the Same

The Tremeloes  Candy Man  

Uriah Heap   Easy Livin' 


Peter Frampton    Show Me the Way

Dave Barry      The Crying Game 1966

The Kinks  You Really Got Me


Mindbenders  Game of Love

Nashville Teens   Tobacco Road


Boomers' Slow Ballads 60s-80s

Motown and Soul Music

Music aficionados are quick to say that African American pop music, even blues, had a prominent affect on so called 'white pop music.' Yet until the 1970s, most white radio stations played few but the most popular crossover hits. Black owned and formatted stations hosted the ears of most black teens up until deep into the 1970. Interestingly black boomer teens bought the most 45 RPM singles records until white people 'discovered' the talent of musicians and black songwriters. Here are a series of uniquely black music, much of which was from Detroit's "Motown" sound that grew first in the 1950s through 1980s.  Rolling Stone's Motown List (100 Greatest Songs.)



Music of the 70s


Links to artists Gilbert O'Sullivan, Johnny Nash, America,
 Chuck Berry, 3Dog Night




Pop music was heavily influenced by the war which brought thousands of young baby boomers to the streets in protest of President Johnson's and Nixon's war in SE Asia.  These are links to the pop songs reflecting this unsettling time when 50,000 American soldiers died in a faraway war that turned unpopular.

Eve of Destruction - Barry McGuire

Most pop radio stations wouldn't play this popular song but boomers dropped quarters in bar juke boxes to hear it over and over.

Kent State goes Pop
Ohio- by Crosby Stills, Nash and Young is put to Vietnam war video after four students were killed by accidental fire during a protest at Kent State University in 1970.  This song became an anthem to mark the 1960s and 70s student protests against the Vietnam War---which resulted in 50,000 American dead soldiers, countless wounded, and after almost ten years, the military pulled out in 1973, handing the small Southeast Asian nation back to the Communists.

 


Good Morning Vietnam
A film stars late comedian Robin Williams portrays a deejay who performed at American Forces Vietnam Network in Siagon during the war.   These are considered Williams' best bits, many of them were Robin's unscripted improvisations that were left in the movie. 

Animals   We Gotta Get Outta This Place
One of the most requested songs by soldiers listening to American Forces Radio in Asia.  Along with their "Sky Pilot", and  PPM's "Leavin on a Jet Plane" and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" by the Kingston Trio..

Coca-Cola teaches the World to Sing
First as a singing 60s commercial for Coke, this jingle song became a popular hit.  This link also takes you to America's (and Britain's, Ireland's and More) Got talent competition of mostly young amateur people with incredible talent vying to win their weekly contests.  Judges included Simon Cowel, a witty personality contestants tried hard to please on this show which has run, and been copied, for decades.

Some corporations who are exclusively focused on money, and even some artists are so tight with their music, they forget who made them famous.  Do you think artists like Streisand and a VERY few others, after fans made them incredibly wealthy, refuse to give out a few historic freebees as their careers are sunsetting??   "Thanks for making me rich and famous but if  you want to hear my voice after all these years, ya still have to pay me!   No comps!"


Movie Clip (Hair was a counterculture Broadway play and then 1968 movie making social statements about The War, free love and sex, drugs, and other taboo subjects.   This musical movie clip depicts young recruits about to go unwillingly off to war.)

Jimi Hendrix in Maui 1970

I stand up next to a mountain... In July 1970, The Jimi Hendrix Experience 'stood on the mountain' and performed a free outdoor concert to a few hundred fans at the base of the Haleakala crater on the Island of Maui. Streaming now on Facebook watch this spectacular performance of 
"Voodoo Child" (Slight Return)"






Procol Harem - Whiter Shade of Pale
Live performance of this pop orchestral hit

The nation's largest generation never really accepted the Pop crooner ballads of their parents but Rock and Roll changed everything with strong guitars and drums, some deafeningly so that replaced lyrical songs with  orchestral and vocal backgrounds. As they grew older, boomer tastes split with variations to include blues, rap, they became fans of the music variations--some called Heavy Metal
from groups like California's Grateful Dead that had its own loyal cult concert following for the rest of the Twentieth Century. 

