Your way in
Rockabilly 1954
Rock and roll filtered through white country music: slapped upright bass, Sun Studio echo and a vocal hiccup. It gets rediscovered every couple of decades.
- Heaviness
- 2
- Speed
- 7
- Melody
- 8
- Where from
- American South
- Tempo
- 150-190 bpm
- Song length
- 2-2.5 min
- Written about
- Cars and girls, Restlessness, Rural poverty, obliquely, Superstition
- Vocals
- Sung
Why this one
| You said | Rockabilly | Match | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Singing When someone is singing, what should come out? | clean | 100% | ×3 |
| Quick and driving What pace? | 7 out of 10 | 100% | ×2 |
| The beginnings Does it matter when it was made? | 1954 | 100% | ×1 |
| Short. Say it and stop. How long should a song be? | up to 2.5 min | 96% | ×1 |
| Weighted mean | 99% | ||
Ranked over all 150 genres in the encyclopedia, on the 4 answers you gave, weighted vocals 3, pace 2, era 1, length 1 out of 7. Rockabilly leads the next by 1 point. Where two genres score the same the broader one wins, because a genre with subgenres under it is somewhere to carry on from and a leaf is a full stop.
Five records, in this order
- 1Start one step outside
Chuck Berry, Chuck 2017
Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode. That opening riff is the DNA of the entire tree.
- 2The one to put on first
Carl Perkins, Carl Perkins 1985
Carl Perkins - Blue Suede Shoes, the original rather than the Elvis version.
- 3Then
- 4Then
- 5Then
The first is the entry point for Rock and roll, one step outside, so the second record has something to be heard against. After it come Rockabilly's essential records in the order the encyclopedia lists them. Every one of these has a page here with links out to somewhere it can be played.
If that is not it
-
Horror punk 94%
Punk with B-movie horror imagery, baritone vocals and mutant doo-wop choruses.
4 steps from Rockabilly, meeting it only at Rock.
The way into Horror punk -
Boogie rock 92%
One shuffle riff held until exhaustion. Simple by design and impossible to sit still to.
4 steps from Rockabilly, meeting it only at Rock.
The way into Boogie rock
Not simply the second and third of the ranking: those are almost always near neighbours of the first, which is three names for one suggestion. An alternate has to sit at least 4 steps through the tree from the headline and from the other alternate, which is the same floor the "sounds like this, but isn't" panel uses.
What your answers ruled out
- Singing put 54 genres at the bottom of that one question, among them Black metal, Death metal, Post-hardcore. Worth 3 of 7.
- The beginnings put 67 genres at the bottom of that one question, among them Folk metal, Metalcore, Nu metal. Worth 1 of 7.
- Short. Say it and stop. put 18 genres at the bottom of that one question, among them Doom metal, Progressive rock, Progressive metal. Worth 1 of 7.
Counted as genres scoring 20% or less on that answer alone. A recommendation that only shows what it chose is hiding half of what it did.