Pop music (a term that originally derives from an abbreviation of "popular") is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented towards a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple love songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes. Pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal", and stands in contrast to art music, and traditional music which was disseminated orally. Although popular music sometimes is known as "pop music", the "two terms are not interchangeable. Popular music is a generic term for music of all ages, but as a genre is particularly associated with the rock and roll Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of the blues, country music and gospel music. Though elements of rock and roll can be heard in country records of the 1930s, and in blues records from the 1920s, rock and roll did not and later rock Rock music is a genre of popular music that entered the mainstream in the 1950s. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country music and also drew on folk music, jazz and classical music. The sound of rock often revolves around the electric guitar, a back beat laid down by a rhythm section of electric bass guitar and style.[citation needed]

Contents

Definitions

Hatch and Millward define pop music as "a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz and folk musics".[1] 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 has always contained songs from a variety of sources, including classical Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 9th century to present times. The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common practice period, jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th century American popular music. Its West African pedigree, rock, and novelty songs A novelty song is a comical or nonsensical song, performed principally for its comical effect. Humorous songs, or those containing humorous elements, are not necessarily novelty songs. The term arose in Tin Pan Alley to describe one of the major divisions of popular music. The other two divisions were ballads and dance music. Novelty songs, while pop music as a genre is usually seen as existing and developing separately.[2] Thus "pop music" may be used to describe a distinct genre, aimed at a youth market, often characterized as a softer alternative to rock and roll Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of the blues, country music and gospel music. Though elements of rock and roll can be heard in country records of the 1930s, and in blues records from the 1920s, rock and roll did not.[3]

Origin of the term

The term "pop song," is first recorded as being used in 1926 in the sense of a piece of music "having popular appeal".[4] Hatch and Millward indicate that many events in the history of recording in the 1920s can be seen as the birth of the modern pop music industry, including in country Country music is a blend of traditional and popular musical forms traditionally found in the Southern United States and the Canadian Maritimes that evolved rapidly in the 1920s, blues Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre created primarily within the African-American communities in the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and and hillbilly music.[5]

According to Grove Music Online, the term "pop music" "originated in Britain in the mid-1950s as a description for Rock and roll and the new youth music styles that it influenced ...".[6] The Oxford Dictionary of Music states that while pop's "[e]arlier meaning meant concerts appealing to a wide audience ...[,] [s]ince the late 1950s, however, pop has had the special meaning of non‐classical mus[ic], usually in the form of songs, performed by such artists as the Beatles The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. From 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney (bass guitar, vocals), George Harrison (lead guitar, vocals) and Ringo Starr (drums, vocals). Rooted in skiffle, the Rolling Stones The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in April 1962 by guitarist and harmonica player Brian Jones, pianist Ian Stewart, vocalist Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards. Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early lineup, ABBA ABBA was a Swedish pop music group formed in Stockholm in 1972, consisting of Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Agnetha Fältskog. Throughout the band's existence, Fältskog and Ulvaeus were a married couple, as were Lyngstad and Andersson - although both couples later divorced. They became one of the most, etc."[7] Grove Music Online also states that "... in the early 1960s [the term] ‘pop music’ competed terminologically with Beat music Beat music, British beat, or Merseybeat , is a rock music genre that developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. Beat music is a fusion of rock and roll, doo wop, skiffle, R&B and soul. The beat movement provided most of the bands responsible for the British invasion of the American pop charts in the period after 1964, and provided the [in England], while in the USA its coverage overlapped (as it still does) with that of ‘rock and roll’."[6] Chambers' Dictionary mentions the contemporary usage of the term "pop art Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art. Pop removes the material from its context and isolates the object,";[8] Grove Music Online states that the "term pop music ... seems to have been a spin-off from the terms pop art and pop culture Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the late 20th and early 21st century. Heavily influenced, coined slightly earlier, and referring to a whole range of new, often American, media-culture products".[6]