 Boomer children--the Gen-X, Y, and Millennials who were born after the mid 70s knew and listened to the wider musical varieties from their parents generation. 

Stations began playing subsets of these with formats and tempos of their own.  Some were called Underground, or Adult Contemorary stations targetting broader age groups, like 25 to 34 or even up to 49 by mixing 'oldies' with various forms of protest lyrics.   In the early 2000s, record companies began selling downloaded internet music and they depended less on radio station introducing new music to showcase their stables of recording artists.  Pop stations played it safe with familiar repetition but new music and artists gained popularity instead from Music videos found on MTV, YouTube, BET and other channels.



The 1980s 



Kansas, Pink Floyd, Guns, AC/DC, CCR, Deep Purple, Meat Loaf, Metallica,  more

Beegees Greatest Hits


 
Moody Blues
Nights in White Satin 
Another orchestral hit to make the pop charts, "Nights" was a major it in the 1970s.  Also here, links to CCR, MeatLoaf, Europa, Metallica, ACDC, Elvis,   Billy Joel, Aerosmith,  The Police, BonJovi, more



Justin Bieber - Baby with Ludicris
2 BILLION views for this teen idol.


Selected Michael Jackson musical cuts of nearly fifty years 

Jackson was called "The King of Pop" and was the most popular  singing and dancing star of modern times,   Despite evidence he had an unhealthy interest in young boys, the scandal did not destroy his popularity which continued beyond his death to drugs in 2009.
80s Music Vids - many choices


We Are The World

Every once in awhile, everyone just needs to see this fundraising video again that stars some of the greatest singing artists of our time!

We Are the World" was a charity single originally recorded by the supergroup USA for Africa in 1985. It was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and produced by Quincy Jones and Michael Omartian for the album We Are the World. With sales in excess of 20 million copies, it is the eighth best-selling physical single of all time.Wikipedia.  Recorded: January 28, 1985

Stairway to Heaven - Heart Tribute to Zeppelin

Freddie Mercury and David Bowie

Freddie Mercury and Elvis Presley's high notes

1980s Queen and more


The late lead singer Freddie Mercury has been called by many as the best performing voice in history. Here is an incredible video performance of Mercury and opera singer Montserrat Caballe performing in Barcelona in 1978 that demonstrates his voice and performing versatility.  It's awesome if you are a classical music fan.

Queen - Live Aid  
 21 min medley, Wembley, Eng (1985.) Considered their best performance. 
Freddie Mercury Bohemian Rhapsody 


This complete concert has been removed multiple times by music owners but then uploaded in segments to show the incredible talent of gay Queen lead singer Mercury, a complex man who tragically died of Aids at the height of his musical career.

A movie was made of his life called Bohemian Rhapsody in 2018 chronicling his life--and the clip compares the film starring Rami Malek to Mercury's own stage performance.

And my personal favorite, not even their biggest song, the girl band The Bangles: 





Next Generation Music



Europa, Beegees, Bon Jovi, Mariah Carey, Cyndi Lauper, More






YouTube:   The Millennial Mixtape 


https://music.youtube.com/
YouTube Interactive Music
You pick the genres, endure their front end commercial and browse.  Listen to what you want.   You are asked if you want to Subscribe to YouTube Premium without commercials.  More recent POP You Tube selections, even Sleep music, Rap, Blues, pop, more.

Music from the Movies


Movies have always influenced music and music has always influenced the movies. Start of it was in the 1940s and 50s with the great MGM musicals; but then Hollywood developed dramatic films which created many pop hits from their soundtracks. Here are some of them:


 Judy Garland: The Wizard of Oz
Judy Garland Somewhere over the Rainbow;  Most famous and loved movie Music videos of the 20th Century from MGM, Warner, YouTube stringed together to play.



 Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole:
     (from the film 50-First Dates, and others)   IZ 1959-1997 weighted 750 pounds and died young.


How the West Was Won
Powerful movie orchestrations of musical drama with Debbie Reynolds and more  YouTube  videos stringed together to play .     Overture


From a cartoon to a big soft pop hit

Somewhere Out There 
  " Fievel from "An American Tail" 1986
Linda Ronstadt & James Inghram
This was the pop hit video that swept the country after the cartoon film was released. 




