In 1942, the big bands ruled American music. Glenn Miller spent almost half the year at the top of the charts with four hits – "Chattanooga Choo Choo," "A String of Pearls," "Moonlight Cocktail," and "(I've Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo." Among the other most popular songs of the year were Woody Herman's "Blues in the Night," Jimmy Dorsey's "Tangerine," Harry James' "Sleepy Lagoon," and Kay Kyser's "Jingle Jangle Jingle."

But the biggest hit of the year – the biggest-selling single of all time, in fact – was Bing Crosby's "White Christmas." Irving Berlin wrote the song, and he was convinced that it would be a hit, telling his secretary, "I've just written the best song that anybody's ever written!" The song became a perennial, appearing on the Billboard pop charts every year for more than 20 years, until a separate chart was created specifically for holiday records. The record was so popular that the master quickly wore out and became unusable. Crosby re-recorded the song, with the same orchestra and backup singers, in 1947, and that's the recording you're most likely to hear today.

It was in 1942 that Billboard magazine officially took notice of that the fact that there was a large music-buying audience in the African-American community, and that they weren't necessarily listening to the same songs of the white audience. In October, the first "Harlem Hit Parade" chart appeared, the first in a long line of precursors to what is now the R&B/Rap chart. The big hits on that chart in 1942 were by Andy Kirk ("Take It and Git"), Ella Mae Morse ("Mr. Five by Five"), Paul Whiteman ("Trav'lin' Light," with vocals by Billie Holiday), Earl Hines ("Stormy Monday Blues,") and Lucky Millinder ("When the Lights Go On Again").  And "White Christmas" was so widely popular that it not only topped the pop charts, it spent three weeks at #1 on the Harlem Hit Parade, too.

In the classical world, several important pieces had their premieres in 1942. The Symphony #7 of Dmitri Shostakovich was of epic length, about 75 minutes, and was dedicated to the city of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), which was then under siege by the Nazis. Benjamin Britten's Christmas staple, A Ceremony of Carols, made its debut, as did Gerald Finzi's song cycle on Shakespeare texts, Let Us Garlands Bring. Bohuslav Martinu premiered his first symphony; Sergei Prokofiev presented his String Quartet #2; and Samuel Barber's Second Essay for Orchestra was introduced by the New York Philharmonic.