works since 1979 by Beth Carvalho, Almir Guineto and the group Fundo de Quintal, formed the new sub-genre that ended up being called pagode by the Brazilian music industry. The novelty of the pagode in the Brazilian music scene occurred at a time of major reorganization of the music industry in the country, whose investments in the first half of the 1980s had been concentrated mainly on Brazilian rock and children's music. Although some samba artists had some commercial success in the period, such as Bezerra da Silva, Almir Guineto and Agepê – who, in 1984, became the first samba singer to surpass the mark of 1 million copies sold on a single LP -, the moment was not promising for samba in the commercial scope. Very popular performers like Beth Carvalho, Clara Nunes, João Nogueira and Roberto Ribeiro pulled the drop in sales of records of the genre. Disgusted by the little recognition and interest in promoting his work, Paulinho da Viola left the Warner Music label in 1984 and only returned to having an album released at the end of that decade. With the success of the LP "Raça Brasileira", the pagode phenomenon experienced a period of commercial growth in the Brazilian phonographic market. The main artists in this sub-genre reached the top of the success charts and became known nationally thanks to exposure in the mainstream media and the growing investments of record labels stimulated by huge sales since 1986, pulled by both the LPs of the already established Almir Guineto and Fundo de Quintal – the great paradigm of the subgenre – and for the debut works of Zeca Pagodinho, Marquinhos Satã and Jovelina Pérola Negra. Although there was a certain cooling of the interest of record labels and the media even during the second half of the 1980s, pagode established itself as an important subgenre of samba. In the 1990s, a new generation of artists emerged who shared, to some extent, similar characteristics, such as the incorporation of musical elements traditionally uncommon in the traditional samba, and a repertoire devoted largely to romantic lyrics. Initially seen by the phonographic industry and by the media as a continuation of the pagode of the previous decade, this new wave was later characterized under the label of "pagode romântico" ("romantic pagode") – or also "pagode paulista", due to the large number of artists of this scene that emerged