Rhapsody in Blue
Click for the performance in it's entirety from the 1924 film




Arab VocalSaddest Song


Louis Armstrong 
"What a Wonderful World"
The late great Trumpeter made this his signature song which has appeared in several good feeling movies.   Here also are more classics from YouTube

Blues Brothers: The Movie
Everybody needs Somebody" 
Aretha: Think

Deliverance:  Dueling Banjos
Another classic film generated a pop hit that was a curiosity in a complex movie of adventure and a clash of cultures in America's deep south.

Dance Music of the 1950s: Dirty Dancin
   Perhaps the best dance movie every made, starring the late actor Patrick Swayze as a dance instructor at a holiday Catskills resort and Jennifer Gray as a young guest who fell in love with him.

Johnny Mathis:  Maria
From Broadway and film, "West Side Story" 1961 A popular hit version.

Righteous Brothers: 
Unchained Melody
The famed 1960s pop hit was used in a dramatic film "Ghost" staring Demi Moore, 
Patrick Swayze (1952-2009)

Gigi Vibes -  Internet Sensation
Many artists aren't known for recording company hits but rather frequent stars on Facebook's REELS singing shorts, usually covers--sometimes as good or better than the originals.  This Chinese star is performing concerts throughout the US and Canada and drawing crowds to watch her smiles and perfectly sung softer songs.


Celine Dion: "My Heart Will Go On"
From the blockbuster film Titanic.

Whitney Houston: 
"The Bodyguard"

Houston, who died of a drug overdose, was a talented actress and pop singer who starred in a film similiar to herself and her bodyguard.  Later, Hollywood produced a biographic film about her.

Sister Act-  Whoopi Goldberg  "Oh Happy Day"
   From the Films "Sister Act"  "I Will Follow Him"
This is a story of an inner city Catholic school starring Goldberg acting as a Vegas singer hiding out in the school for her own protection from the mob, and how she converts the school's choir into a success even drawing the Pope to hear them sing classic pop hits;  an inspirational, feelgood story of teenagers needing and getting inspiration.

Lean On Me -
Another classic film produced in 1989, starring Morgan Freeman as a tyrannical school principal in New Jersey.   Lean on Me at an All school Assembly; bathroom scene Principal confronts the students.


Pentatonix:  Sound of Silence     Hallalujah
   A musical singing and dancer performing troop

  
Best Blues

A type of African-American music that was first developed in the Mississippi Delta region at the end of the nineteenth century, the blues is difficult to define. Some people think of the blues as an emotion; others regard it primarily as a musical genre characterized by a special blues scale containing twelve bars and three chords in a particular order.

Its influence on jazz, gospel music, theater music, rock, soul, hip-hop, and almost every form of popular music since the 1920s has been enormous.

BB King:   The Thrill is Gone


 Stevie Ray Vaughn: Voodoo Child
A blues and guitar virtuoso in a live performance

Rev Wintley Phipps
 The Black Keys 
The 7- note Slave Scale of most negro spirituals  
"Amazing Grace!"
Phipps at Barack Obama's Natnl Prayer Service


A Little Bit Country


Taylor Swift: The Man

TV episode with Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Johnny Cash and others

John Denver:  Live at the Apollo 1982


George Strait:  Amarillo by Morning

Roy Clark:  Ghost Riders in the Sky
live on Country Road TV show with link

Country Big Hitters: Shania Twain 
 Willie Nelson, John Denver, Carpenters, Glen Campbell, many more


Dolly Pardonwrote and sang "I Will Always Love You"
   Film Clip: Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"
   A major cover hit by Whitney Houston  in "The Bodyguard"

        w/Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr; Songwriters Lennon-McCartney

Welcome to American Folk where we start em YOUNG!
The Cotton Pickin Kids ages 12 to 20
We call it "Foggy Mountain Rock."

