American Bandstand is an American music-performance show that aired in various versions from 1952 to 1989 and was hosted from 1956 until its final season by Dick Clark, who also served as producer. The show featured teenagers dancing to Top 40 music introduced by Clark; at least one popular musical act—over the decades, running the gamut from Jerry Lee Lewis to Run DMC—would usually appear in person to lip-sync one of their latest singles. Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon holds the record for most appearances at 110. After a failed revival (due to Dick Clark suffering a severe stroke in 2004), it was announced that Lady Luck Productions, in association with Dick Clark Productions, is producing a revival of the series, with Carson Daly named as it's host. And in 2013, a year after Lady Luck Productions brought back Soul Train, American Bandstand made it's return.
Rate-A-Record[]
Daly would often interview the teenagers about their opinions of the songs being played, most memorably through the "Rate-a-Record" segment. During the segment, two audience members each ranked two records on a scale of 35 to 98, after which the two opinions were averaged by Daly, who then asked the audience members to justify their scores. The segment gave rise, perhaps apocryphally, to the phrase "It's got a good beat and you can dance to it."
Featured artists typically performed their current hits by lip-synching to the released version of the song.