Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom. The terms ''popular music'' and ''pop music'' are often used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular and includes many disparate styles. During the 1950s and 1960s, pop music encompassed rock and roll and the youth-oriented styles it influenced. '' Rock'' and ''pop'' music remained roughly synonymous until the late 1960s, after which ''pop'' became associated with music that was more commercial, ephemeral, and accessible. Although much of the music that appears on record charts is considered to be pop music, the genre is distinguished from chart music. Identifying factors usually include repeated choruses and hooks, short to medium-length songs written in a basic format (often the verse-chorus structure), and rhythms or tempos that can be easily danced to. Much pop music also borrows elements from other styles such as rock,

urban Urban means "related to a city". In that sense, the term may refer to: * Urban area, geographical area distinct from rural areas * Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities Urban may also refer to: General * Urban (name), a list of people ...

, dance,

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, and country.

Definitions and etymology

David Hatch and Stephen Millward describe pop music as "a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz, and folk music". According to Pete Seeger, pop music is "professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music". David Boyle, a music researcher, states pop music as any type of music that a person has been exposed to by the mass media. Most individuals think that pop music is just the

singles charts A record chart, in the music industry, also called a music chart, is a ranking of recorded music according to certain criteria during a given period. Many different criteria are used in worldwide charts, often in combination. These include rec ...

and not the sum of all chart music. The music charts contain songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and

novelty song A novelty song is a type of song built upon some form of novel concept, such as a gimmick, a piece of humor, or a sample of popular culture. Novelty songs partially overlap with comedy songs, which are more explicitly based on humor, and wit ...

s. As a genre, pop music is seen to exist and develop separately. Therefore, the term "pop music" may be used to describe a distinct genre, designed to appeal to all, often characterized as "instant singles-based music aimed at teenagers" in contrast to rock music as "album-based music for adults". Pop music continuously evolves along with the term's definition. According to music writer Bill Lamb, popular music is defined as "the music since industrialization in the 1800s that is most in line with the tastes and interests of the urban middle class." The term "pop song" was first used in 1926, in the sense of a piece of music "having popular appeal".J. Simpson and E. Weiner, ''Oxford English Dictionary''(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). , cf. pop. 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, blues, and

hillbilly music Hillbilly is a term (often derogatory) for people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas in the United States, primarily in southern Appalachia and the Ozarks. The term was later used to refer to people from other rural and mountainous areas we ...

Rolling stones - 11 luglio 2006 - san siro

According to the website of '' The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', the term "pop music" "originated in

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

in the mid-1950s as a description for rock and roll and the new youth music styles that it influenced", this is however unsubstantiated.R. Middleton, et al.
"Pop"
''Grove music online'', retrieved 14 March 2010. ''The Oxford Dictionary of Music'' states that while pop's "earlier meaning meant concerts appealing to a wide audience ..since the late 1950s, however, pop has had the special meaning of non-classical mus c usually in the form of songs, performed by such artists as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, ABBA, etc." ''Grove Music Online'' also states that " ..in the early 1960s, he term'pop music' competed terminologically with beat music n England while in the US its coverage overlapped (as it still does) with that of 'rock and roll'". From about 1967, the term "pop music" was increasingly used in opposition to the term rock music, a division that gave generic significance to both terms.Kenneth Gloag in ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), , p. 983. While rock aspired to authenticity and an expansion of the possibilities of popular music, pop was more commercial, ephemeral, and accessible.T. Warner, ''Pop Music: Technology and Creativity: Trevor Horn and the Digital Revolution'' (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), , pp. 3–4. According to British musicologist Simon Frith, pop music is produced "as a matter of enterprise not art", and is "designed to appeal to everyone" but "doesn't come from any particular place or mark off any particular taste". Frith adds that 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".

Characteristics

According to Frith, characteristics of pop music include an aim of appealing to a general audience, rather than to a particular sub-culture or ideology, and an emphasis on craftsmanship rather than formal "artistic" qualities. Besides, Frith also offers three identifying characteristics of pop music: light entertainment, commercial imperatives, and personal identification. Pop music grew out of a light entertainment/ easy listening tradition. Pop music is more conservative than other music genres such as folk, blues, country, and tradition. Many pop songs do not contain themes of resistance, opposition, or political themes, rather focusing more on love and relationships. Therefore, pop music does not challenge its audiences socially, and does not cause political activism. Frith also said the main purpose of pop music is to create revenue. It is not a medium of free articulation of the people. Instead, pop music seeks to supply the nature of personal desire and achieve the instant empathy with cliche personalities, stereotypes, and melodrama that appeals to listeners. It is mostly about how much revenue pop music makes for record companies. Music scholar Timothy Warner said pop music typically has an emphasis on recording, production, and technology, rather than live performance; a tendency to reflect existing trends rather than progressive developments; and seeks to encourage dancing or uses dance-oriented rhythms. 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. The structure of many popular songs is that of a verse and a chorus, the chorus serving as the portion of the track that is designed to stick in the ear through simple repetition both musically and lyrically. The chorus is often where the music builds towards and is often preceded by "the drop" where the bass and drum parts "drop out". Common variants include the verse-chorus form and the

thirty-two-bar form The 32-bar form, also known as the AABA song form, American popular song form and the ballad form, is a song structure commonly found in Tin Pan Alley songs and other American popular music, especially in the first half of the 20th century. A ...