Best Voices

Streisand 1994   (rights Withdrawn again)
Anaheim 1  Part 2   

Walk On 2001   Somewhere   
Memory     Concert 1993

 

Not possible to do this without "The Voice"
Frank Sinatra: One For My Baby

Vegas Rat Pack: Birth of the Blues
Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, others

Boogie Woogie

Clowning Cops:  The Lion Sleeps Tonight
Israeli cops make a silly hit video lipsyncing to a popular 1960s song

Ray Stevens: Immigration Song


Leonard Cohen  Hallelujah -  
Songwriter Leonard Cohen Live in London sings his own, an inspiring melody and lyric sung all over the world in schools, cathedrals, TV shows, and even pop artists.

Russian Group on YouTube 
  English title not available for this well produced happy Russian song


The Voice Kids - Got Talent


 Russian Kids:  Hallelujah   
The Voice Kids
An offshoot of America's Got Talent, the Russians have a TV show featuring young, competing singing talent doing a hit western song.

Kaylee Rogers, 9" Hallelujah
(and her Irish friends w autism)
Kaylee Rogers, 11: "Hallelujah"

with the renowned Pentatonix singing group

European Pop Orchestra "Hallelujah"
Emma Kok:  
Jadyn Ryle covers: The Sound of Silence
Jennifer Ryan - America's Got Talent
Leo from France -- The Voice Kids

Bohemian Rhapsody - The Voice Kids (3 girls)
Chinese boy  Sings Whitney Houston 
Natalie age 10 Britain's Got Talent
Young Boy  The Voice of Poland
     belts out When a Man Loves a Woman

The best young voices manage perfect pitch and stage presence--amazing, what comes out of the mouths of babes, like  Gabriel Markdale, 12 from Romania's Amateur talent TV show, getting  2.5 million internet views singing American movie hit "My Heart will Go On."  One wonders if these exceptionally talented kids are on the highest end of the Spectrum!

And this one, Annette with a poem but WAIT FOR IT...at the END

Jonathan 17 and Charlotte 16:
 Surprise Opera 
America's Got Talent
Jonathan ten years later has become a solo opera sensation.
Christmas Album:  How Great Thou Art

Elvis' 
rendition "How Great Thou Artshortly before his death at a 1977 Omaha concert.

Jackie Evanko Nessun Dorma America's Got Talent  
  Jackie is BACK!  At 18, all grown up

 Collabro: Surprise Religious Presentation

Susan Boyle (winner): Britain's Got Talent
    A surprising broadcast when an older, plain looking woman surprises the judges and the audience with a magnificant voice that brought her instant fame.  When asked who she wanted to be like, she said famous European singer Ellen Page, and it was later she sang a duet with Page.
Susan Boyle and Ellen Page: In Concert


Marcelito Pomoy "The Prayer"
A big winner on America's Got Talent from the Philippines.
 You have never heard such a magnificent and versatile voice as this. Don't miss this one.

 

Classical Music



 Charlotte Church-Josh Groban:
  Duet "The Prayer"
  "Pie Jesu"


Yo Yo Ma:  Suite in G-Major    
Rights withdrawn by Kennedy Center!
 Yo Yo Ma age 7: Leonard Bernstein presents

Budapest Synagogue: Schlinder's List (Cello) 
Soloist plays the moving theme from the film about the a hero saving many Jews from the Holocaust, a live performance)


 Elton John:   "Candles in the Wind"
 Lady Di's Funeral 1997 (full video)
Elton wrote this pop song as a tribute to Marilyn Monroe but reworked it for Lady Diana's funeral.



President Obama:  Sweet Home Chicago
 
Aretha Franklin 
Performs for Pres Obama
at Kennedy Center    
Withdrawn by the Kennedy Center!!



The National Anthem
Various Artists


Whitney Houston Pregame
at Pres Biden's inauguration, a normally flamboyant artist's rendition but here with traditional and moving style.  Spectacular performance

Kiss' Gene Simmons:
Military Tribute by the Armed Services
on stage with the Military

Bette Midler:  Wind Beneath My Wings
Her signature song after 9-11 at Yankee Stadium

Heart performs a Led Zepplin Tribute to the band at Kennedy Honors
Stairway to Heaven


Flash Mob Videos
around the world

1980 Movie Flashmob; she passed away 2022   
Cara was a prominent actress in the TV Film Alex Haleys: ROOTS, Second Generation. 

Best Flash Mob 
(misc songs)