The Top 100 Instrumental Charts will show visitors to this site at a glance which instrumentals were the most popular for the following decades or years:
- The Tens
- The Twenties
- The Thirties
- The Forties
- The Fifties
- The Sixties
- The Seventies
- 1890-1954
- 1955-2010
- 1940-1987
- Top 1,000 All-Time Instrumentasl 1890-2011
It is our goal to provide you with the most accurate information on the popularity of instrumental records on the charts based on certain criteria. The same criteria is used for every chart on this site.
We need to define what is an instrumental. For a song to be considered (or qualify) on any of the instrumental charts, it has to have no vocals for 90% or more on the entire record. The vast majority of these songs have no vocals at all.
Criteria Used In The Rankings
The basic criteria used for all ranking of all instrumental songs to break any ties:
- The highest peak position reached from the charts
- The number of weeks at the peak position
- Total number of weeks in the Top 10
- Total number of weeks in the Top 40
- The highest total number of weeks charted from the charts
Using this criteria is the most fairest way to rank the popularity of any song regardless of the decade being examined.
Why Instrumentals?
While growing up, I was fascinated with them. Also, I liked many of them when they were being played on the radio. It intrigued me as how each of these songs ranked and which songs were the most popular in the the decades, in which many of the instrumentals were recorded and released to the public.
Check Them Out
If you are a fan of instrumental music just view the decade or years of interest to you. That’s why we have provided the top 100 instrumentals for the 10’s, 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, & 70’s. In case you are wondering why the years before 1910 and after 1980 are not included, there is not 100 instrumental songs that made the charts.
- 1890-1899 (27)
- 1900-1909 (69)
- 1980-1989 (37)
- 1990-1999 (16)
- 2000-2011 (5)
As you can see, the number of instrumentals for the above decades are in () and were not a very popular format after the decade of the seventies.
In case you may be wondering about the breakdown of the instrumentals by decade, I have included that information below:
- 1910-1919 (195)
- 1920-1929 (542)
- 1930-1939 (279)
- 1940-1949 (229)
- 1950-1959 (385)
- 1960-1969 (544)
- 1970-1979 (184)
- 1890-2011 (2,513)
After we publish the instrumental charts by decade, we will publish one final instrumental chart for the entire period from 1890-2011, by compiling the All-Time Top 1,000 instrumentals for this period.
I think you will agree that reviewing these top 100 instrumental charts will bring back many memories. And, at the same time, give you information, at a glance, on how popular these songs were.
Back to the top 100 songs of all time home page.