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Pop music

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This article is about a specific music genre. For popular music in general, see Popular music. For other uses, see Pop music (disambiguation).

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Pop music
Stylistic originsRock and roll • Jazz • Doo-wop • Folk • Dance music
Cultural origins1920s.[1] 1950s, United States and United Kingdom
Typical instrumentsVocals • Electric guitar • Bass guitar • Drums • Keyboards • Synthesizer • Drum machine • Sequencer • Sampler
Subgenres
Baroque pop • Bubblegum pop • Dance-pop • Electropop • Europop • Indie pop • Operatic pop • Power pop • Sophisti-pop • Space age pop • Sunshine pop • Teen pop
Fusion genres
Country pop • Disco • Dream pop • Jangle pop • Pop punk • Pop rap • Pop rock • Psychedelic pop • Technopop • Urban pop

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Pop music is a term that "from the late 1950s has been applied to the central and most widely circulated kinds of popular music"[2], such as rock and roll and its related forms. Pop music originated in the United States in the 1920s from a family of folk music styles including blues and country that went on to form the basis of rock and roll and its subsequent forms. While pop and rock are related, or even, in some definitions, put together under the same heading, rock critics since the 1960s have tended to depict pop and rock as opposites; rock critics tend to consider rock as "serious" and "authentic" and call pop music "light" and "commercial".

Some definitions of pop are very broad and inclusive, covering all contemporary popular forms, including rock, country, reggae, rap, and so on. Other definitions are more narrow, defining pop as singles-based music aimed at teens. Pop music tends to written in a tuneful, repetitive style that makes it accessible to a general public. Pop songs are usually from two and a half to three and a half minutes long, with a clear rhythm, a catchy melody, and often, a verse-chorus structure. The lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes such as love and romantic relationships.

Technology has played a major role in dissemination of pop music, from the role of radio broadcasts which popularized country songs in the US in the 1920s, to television shows which promoted pop songs in the 1950s, to music video television channels in the 1980s. Technology has also played an important role in the production of pop music, ranging from the use of the microphone for singing, beginning in the 1920s, which permitted a more intimate, expressive vocal style, to the use of multitrack recordings, beginning in the 1960s, which gave producers much more control over the finished sound. In the 1970s and 1980s, pop music began to use synthesizer technologies to create new sounds; this creative use of new technologies continued in the 1990s and 2000s with the use of digital sampling, vocoders, and digital synths.

Terminology

Simon Frith argues that "pop music is a slippery concept, perhaps because it is so familiar, so easily used".[3] Another factor that makes pop music hard to define is that "few elements within pop have been constant during pop music's short history"[4]. Frith states that while pop can "be diffentiated from classical or art music" and from folk music", it "may otherwise include any sort of style".[3] Frith states that pop music is music that is "accessible to a general public" and "produced commercially" on a for-profit basis; when "[d]efined in these terms, 'pop music' includes all contemporary popular forms-rock, country, reggae, rap, and so on."[5].

Nevertheless, Frith acknowledges that this "inclusive definition" can be problematic, because it does not differentiate between pop, which he defines as "instant singles-based music aimed at teenagers" and rock, which he defines as "album-based music for adults".[3] As such, Frith concludes that one way of defining pop is through a "residual" process; that is, pop music is "what's left when all other popular music forms [are] stripped away (rock, country, rap).[6]. Another way that Frith defines pop is as a "catch-all category" [3] Frith remarks that one of the paradoxes of popular music is that "any kind of music can feed into it and yet it remains categorically distinct"[7] Hatch and Millward point out that "many of the arguments and controversies which surround the subject [of pop music] are concerned with problems of categorization": how can different, yet related styles be categorized?.[8]

The term "pop song" is first recorded as being used in 1926 in the sense of a piece of music "having popular appeal".[9] Starting in the 1950s the term "pop music" has been used to describe a distinct genre, aimed at a youth market, often characterized as a softer alternative to rock and roll; "Early Pop/Rock emerged in the late '50s, as the initial rock & roll craze began to die down, and a lighter, smoother (but still similar) alternative to rock was needed".[3][10] The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians defines pop as "a term that from the late 1950s has been applied to the central and most widely circulated kinds of popular music..., in particular rock and roll, reggae, etc." Hardy and Laing define pop music as "a broad term normally used for the softer, even more teenage-oriented sounds that emerged as Rock 'n' Roll waned in the early 1960s..."[11].

