Beach music, also known as Carolina beach music and beach pop, is a regional genre of music in the United States which developed from rock/R&B and pop music of the 1950s and 1960s. Beach music is most closely associated with the style of dance known as the shag, or the Carolina shag, which is also the official state dance of both North Carolina and South Carolina. Recordings with a 4/4 "blues shuffle" rhythmic structure and moderate-to-fast tempo are the most popular music for the shag, and the vast majority of the music in this genre fits that description.

Though primarily confined to a small regional fan base, specifically to "Grand Strand" communities such as Myrtle Beach, Carolina Beach, and the Golden Isles of Georgia, in its early days what is now known as Carolina beach music was instrumental in bringing about wider acceptance of soul music/R&B among the white music lovers on the south-east coast.

While the older styles of R&B have faded from popularity nationally, the Carolina shag has gained wide popularity in dance circles around the US. This has not generally led to increased appreciation for the music of the beach bands, however. Many of these new shag dance aficionados prefer the "R&B oldies" and/or shagging to currently popular tunes that happen to have the required beat. As more networking is being done on the Internet among shag deejays and beach music fans nationwide, however, there is a growing acceptance of the regional bands by the "new shaggers".

Historical accounts of beach music as it relates to the development of this dance are often conflicting, but most agree that the Ocean Drive section of North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is where the beach/shag phenomenon had its greatest impact among vacationing teenagers and college students. The early development started around 1950.

In the period from roughly the end of World War II through the mid-1950s, many white youth in the still-segregated South could not always hear the compelling music of primarily black popular recording artists in their home towns. At the time, much of these recordings were characterized as "race music", a term later replaced by "R&B." In some communities, this remained in effect even after racial desegregation was implemented in the region. However, young people flocked to the bars and pavilions of the Carolina beaches where the shag was gaining popularity, R&B instrumentals by artists such as Earl Bostic ruled the jukeboxes, and the "beach clubs" where R&B artists performed live also thrived. Even though toward the end of the 1960s more and more such clubs with similar jukebox selections and live band performances opened in locations other than the beach resorts, the term "Beach Music" which began to emerge in the mid-1960s, keyed off of the memorable experiences of dancing the shag to this music at venues by the sea.

A major contributing influence upon this musical affinity beginning in the late 1950s was radio station WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee, which blanketed the Southeast with everything from R&B to blues and more. Stations with similar playlists began to emerge in the Carolinas and surrounding states throughout the late 1950s and the 1960s, increasing the popularity of the music across racial lines and contributing to the increasing popularity of the emerging new gospel-infused R&B sound, soul music.

Among the most popular and influential R&B artists who produced "beach records" in the 1950s and 1960s were the Dominoes, the Drifters, the Clovers, Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs, the Tams, the Tymes, the Platters, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Brenton Wood, the Capitols, the Marvelows, The Swingin' Medallions, The Reflections, Clarence Carter, the Casinos, and the Chairmen of the Board. Beginning in the 1960s, pop soul records that had the right tempo came to be included within the beach music genre. Among the best-known examples are "It will Stand" by the Showmen, "So Much in Love" by the Tymes", "My Girl" by the Temptations (1965) and "Build Me Up Buttercup" by UK pop soul group the Foundations (1968). While some of the "beach hits" by these artists appeared on the R&B and rock and roll charts nationally, a great many of them were "B-sides"— or even more obscure recordings that never charted at all. With this penchant for obscure R&B, especially from the 1960s, beach music has much in common with the northern soul phenomenon in the UK, and perhaps even more with the popcorn sound in Belgium.

Another wave of artists, known today as the "beach bands" came into prominence in the mid-1960s to early 1970s, heavily influenced by the sound of Motown and the other prominent R&B labels of the day such as Atlantic Records, Stax, etc. These included the nationally-charting groups The Swingin' Medallions (South Carolina), The O'Kaysions (North Carolina), and Bill Deal and the Rhondels (Virginia). This wave of primarily white R&B artists was part of a strong but nationally short-lived musical trend known as blue-eyed soul. The Tymes gained UK hit "Ms Grace" in 1975. By the late 1970s, The Trammps, Tavares, and Jimmy Buffett were popular in the beach music scene.