From about 1967 the term was increasingly used in opposition to the term rock music Rock music is a genre of popular music that entered the mainstream in the 1950s. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country music and also drew on folk music, jazz and classical music. The sound of rock often revolves around the electric guitar, a back beat laid down by a rhythm section of electric bass guitar and, a division that gave generic significance to both terms.[9] Whereas rock aspired to authenticity and an expansion of the possibilities of popular music,[9] pop was more commercial, ephemeral and accessible.[10] According to Simon Frith Simon Frith is a former rock critic and a sociologist who specializes in popular music culture. He read PPE at Oxford and did a doctorate in Sociology at UC Berkeley. He is the author of many books, including The Sociology of Rock , Sound Effects (Panteon, 1981), Art into Pop (Methuen, 1987) written with Howard Horne), Music for Pleasure ( pop music is produced "as a matter of enterprise not art", is "designed to appeal to everyone" and "doesn't come from any particular place or mark off any particular taste". It is "not driven by any significant ambition except profit and commercial reward ... and, in musical terms, it is essentially conservative". It is, "provided from on high (by record companies, radio programmers and concert promoters) rather than being made from below ... Pop is not a do-it-yourself music but is professionally produced and packaged".[11]

Influences and development

Technological developments played an important role in the dissemination of pop music, particularly the 7-inch 45 rpm record (right) and the Compact Disc (above). The 12-inch 33 rpm record (left) was more associated with rock albums than with pop music.[citation needed]

Throughout its development, pop music has absorbed influences from most other genres of popular music. Early pop music drew on the sentimental ballad A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later North America, Australia and North Africa. Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet for its form, gained its use of vocal harmonies from gospel Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music and soul music Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying." Catchy, instrumentation from jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th century American popular music. Its West African pedigree and rock music, orchestration from classical music Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 9th century to present times. The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common practice period, tempo from dance music This article is about dance music in general. You may also be looking for electronic dance music or dance-pop, backing from electronic music Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound producing devices include the telharmonium, Hammond and has recently appropriated spoken passages from rap Hip hop music is a musical genre which developed as part of hip hop culture, and is defined by key stylistic elements such as rapping, DJing, sampling, scratching and beatboxing. Hip hop began in the South Bronx of New York City in the 1970s. The term rap is often used synonymously with hip hop, but hip hop denotes the practices of an entire.[3]

It has also made use of technological innovation. In the 1940s improved microphone A microphone (colloquially called a mic or mike is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1876, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, tape recorders, karaoke systems, hearing aids, design allowed a more intimate singing style[12] and ten or twenty years later inexpensive and more durable 45 r.p.m. records for singles "revolutionized the manner in which pop has been disseminated" and helped to move pop music to ‘a record/radio/film star system’.[12] Another technological change was the widespread availability of television in the 1950s; with televised performances, "[p]op stars had to have a visual presence".[12] In the 1960s, the introduction of inexpensive, portable transistor radios A transistor radio is a small transistor-based radio receiver. Historically, the term "transistor radio" refers to a radio that is monaural and typically receives only the 540–1600 kilocycle AM broadcast band meant that teenagers could listen to music outside of the home.[12] Multi-track recording Multitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole. This is the most common method of recording popular music. In the 2000s, multitracking software for computers became widely used (from the 1960s); and digital sampling In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song. The wide spread use of sampling in popular music originated with the birth of Hip Hop music in New York in the late 70's and early 80's. This is typically done with a sampler, which can be a (from the 1980s) have also been utilized as methods for the creation and elaboration of pop music.[3] By the early 1980s, the promotion of pop music had been greatly affected by the rise of Music Television channels like MTV MTV is an American cable television network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs. Today, MTV rarely play music videos, and primarily broadcasts a variety of popular culture and reality television shows targeted at adolescents and, which "favoured those artists such as Michael Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and philanthropist. Referred to as the King of Pop, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records. His contribution to music, dance and fashion, along with a much-publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular, Madonna, and Prince Prince is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. He has also been known under the unpronounceable symbol , which he used between 1993 and 2000. This name change invoked controversy and many referred to him as "the artist formerly known as Prince" often abbreviated to "TAFKAP", or simply "The Artist" who had a strong visual appeal".[12]

Pop music has been dominated by the American and (from the mid-1960s) British music industries The music industry sells compositions, recordings and performances of music. Among the many individuals and organizations that operate within the industry are the musicians who compose and perform the music; the companies and professionals who create and sell recorded music (e.g., music publishers, producers, studios, engineers, record labels,, whose influence has made pop music something of an international monoculture Monoculture is the agricultural saying of producing or growing one single crop over a wide area. It is widely used in modern industrial agriculture and its implementation has allowed for large harvests from minimal labor. However, monocultures can lead to the quicker spread of diseases, where a uniform crop is susceptible to a pathogen. 'Crop, but most regions and countries have their own form of pop music, sometimes producing local versions of wider trends, and lending them local characteristics.[13] Some of these trends (for example Europop Europop refers to a style of pop music that first developed in today's form in Europe, throughout the late 1970s. Europop topped the charts throughout the 1980s and ’90s. Some Europop stars came from France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands and United Kingdom; but most were Swedish in origin. In the 1970s, such groups were primarily popular) have had a significant impact of the development of the genre.[3]

