Progressive pop

Progressive pop
Etymology	A "progression" from mid-20th century pop music formulas.
Stylistic origins	Pop progressive rock
Cultural origins	Mid-1960s
Derivative forms	Hypnagogic pop New Pop
Other topics
Art pop art rock avant-pop experimental pop progressive rock proto-prog

Progressive pop is a form of pop music which attempts to break with the genre's standard formula. Originally termed for early progressive rock music, some stylistic features of progressive pop include changes in key and rhythm, experiments with larger forms, and unexpected, disruptive, or ironic treatments of past conventions. Performers commonly produce their own material while opposing the influence of managers, agents, or record companies.

Since 1967, "progressive" pop has stood in contrast to "mass/chart" pop. Following the economic boom of the mid 1960s, record labels began investing in artists, but allowed performers limited control over their own content and marketing. Groups who combined rock and roll with various other music styles such as Indian ragas and oriental melodies ultimately influenced the creation of progressive rock (or "prog"). After the 1970s, prog began selling poorly, opening a vacuum for a new, milder brand of progressive pop. During the 1980s, the New Pop movement attempted to bridge the divide between "progressive" pop and its mass/chart counterpart. By the 2000s, progressive pop gave rise to a host of popular, uncommonly large bands with an aversion to formal hierarchies.

Definition and scope

Further information: Progressive music and Pop music § Characteristics

See also: Progressive rock and Pomp rock

The term "progressive" refers to the wide range of attempts to break with standard pop music formulas through extended instrumentation, personalized lyrics, and individual improvisation. The premise involved popular music that was created with the intention of listening, not dancing, and opposed the influence of managers, agents, or record companies. Progressive music was also mainly produced by the performing artists themselves. In 1970, a journalist at UK publication, Melody Maker, described progressive pop as music appealing to the masses, but less disposable than the "six weeks in the charts and the 'forget it' music of older pop forms." In terms of tonal structure, progressive pop is similar to rock and roll in overthrowing harmony as its basic organizing structure. However, unlike rock and roll, progressive pop inverts received conventions, playing with them ironically, disrupting them, or producing shadows of them in new and unexpected forms. Some stylistic features include changes in key and rhythm or experiments with larger forms. Electronic techniques such as echo, feedback, stereo, loudness, and distortion may be used to give the music the impression of space and lateral extension.

"Progressive pop" was originally termed for progressive rock music. The latter genre was influenced by the "progressive" pop groups from the 1960s who combined rock and roll with various other music styles such as Indian ragas, oriental melodies, and Gregorian chants, like the Beatles and the Yardbirds. In December 1966, Melody Maker attempted to define the recent developments in pop. In this article, titled "Progressive Pop", Chris Welch categorised artists using terms previously associated with jazz; in the most advanced of these, "Avant-Garde", he placed the Beatles, Cream, Love, the Mothers of Invention, Pink Floyd and Soft Machine, while "Modern", the next category, comprised the Byrds, Donovan and the Small Faces. After the release of the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, magazines such as Melody Maker drew a sharp line between "pop" and "rock', thus eliminating the "roll" from "rock and roll" (which now refers to the 1950s style). The only artists who remained "rock" would be those who were considered at the vanguard of compositional forms, far from "radio friendly" standards, as Americans increasingly used the adjective "progressive" for groups like Jethro Tull, Family, East of Eden, Van Der Graaf Generator, and King Crimson.

By the late 1970s, "progressive pop" was roughly synonymous with "rock music". Authors Don and Jeff Breithaupt define progressive pop in the 1970s and 1980s as a "leaner breed of pomp rock" that was derivative of the Beatles. Musician Alan Parsons, who worked as an engineer on the Beatles' album Abbey Road (1969), remembers that even though he considered some of his songs "pure pop", others continued to categorize his band (the Alan Parsons Project) under the "progressive rock" label. Parsons thought "progressive pop" was a better name, explaining that "what made [our music] progressive was the epic sound and the orchestration which very few people were doing that at the time."

Evolution and popularity

1960s: Origins

See also: Proto-prog

The Beatles working in the studio with their producer George Martin, circa 1965

The Beach Boys, 1964

During the mid 1960s, pop music made repeated forays into new sounds, styles, and techniques that inspired public discourse among its listeners. The word "progressive" was frequently used, and it was thought that every song and single was to be a "progression" from the last. The Beatles' Paul McCartney intimated in 1967: "we [the band] got a bit bored with 12 bars all the time, so we tried to get into something else. Then came [Bob] Dylan, the Who, and the Beach Boys. ... We're all trying to do vaguely the same kind of thing." Before the progressive pop of the late 1960s, performers were typically unable to decide on the artistic content of their music. The Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson is credited for setting a precedent that allowed bands and artists to enter a recording studio and act as their own producers.

