Talk:Traditional pop music

Choice of label

Hi, I linked to this article because it was necessary to set off the words "popular classic" in the middle of a quote, to keep it from being confusing, and (just coming upon it sight unseen and unaware of what's going on here) think it might help solve your problem in this regard. Also added the name Victor Herbert (Prolific composer remembered for Babes in Toyland by about everyone in my generation of Americans, who heard the songs in movies and in school.) under Origins, Classic Pop embraces... BruceWHain (talk) 19:09, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi user:Dickparker1933. For a start, pleae list your objections to the term "traditional pop music"? Then perhaps you could suggest an alternative. Thanks. -- Viajero 11:07, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

In the American context at least, "traditional pop music" should really be stuff by Stephen Foster and Dan Emmett, shouldn't it? — Amcaja 17:26, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

what are American Standards supposed to be? this is a very myopic view of music, suggest renaming this category

I agree, this is a bit of a mess. Of course all definitions of this sort are always going to be fuzzy round the edges, but it does seem a little bizarre to find Rod Stewart and Linda Ronstadt mentioned as being of any significance in an article about Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Warren/Dubin, etc. I would have thought a more significant aspect of this kind of music, not mentioned in the article so far, is its joint roots in (a) East European Jewish music, (b) Viennese operetta, and (c) jazz, with particular reference to the very high proportion of its originators who were either only one generation away from central or eastern Europe, and/or (mostly "and") Jewish. Woblosch 23:22, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Woblosch's point on origins if not that on more recent exponents. However, I find the use of the word "traditional" in the context of mass-market music extremely strange! With any tradition, one can always point out a group of people the tradition can be said to "belong to". So, this music is a tradition of whose, exactly?

I suggest that these perennially favourite songs are better known as popular standards, since they are well-known and unexceptionable. They are likely to be performed by any new singer trying to get established; they also represent a safe, middle-of-the-road choice for musicians who are paid primarily to provide entertaining background music in clubs and restaurants. 124.191.50.164 09:39, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I should add that the label "classic pop" seems to me to better suit the entire genre, than any name including the word "traditional" could possibly do. 124.191.50.164 14:45, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this article needs a LOT of revision - starting from the version as at 9 April 2007, before a huge amount of extremely POV stuff about Linda Ronstadt et al was put in. I've taken some of that out, but it needs a lot more work - eg to add in the points made by Woblosch. I find the idea that Joni Mitchell, for example, writes "traditional pop" utterly bizarre - she writes high quality classic music which may well be appreciated by some admirers of Sinatra etc, but that is not the same thing. There is a good article to be written here, which looks at the "pre-rock" (and non-jazz/blues/R&B) elements and history of Western (US/UK etc) popular music, its relationship with theatre, movies, etc, and the latterday examples of that approach (inc Ronstadt, Rod Stewart etc), but the current article is not a good starting point.Ghmyrtle 15:01, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Idiom

Resolved: Fixed in text. Larger issue of tone raised in new thread.

Under the heading "The advent of Rock and Roll", the second-last paragraph ends with: "... all made forays into this once shied upon territory." My understanding of the idioms involving the verb "shy" is that people "shy away from {territory, etc}" rather than "shy upon {territory, etc}". What do others think? 124.191.50.164 09:39, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's "away from", not "upon". And that's been fixed in the text. But the real problem is that language like that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia at all. That's journalism- and essay-style writing, and is completely inappropriate here. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 23:06, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Last date

A question to ponder: Is there a last date acceptable for a song to classify as belonging to the "classic pop" genre? I'm thinking particularly of songs like The Beatles' "Till There Was You", which strikes me as very much of the same type, even though performed by a band more usually labelled "rock". Your opinions, please? 124.191.50.164 14:53, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I now discover that "Till There Was You" was written by Meredith Willson, composer and lyricist of the famous Broadway musical "The Music Man". Duh! ;-) But the question stands, even if my first example was totally inappropriate. For example, do we include the songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim? or the ballads (clearly not rock) of Elton John & Bernie Taupin, eg "Candle in the Wind"? 124.191.50.164 03:48, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Jobim's roots were in jazz and Brazilian folk music. With the combined influences came bosanova, which is essentially a hybrid of "cool" jazz and samba. The music has commonality with the works of Kern, Porter, etc. It has no homage to rock.

The ballads of Elton John are rock music. John is a rock singer. He phrases like The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, etc. As opposed to Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Jack Jones, etc. Plus, John's arrangements are performed by the rythem/keyboard instruments associated with rock, not the brass and woodwind instruments normally associated with traditional pop music.

A truer grey area is the music of Burt Bacharach.

Eelb53 (talk) 07:45, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

External sources

Do we have external sources that use either of the labels "classic pop" or "traditional pop"? If not, doesn't this article violate Wikipedia guidelines? 124.191.50.164 14:53, 10 June 2007 (UTC) Yes, AllMusic.com uses the term "traditional pop". (It is the first external source listed at the bottom of the page.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.50.4.7 (talk) 02:50, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Needs a top-to-bottom total rewrite - violates at least 3 policies, and various guidelines

This article is in flagrant violation of WP policy, specifically WP:No original research and WP:Neutral point of view, and WP:Verifiability, as well as guidelines like WP:Reliable sources, WP:Manual of Style, and WP:How to write a good article. It has far too few sources, and is chock full of emotive, personal-opinion-pushing language more suited for People magazine. It is written pretty much in the style of a high school or freshman university essay for an English composition class. It's tone, and the leaps it makes in asserting as fact all sorts of things for which we have no cited sources, is grossly inappropriately for an encyclopedia. That said, the breadth of coverage is good. It just needs to be reined in and cleaned up. A lot. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 23:14, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree it definately needs a clean up. I think a back to the sources approach will be needed. Do you want to do this one or shall I put it on my to do list?--SabreBD (talk) 23:56, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Touch of Schmilsson

I'm not well-informed about this article's subject — but maybe the article should mention the following (which predated Ronstadt's album of standards by a decade):

A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night108.36.209.26 (talk) 02:37, 3 January 2012 (UTC)