Hatch and Millward define pop music as "a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz and folk musics" [12]and they state that the "birth of the pop music industry" was with the "discovery of Jimmie Rodgers in 1927"[13]. Hatch and Millward state that pop music is distinguished from other popular music, such as Hollywood soundtrack music or Tin Pan Alley music in that pop music relies on an "aural tradition" (learning "by ear" from records or other musicians), whereas other popular music forms were transmitted via sheet music. [14]

Hatch and Millward state that the "first generation" of British pop musicians copied American popular music.[15] In Britain, "women singers generally occupied a 'second division' pop status" compared to male bands. [16]. Iain Chambers asserts that between 1963 and 1965, pop was "a central symbol of fashionable, metropolitan British culture.[17] In the aftermath of the British Invasion, when British bands became popular in the US, from about 1967, the term "pop music" was increasingly used in opposition to the term rock music, to describe a form that was more commercial, ephemeral and accessible.[18]

Comparison with rock

D. Hill notes that "Pop implies a very different set of values to rock. Pop makes no bones about being mainstream. It accepts and embraces the requirement to be instantly pleasing and to make a pretty picture of itself. Rock on the other hand, has liked to think it was somehow more profound, non-conformist, self-directed and intelligent".[19] Although pop music is often seen as oriented towards the singles charts, as a genre it is not the sum of all chart music, which have always contained songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and novelty songs, while pop music as a genre is usually seen as existing and developing separately.[20] Frith confirms this point with his remark that it is "misleading to equate pop with record sales" (i.e., chart success).[3]

Characteristics

Pop music has been defined as "...modern commercial music, usually tuneful, up-tempo and repetitive, that is aimed at the general public and the youth market in particular."[21] Musicologists often identify the following characteristics as typical of the pop music genre:[3][10][18][22]

  • a focus on the individual song or singles, rather than on extended works or albums
  • an aim of appealing to a general audience, rather than to a particular sub-culture or ideology
  • an emphasis on craftsmanship rather than formal "artistic" qualities
  • an emphasis on recording, production, and technology, over live performance
  • a tendency to reflect existing trends rather than progressive developments
  • much pop music is intended to encourage dancing, or it uses dance-oriented beats or rhythms[18]

The main medium of pop music is the song, often between two and a half and three and a half minutes in length, generally marked by a consistent and noticeable rhythmic element, a mainstream style and a simple traditional structure.[23] Common variants include the verse-chorus form and the thirty-two-bar form, with a focus on melodies and catchy hooks, and a chorus that contrasts melodically, rhythmically and harmonically with the verse.[24] The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment.[25] The lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions.[3] The "easy sexuality described in pop music provided an idealized version of sexual freedom" [26].

Brian Longhurst notes that "pop songs often utilize the same or very similar drum patterns, chord progressions, song structures, and lyrics, while being distinguished by marketing techniques" such as the "construction of 'personalities' involved in selling" a group or singer.[27]

Influences and development

Throughout its development, pop music has absorbed influences from most other genres of popular music. In the 1920s, pop music drew its repertoire from the US folk tradition, which included country blues, boogie woogie, gospel, and hillbilly styles.[28] "[P]op music commenced with the advent of commercial recordings and radio broadcasts" in the Southern US states during the 1920s; these technologies helped to spread awareness of the ragtime, blues, 'hillbilly'-'country', and gospel styles.[29] The styles of music used in early pop during the 1920s can be "seen as an extended family", due to all of the inter-relationships between the different styles (e.g., blues and boogie).[30]