Author Bill Martin recognises the Beatles and the Beach Boys as the most significant contributors to the development of progressive rock, transforming rock from dance music into music that was made for listening to. Citing a quantitative study of tempos in music from the era, musicologist Walter Everett identifies the Beatles' 1965 album Rubber Soul as a work that was "made more to be thought about than danced to", and an album that "began a far-reaching trend" in its slowing-down of the tempos typically used in pop and rock music. Upon release, the Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds was hailed by British newspapers as "the most progressive pop album ever". Cleveland's Troy Smith believes that the album "established the group as forefathers of progressive pop, right from the beginning chords of 'Wouldn't It Be Nice', a Wall of Sound style single".

In the opinion of author Simon Grilo, the Beatles' progressive pop was exemplified in the double A-sided single "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" (1967). In a further example of the reciprocal influences between themselves and the Beach Boys, the Beatles demonstrated "paradoxical lyrical content matched by music that was at once 'young' and 'old', rock and Tin Pan Alley, LSD and cocoa, progressive and nostalgic" – all features that were shared on Sgt. Pepper's. Musicologist Allan Moore writes: "At that time, Sgt. Pepper seemed to mark rock music's coming of age ... Now, of course, with jaded memories, we think of it as ushering in an era of pomposity, with varying degrees of seriousness ... The question after 1967 was whether 'progressive' pop/rock was to be trusted, because it was dealing with issues 'deeper' than simply interpersonal relationships. In the long run, the answer turned out to be 'no' (at least, that is, until a later generation of bands discovered the delight of pastiching the Beatles)."

Towards the end of the 1960s, progressive pop music was received with doubt and disinterest. The Who's Pete Townshend reflected that "a lot of psychedelic bullshit was going on", referring to "garbage" being promoted in the charts, and that many artists who were doing ambitious works were instantly being labelled "pretentious". He believed: "Anybody that was any good ... was more or less becoming insignificant again." In 1969, writer Nik Cohn reported that the pop music industry had been split "roughly eighty percent ugly and twenty percent idealist", with the eighty percent being "mainline pop" and the twenty percent being "progressive pop [developed to] an esoteric feel". He predicted that in ten years, the genre would be called by another name (possibly "electric music"), and that its relationship to pop music would be similar to the one between art movies and Hollywood. While progressive pop did not "shrink to a minority cult", as Cohn wrote one year later, "in England, I wasn't entirely wrong ... But, in America, I fluffed completely – the Woodstock nation has kept growing and, for all his seriousness and pretensions to poetry, someone like James Taylor has achieved the same mass appeal as earlier stars."

1970s–2010s

"Symphonic pop" redirects here. For the similar genres, see Orchestral pop and Chamber pop.

See also: Art rock and New Pop

Progressive rock (also known as art rock) was ushered in the 1970s, directly following the combination of classical grandiosity and pop experimentalism from the 1960s. Although it reached widespread popularity, from 1976 onward, the genre declined in sales and was played with less frequency on FM radio. According to Breithaupt and Breithaupt, this created a vacuum for "a host of new, milder 'serious' bands, whose humor (Queen), pop smarts (Supertramp), and style (Roxy Music, mach two) would ensure their survival into the eighties. ... they met the melodic requirements of AM radio while still producing thoughtful, original work." Bands like Queen and ELO played a type of progressive pop that was grounded in prog-rock without compromising their chart success. The Buggles' Geoff Downes, who considers his band to be a continuation of Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) and 10cc's progressive traditions, says: "Those early 10cc records such as [1973 debut] 10cc and Sheet Music were pretty out there, and Godley & Creme took that even further. Even Abba had sections in their music that were quite intricate. We loved all that studio trickery and experimentation. Parallel to that were bands like Yes, who were experimenting in the studio in a more progressive rock format."

Author Edward Macan views British symphonic pop as a splinter of the progressive rock genre that relied on straightforward songwriting, rich vocal arrangements and quasi-orchestral fullness, citing Supertramp, ELO, 10cc, the Alan Parsons Project, and Al Stewart as examples. By the late 1970s, the era of record labels investing in their artists, giving them freedom to experiment and limited control over their content and marketing had ended. Corporate artists and repertoire staff began exerting an increasing amount of control over the creative process that had previously belonged to the artists. Some of the major progressive bands transitioned to a more commercial sound and deemphasized the evocation of art music. By the early 1980s, the prevailing view was that the progressive rock style had ceased to exist.

In 1985, Simon Reynolds noted that the New Pop movement attempted to "bridge" the divide between "progressive" pop and its mass/chart counterpart, describing their general relationship as "one between boys and girls, middle-class and working-class." In 2008, The New York Times' John Wray discussed "the return of the one-man band", observing a recent progressive pop trend that involved large bands or collectives "with a disdain for clearly defined hierarchies", noting examples such as Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, and Animal Collective. In 2017, musician Steven Wilson opined that there were few modern albums comparable to "the hugely ambitious progressive pop records that I loved from [the 1970s and 1980s] ... quite accessible on the surface, but if you [chose] to engage with them on a deeper level, you [could] find layers in the production, musicianship and some thoughtful lyrics."

