50 Most Important Musical Moments From This Decade

"Rolling Stone" has a list of the 50 most important "music moments" of the past decade...and it's a mix of legitimately influential happenings, changes in the industry, and shameless viral sensations.

Here are 20 highlights from the list, in chronological order:

1. November of 2010: The Beatles finally put their music on iTunes.

2. March of 2011: 13-year-old Rebecca Black releases her viral hit "Friday". "Fun, fun, fun, fun...kickin' in the front seat, sittin' in the back seat. Gotta make my mind up. Which seat can I take?" 

3. July of 2011: Spotify makes its U.S. debut. It now has 248 million global users.

4. April of 2012: A hologram of Tupac Shakur "performs" at Coachella.

5. Winter of 2012: Psy's viral hit "Gangnam Style" explodes on the Internet.

6. Winter of 2013: The "Frozen" soundtrack smashes all expectations,and earns an Oscar for its title track "Let It Go".

7. Summer of 2014: Canadian teenager Shawn Mendes gets half a billion views on Vine with six-second covers of Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran songs.

8. September of 2014: U2 suddenly gave half a billion people unsolicited downloads of "Songs of Innocence" on their iTunes accounts.

9. November of 2014: Taylor Swift abruptly pulled her entire catalog from Spotify, in a protest against their free tier. She returned in 2017.

10. March of 2015: A jury decides that Robin Thicke ripped off Marvin Gaye's 1977 hit "Got to Give It Up".

11. March of 2015: James Corden and Mariah Carey do the very first "Carpool Karaoke".

12. July of 2015: Album releases move to Friday.

13. April of 2016: The death of Prince shocks his fans, and puts the future of his vaults of music in jeopardy.

14. June of 2016: The Grammys vote to include streaming-only albums.

15. January of 2017: "Despacito" sweeps the globe without a word of English.

16. March of 2017: Future unseats his own #1 album with another #1.

17. July of 2018: Cardi B is the first female rapper to score two #1 hits.

18. January of 2019: The app TikTok finished 2018 with 1 billion downloads.

19. March of 2019: Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" goes viral.

20. July 2019 to present: Taylor Swift's public fight with Scooter Braun and her old label boss over her master recordings.

RollingStone.com has the whole list.

Photo Credit: iHeartRadio Network


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