Early pop music drew on the sentimental ballad for its form, gained its use of vocal harmonies from gospel and soul music, instrumentation from jazz and rock music, orchestration from classical music, tempo from dance music, backing from electronic music and has recently appropriated spoken passages from rap.[3] It has also made use of technological innovation, being itself made possible by the invention of the electronic microphone-which allowed singers to use a more intimate, expressive singing style-- and the vinyl record, and adopting multi-track recording and digital sampling as methods for the creation and elaboration of pop music.[3] Although guitars dominated the instrumental aspect of pop music for much of pop's history, by the 1970s, the development of synthesizers led to an instrument that could "threaten the guitar's domination of pop music".[31] One instrument that also played a longtime role in pop was the piano; however, rather than challenging the supremacy of the guitar, the piano tended to be used in combination with the guitar, both in 1930s and 1940s dance bands, in 1950s rock and roll groups [32] and in 1960s and 1970s soft pop.

Pop music was also communicated largely through the mass media, including radio, film, TV and, particularly since the 1980s, video.[3] Television is "pop's largest and most important public arena"; in Britain, the BBC show Top of the Pops has been presenting "successful pop records" for 35 years.[18]

Hatch and Millward state that the "three most important periods in pop development" are:[33]

  • The "crystallization" of rock and roll in the early to mid-1950s
  • The beginning of British rock in the early to mid-1960s
  • The development of punk and New Wave about a decade later

Pop music has been dominated by the American (and from the mid-1960s British) music industries, whose influence has made pop music something of an international monoculture, but most regions and countries have their own form of pop music, sometimes producing local versions of wider trends, and lending them local characteristics.[34] Frith states that in pop music, songs tend to be written by professional songwriters, rather than by the singers or bands, and as such, the "singer-songwriter is not a common pop figure" (he states that Barry Manilow is an exception to this trend)[3]. Some of these trends (for example Europop) have had a significant impact of the development of the genre.[3] Hatch and Millward assert that in the 1980s, "both blues and gospel vocal techniques have been very influential in pop music" .[35] "Girl groups have continued to play a major role in late 1990s pop".[36].

Notes

  1. ^ Hatch, David and Millward, Stephen. From blues to rock: an analytical history of pop music. p.2
  2. ^ The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m S. Frith, "Pop Music" in S. Frith, W. Stray and J. Street, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 94. Cite error: The named reference "Firth2001" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  4. ^ Warner, Timothy. Pop music: technology and creativity: Trevor Horn and the digital revolution. 2003. p. 3
  5. ^ ibid
  6. ^ ibid
  7. ^ Frith, Simon. Popular Music: Music and Society. 2004. p. 4
  8. ^ Hatch, David and Millward, Stephen. From blues to rock: an analytical history of pop music. p.14
  9. ^ J. Simpson and E. Weiner, Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), cf pop.
  10. ^ a b "Early Pop/Rock". Allmusic. Retrieved 2009-08-07.
  11. ^ Warner, Timothy. Pop music: technology and creativity: Trevor Horn and the digital revolution. 2003
  12. ^ Hatch, David and Millward, Stephen. From blues to rock: an analytical history of pop music. p.1
  13. ^ Hatch, David and Millward, Stephen. From blues to rock: an analytical history of pop music. p.49
  14. ^ Hatch, David and Millward, Stephen. From blues to rock: an analytical history of pop music. p.vii
  15. ^ Hatch, David and Millward, Stephen. From blues to rock: an analytical history of pop music. p.vii
  16. ^ Whitely, Sheila. Women and Popular Music: Sexuality, Identity and Subjectivity. 2000. p. 10
  17. ^ Jones, Steve. Pop music and the press. 2002. p. 52.
  18. ^ a b c d T. Warner, Pop music: technology and creativity: Trevor Horn and the digital revolution (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), p. 3. Cite error: The named reference "Warner2003" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  19. ^ R. Shuker, Understanding Popular Music (Abingdon: Routledge, 1994), ISBN 0415107237, p. 5.
  20. ^ R. Serge Denisoff, and William L. Schurk. Tarnished gold: the record industry revisited (Transaction Publishers, 3rd edn., 1986), pp. 2–3.
  21. ^ cf Pop music, Encarta® World English Dictionary (North American Edition), retrieved 14 February 2010.
  22. ^ R. Shuker, Understanding popular music (London: Routledge, 2nd edn., 2001), pp. 8–10.
  23. ^ W. Everett, Expression in Pop-rock Music: A Collection of Critical and Analytical Essays (London: Taylor & Francis, 2000), p. 272.
  24. ^ J. Shepherd, Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Performance and production (Continuum, 2003), p. 508.
  25. ^ V. Kramarz, The Pop Formulas: Hamonic Tools of the Hit Makers (Mel Bay Publications, 2007), p. 61.
  26. ^ Whitely, Sheila. Women and Popular Music: Sexuality, Identity and Subjectivity. 2000. p. 39
  27. ^ B. Longhurst, Popular Music and Society (Cambridge: Polity, 2nd edn., 2007), ISBN 0745631622, p. 4.
  28. ^ Hatch, David and Millward, Stephen. From blues to rock: an analytical history of pop music. p.2
  29. ^ ibid, p. 12
  30. ^ ibid, p. 34
  31. ^ Hatch, David and Millward, Stephen. From blues to rock: an analytical history of pop music. p.40
  32. ^ ibid, p.41
  33. ^ Hatch, David and Millward, Stephen. From blues to rock: an analytical history of pop music. p.42
  34. ^ J. Kun, Audiotopia: music, race, and America (University of California Press, 2005), p. 201.
  35. ^ Hatch, David and Millward, Stephen. From blues to rock: an analytical history of pop music. p. 39
  36. ^ Whitely, Sheila. Women and Popular Music: Sexuality, Identity and Subjectivity. 2000. p. 18

