Scenes

The most productive hit factory in American history ran out of a house on West Grand Boulevard. Berry Gordy built an assembly line for pop soul, and for a decade Detroit out-charted cities ten times its size.

Guitar bands from the Liverpool docks took the American records arriving off the ships and sent them back louder. For three years a single northern English city rewrote the global pop chart.

Guitars met acid house in a few Manchester clubs and a scene fell out of it. Baggy, loose, and briefly the centre of British music.

Gamble and Huff took Motown's assembly-line idea, added lush strings and social conscience, and made Sigma Sound the smoothest studio in America.

Dr. Dre slowed the tempo, added the synth whine, and Los Angeles hip-hop took over the charts. Laid-back and menacing at once.

Trap moved the centre of gravity of American music from the coasts to the South. For two decades the most-streamed sound in the world has come out of Atlanta.