According to Grove Music Online, "Western-derived pop styles, whether coexisting with or marginalizing distinctively local genres, have spread throughout the world and have come to constitute stylistic common denominators in global commercial music cultures".[14] Some non-Western countries, such as Japan, have developed a thriving pop music industry, most of which is devoted to Western-style pop, has for several years has produced a greater quantity of music of everywhere except the USA.[14] The spread of Western-style pop music has been interpreted variously as representing processes of Americanization, homogenization, modernization, creative appropriation, cultural imperialism, and/or a more general process of globalization.[14]

Characteristics

Musicologists often identify the following characteristics as typical of the pop music genre:

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 The study of rhythm, stress, and pitch in speech is called prosody; it is a topic in linguistics. Narmour describes three categories of prosodic rules which create rhythmic successions which are additive , cumulative (short-long), or countercumulative (long-short). Cumulation is associated with closure or relaxation, countercumulation with, a mainstream style and a simple traditional structure The structures or musical forms of songs in popular music are typically sectional, repeating forms, such as strophic form. Other common forms include thirty-two-bar form, verse-chorus form, and the twelve bar blues. Popular music songs are rarely composed using different music for each stanza of the lyrics.[15] Common variants include the verse-chorus form Verse-chorus form is a musical form common in popular music and predominant in rock since the 1960s. In contrast to AABA form, which is focused on the verse , in verse-chorus form the chorus is highlighted (prepared and contrasted with the verse) and the thirty-two-bar form The thirty-two-bar form, often called AABA from the musical form or order in which its melodies occur, is common in Tin Pan Alley songs and later popular music including rock, pop and jazz. Though it resembles the ternary form of the operatic da capo aria its popularity declined and "there were few instances of it in any type of popular music, with a focus on melodies A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a sequence of pitches and durations, while, more figuratively, the term has occasionally been extended to include successions of other musical elements such as tone color and catchy hooks A hook is a musical idea, often a short riff, passage, or phrase, that is used in popular music to make a song appealing and to "catch the ear of the listener". The term generally applies to popular music, especially rock music, hip hop, dance music, and pop. In these genres, the hook is often found in, or consists of, the chorus. A hook, and a chorus A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song. Poetic fixed forms that feature refrains include the villanelle, the virelay, and the sestina that contrasts melodically, rhythmically and harmonically In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic line, or the "horizontal" aspect with the verse The structures or musical forms of songs in popular music are typically sectional, repeating forms, such as strophic form. Other common forms include thirty-two-bar form, verse-chorus form, and the twelve bar blues. Popular music songs are rarely composed using different music for each stanza of the lyrics.[16] The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment.[17] The lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions.[3]

Harmony A chord progression is a series of musical chords, or chord changes that "aims for a definite goal" of establishing (or contradicting) a tonality founded on a key, root or tonic chord. Chords and chord theory are generally known as harmony in pop music is often "that of classical European tonality Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840 (Reti, 1958; Simms 1975, 119; Judd, 1998; Dahlhaus 1990). Although Fétis used it as a general term for a, only more simple-minded."[18] Cliches include the barbershop harmony (i.e. moving from a secondary dominant Secondary dominant is a type of chord used in musical harmony. It refers to a dominant of a degree other than the tonic, with V7/V, the dominant of the dominant, "being the most frequently encountered". The chord to which a secondary dominant progresses is a tonicized chord in that it is briefly treated as the tonic. Tonicizations longer harmony to a dominant harmony, and then to the tonic) and blues scale The hexatonic, or six note, blues scale consists of the minor pentatonic scale plus the ♯4 or ♭5 degree. A major feature of the blues scale is the use of blue notes, however, since blue notes are considered alternative inflections, a blues scale may be considered to not fit the traditional definition of a scale. At its most basic, a single-influenced harmony.[19] "The influence of the circle-of-fifths In music theory, the circle of fifths shows the relationships among the twelve tones of the chromatic scale, their corresponding key signatures, and the associated major and minor keys. More specifically, it is a geometrical representation of relationships among the 12 pitch classes of the chromatic scale in pitch class space. Since the term ' paradigm has declined since the mid-1950s. The harmonic languages of rock and soul have moved away from the all-encompassing influence of the dominant The dominant is a psycho-acoustic phenomenon. It is created in the ear, conforms to verifiable mathematical relationships, yet only really exists in the musical imagination of the listener. That said however, all humans, and evidently, some animals, experience the sensation of Tonality function. ...There are other tendencies (perhaps also traceable to the use of a guitar as a composing instrument) – pedal-point harmonies, root motion by diatonic step, modal harmonic and melodic organization – that point away from functional tonality and toward a tonal sense that is less directional, more free-floating."[20]