List of artists

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

• 10cc
• Al Stewart
• Kevin Ayers
• The Beatles
• Be-Bop Deluxe
• The Buggles
• Caravan
• City Boy
• Crack the Sky
• Electric Light Orchestra
• Brian Eno
• Genesis (sans Steve Hackett)
• Hawkwind
• Kansas
• Kraftwerk
• Alan Parsons
• Pink Floyd (particularly The Wall)
• Renaissance
• Roxy Music
• Todd Rundgren
• Saga
• Starcastle
• Supertramp
• Synergy
• Queen
• U.K.
• Utopia
• Gary Wright
• XTC
• The Yardbirds

References

Citations

Sources

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• Blake, Andrew (2009). "Recording practices and the role of the producer". In Cook, Nicholas; Clarke, Eric; Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-82796-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Breithaupt, Don; Breithaupt, Jeff (2000), Night Moves: Pop Music in the Late '70s, St. Martin's Press, ISBN 978-0-312-19821-3
• Breithaupt, Don; Breithaupt, Jeff (2014), Precious and Few: Pop Music of the Early '70s, St. Martin's Press, ISBN 978-1-4668-7649-1 {{citation}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Cohn, Nik (1970), Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock, Grove Press, ISBN 978-0-8021-3830-9 {{citation}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Covach, John (1997). "Progressive Rock, 'Close to the Edge,' and the Boundaries of Style" (PDF). In John Covach; Graeme M. Boone (eds.). Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-510005-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Everett, Walter (2001). The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men Through Rubber Soul. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514105-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gaines, Steven (1986), Heroes and Villains: The True Story of The Beach Boys, New York: Da Capo Press, ISBN 0-306-80647-9 {{citation}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Haworth, John Trevor; Smith, Michael A. (1975). Work and Leisure: An Interdisciplinary Study in Theory, Education and Planning. Lepus Books. ISBN 0-86019-009-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Heylin, Clinton (2012). All the Madmen: Barrett, Bowie, Drake, the Floyd, The Kinks, The Who and the Journey to the Dark Side of English Rock. Little, Brown Book Group. ISBN 978-1-78033-078-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Jacobshagen, Arnold; Leniger, Markus; Henn, Benedikt (2007). Rebellische Musik: gesellschaftlicher Protest und kultureller Wandel um 1968. Verlag Dohr. ISBN 978-3-936655-48-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Leaf, David (1985), The Beach Boys, Courage Books, ISBN 978-0-89471-412-2
• Edmondson, Jacqueline, ed. (2013). Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories that Shaped our Culture. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-313-39348-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lenig, Stuart (2010). The Twisted Tale of Glam Rock. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-313-37986-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hewitt, Paolo; Hellier, John (2015). Steve Marriott: All Too Beautiful. Dean Street Press. ISBN 978-1-910570-69-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Macan, Edward (1997). Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-509887-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Martin, Bill (1996), Music of Yes: Structure and Vision in Progressive Rock, Chicago: Open Court
• Martin, Bill (1998). Listening to the Future: The Time of Progressive Rock, 1968–1978. Open Court. ISBN 0-8126-9368-X. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Moore, Allan (1997). The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-57484-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Moore, Allan (2004), Jethro Tull's Aqualung, Bloomsbury Publishing, ISBN 978-1-4411-1315-3 {{citation}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Moore, Allan (2016). Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-05265-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Palmberg, Mai; Baaz, Maria Eriksson (2001). Same and Other: Negotiating African Identity in Cultural Production. Nordic Africa Institute. ISBN 978-91-7106-477-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Philo, Simon (2014). British Invasion: The Crosscurrents of Musical Influence. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8108-8627-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Prown, Pete; Newquist, Harvey P. (1997). Legends of Rock Guitar: The Essential Reference of Rock's Greatest Guitarists. Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 978-0-7935-4042-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Reynolds, Simon (2006), "New Pop and its Aftermath", On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-134-93951-0 {{citation}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Roberts, Jim; Rooksby, Rikky (2003). The Songwriting Sourcebook: How to Turn Chords Into Great Songs. Hal Leonard. ISBN 978-1-61780-033-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Shepherd, John; Virden, Phil; Vulliamy, Graham (1977), Whose Music?: A Sociology of Musical Languages, Transaction Publishers, ISBN 978-1-4128-4147-4 {{citation}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Turner, Steve (2016). Beatles '66: The Revolutionary Year. New York, NY: HarperLuxe. ISBN 978-0-06-249713-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Willis, Paul E. (2014). Profane Culture. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-6514-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Zoppo, Donato (2014). Prog: Una suite lunga mezzo secolo (in Italian). Arcana. ISBN 978-88-6231-639-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Further reading

• Lee, Edward (1970). Music of the People: A Study of Popular Music in Great Britain. Barrie & Jenkins. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Stump, Paul (1997). The Music's All that Matters: A History of Progressive Rock. Quartet Books. ISBN 978-0-7043-8036-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)