Bibliography

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  • Bell, John L., (2000) The Singing Thing: A Case for Congregational Song, GIA Publications, ISBN 1579991009
  • Bindas, Kenneth J., (1992) America's Musical Pulse: Popular Music in Twentieth-Century Society, Praeger.
  • Clarke, Donald, (1995) The Rise and Fall of Popular Music, St Martin's Press. http://www.musicweb.uk.net/RiseandFall/index.htm
  • Dolfsma, Wilfred, (1999) Valuing Pop Music: Institutions, Values and Economics, Eburon.
  • Dolfsma, Wilfred, (2004) Institutional Economics and the Formation of Preferences: The Advent of Pop Music, Edward Elgar Publishing.
  • Frith, Simon, Straw, Will, Street, John, eds, (2001), The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521556600.
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  • Frith, Simon. Popular Music: Music and Society. Routledge, 2004. ISBN 0415299055
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  • Jones, Steve. Pop music and the press. Temple University Press, 2002 ISBN 1566399661, ISBN 9781566399661
  • Lonergan, David F., (2004) Hit Records, 1950-1975, Scarecrow Press, ISBN 0-8108-5129-6.
  • Longhurst, Brian, (2007), Popular music and society, Cambridge: Polity, 2nd edn., ISBN 0745631622.
  • Maultsby, Portia K., (1996) Intra- and International Identities in American Popular Music, Trading Culture.
  • Middleton, Richard, (1990) Studying Popular Music, Open University Press.
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  • Pleasants, Henry (1969) Serious Music and All That Jazz, Simon & Schuster.
  • Roxon, Lillian, (1969) Rock Encyclopedia, Grosset & Dunlap.
  • Shuker, Roy, (2002) Popular Music: The Key Concepts, Routledge, (2nd edn.) ISBN 0415284252.
  • Starr, Larry & Waterman, Christopher, (2002) American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MTV, Oxford University Press.
  • Warner, Timothy. Pop music: technology and creativity: Trevor Horn and the digital revolution. Ashgate Publishing Ltd. 2003. ISBN 075463132X</ref>.
  • Watkins, S. Craig, (2005) Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement, Beacon Press, ISBN 0807009822.
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