See also

Music portal

Notes

  1. ^ D. Hatch and S. Millward, From Blues to Rock: an Analytical History of Pop Music (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), ISBN 0719014891, p. 1.
  2. ^ R. Serge Denisoff and William L. Schurk, Tarnished Gold: the Record Industry Revisited (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 3rd edn., 1986), ISBN 0887386180, pp. 2–3.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), ISBN 0-521-55660-0, pp. 95-6.
  4. ^ J. Simpson and E. Weiner, Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), ISBN 0198611862, cf pop.
  5. ^ D. Hatch and S. Millward, From Blues to Rock: an Analytical History of Pop Music, ISBN 0719014891, p. 49.
  6. ^ a b c R. Middleton, et al, "Pop", Grove music online, retrieved 14 March 2010. (subscription required)
  7. ^ "Pop", The Oxford Dictionary of Music, retrieved 9 March 2010.(subscription required)
  8. ^ A. M. Macdonald, ed., Chambers' Twentieth Century Dictionary (Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap, 1977), ISBN 0550102310, cf. pop.
  9. ^ a b Kenneth Gloag in The Oxford Companion to Music, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ISBN 0198662122, p. 983.
  10. ^ a b c d T. Warner, Pop Music: Technology and Creativity: Trevor Horn and the Digital Revolution (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), ISBN 075463132X, pp. 3-4.
  11. ^ S. Frith, "Pop music", in S. Frith, W. Straw and J. Street, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), ISBN 0-521-55660-0, pp. 95–6.
  12. ^ a b c d e D. Buckley, "Pop" "II. Implications of technology", Grove Music Online, retrieved 15 March 2010.
  13. ^ J. Kun, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), ISBN 0520244249, p. 201.
  14. ^ a b c P. Manuel, "Pop. Non-Western cultures 1. Global dissemination", Grove Music Online, retrieved 14 March 2010.
  15. ^ W. Everett, Expression in Pop-rock Music: A Collection of Critical and Analytical Essays (London: Taylor & Francis, 2000), p. 272.
  16. ^ J. Shepherd, Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Performance and production (Continuum, 2003), p. 508.
  17. ^ V. Kramarz, The Pop Formulas: Harmonic Tools of the Hit Makers (Mel Bay Publications, 2007), p. 61.
  18. ^ Winkler, Peter (1978). "Toward a theory of pop harmony", In Theory Only, 4, pp. 3-26.
  19. ^ Sargeant, p. 198. cited in Winkler (1978), p. 4.
  20. ^ Winkler (1978), p. 22.

Bibliography

External links

Pop music
By style Adult contemporary · Adult oriented · Baroque · Blue-eyed soul · Bubblegum · Christian · Country · Dance · Emo · Pop punk · Power pop · Pop soul · Pop rock · Psychedelic · Synthpop & Electropop · Sunshine · Swamp · Teen · Traditional · Yé-yé
By region/country American · Arabic · Balkan · Canada · Hongkongese pop (Cantonese · HK English · Mandarin) · Chinese · Europop (Austropop, French, Nederpop, Swedish) · Greek · Indian (Filmi) · Japanese (Picopop, Shibuya-kei) · Korean · Latin (Brazilian · Mexican) · Pakistani · Persian · Philippine · Russian · Ukraine · SFR Yugoslavia · Taiwanese · Thai · Turkish · United Kingdom
Other topics Boy band · Girl group · List of pop music terms · Pop culture · Pop icon · Popular music · Pop music automation

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