, with a focus on

melodies A melody (from Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combinati ...

and catchy hooks, and a chorus that contrasts melodically, rhythmically and

harmonically In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However, ...

with the verse. The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment. The lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions. Harmony and

chord progression In a musical composition, a chord progression or harmonic progression (informally chord changes, used as a plural) is a succession of chords. Chord progressions are the foundation of harmony in Western musical tradition from the common practice ...

s in pop music are often "that of classical European tonality, only more simple-minded." Clichés include the barbershop quartet-style harmony (i.e. ii – V – I) and

blues scale Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African- ...

-influenced harmony. There was a lessening of the influence of traditional views of the

circle of fifths In music theory, the circle of fifths is a way of organizing the 12 chromatic pitches as a sequence of perfect fifths. (This is strictly true in the standard 12-tone equal temperament system — using a different system requires one interval of ...

between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s, including less predominance for the dominant

function Function or functionality may refer to: Computing * Function key, a type of key on computer keyboards * Function model, a structured representation of processes in a system * Function object or functor or functionoid, a concept of object-oriente ...

Development and influence

Technology and media

In the 1940s, improved microphone design allowed a more intimate singing style and, ten or twenty years later, inexpensive and more durable 45 rpm records for singles "revolutionized the manner in which pop has been disseminated", which helped to move pop music to "a record/radio/film star system".D. Buckley, "Pop" "II. Implications of technology", ''Grove Music Online'', retrieved 15 March 2010. Another technological change was the widespread availability of television in the 1950s with televised performances, forcing "pop stars had to have a visual presence". In the 1960s, the introduction of inexpensive, portable

transistor radio A transistor radio is a small portable radio receiver that uses transistor-based circuitry. Following the invention of the transistor in 1947—which revolutionized the field of consumer electronics by introducing small but powerful, convenient ...

s meant that teenagers in the developed world could listen to music outside of the home. By the early 1980s, the promotion of pop music had been greatly affected by the rise of music television channels like MTV, which "favoured those artists such as Michael Jackson and Madonna who had a strong visual appeal".

Multi-track recording Multi-track may refer to: * Multitrack recording, the process of mixing individual sound sources to a single recording * Multi-track diplomacy, a method of conflict resolution * Multi track, a process of civil litigation in England and Wales ** ...

(from the 1960s) and digital sampling (from the 1980s) have also been used as methods for the creation and elaboration of pop music. 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. Music critic Simon Reynolds writes that beginning with 1967, a divide would exist between "progressive" pop and "mass/chart" pop, a separation which was "also, broadly, one between boys and girls, middle-class and working-class." The latter half of the 20th-century included a large-scale trend in American culture in which the boundaries between art and pop music were increasingly blurred. Between 1950 and 1970, there was a debate of pop versus art. Since then, certain music publications have embraced the music's legitimacy, a trend referred to as " poptimism".

Stylistic evolution

Throughout its development, pop music has absorbed influences from other genres of popular music. Early pop music drew on the

sentimental ballad A sentimental ballad is an emotional style of music that often deals with romantic and intimate relationships, and to a lesser extent, loneliness, death, war, drug abuse, politics and religion, usually in a poignant but solemn manner.J. ...

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, rhythmic elements from hip-hop music, and spoken passages from

rap Rapping (also rhyming, spitting, emceeing or MCing) is a musical form of vocal delivery that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular". It is performed or chanted, usually over a backing beat or musical accompaniment. The ...

.S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street, eds, '' The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), , pp. 95–105. In 2016, a '' Scientific Reports'' study that examined over 464,000 recordings of popular music recorded between 1955 and 2010 found that, compared to 1960s pop music, contemporary pop music uses a smaller variety of pitch progressions, greater average volume, less diverse instrumentation and recording techniques, and less timbral variety. '' Scientific American''s John Matson reported that this "seems to support the popular anecdotal observation that pop music of yore was "better", or at least more varied, than today's top-40 stuff". However, he also noted that the study may not have been entirely representative of pop in each generation.John Matson, "Is Pop Music Evolving, or Is It Just Getting Louder?", ''Scientific American'', 26 July 2012
. Retrieved 30 March 2016 In the 1960s, the majority of mainstream pop music fell in two categories: guitar, drum and bass groups or singers backed by a traditional orchestra. Since early in the decade, it was common for pop producers, songwriters, and engineers to freely experiment with musical form, orchestration, unnatural reverb, and other sound effects. Some of the best known examples are Phil Spector's Wall of Sound and

Joe Meek Robert George "Joe" Meek (5 April 1929 – 3 February 1967) was an English record producer, sound engineer and songwriter who pioneered space age and experimental pop music. He also assisted in the development of recording practices like over ...

's use of homemade electronic sound effects for acts like

the Tornados The Tornados (The Tornadoes in North America) were an English instrumental rock group of the 1960s that acted as backing group for many of record producer Joe Meek's productions and also for singer Billy Fury. They enjoyed several chart hi ...

. At the same time, pop music on radio and in both American and British film moved away from refined Tin Pan Alley to more eccentric songwriting and incorporated reverb-drenched rock guitar, symphonic strings, and horns played by groups of properly arranged and rehearsed studio musicians. A 2019 study held by New York University in which 643 participants had to rank how familiar a pop song is to them, songs from the 1960s turned out to be the most memorable, significantly more than songs from recent years 2000 to 2015. Before the progressive pop of the late 1960s, performers were typically unable to decide on the artistic content of their music. Assisted by the mid-1960s economic boom, record labels began investing in artists, giving them the freedom to experiment, and offering them limited control over their content and marketing. This situation declined after the late 1970s and would not reemerge until the rise of Internet stars. Indie pop, which developed in the late 1970s, marked another departure from the glamour of contemporary pop music, with guitar bands formed on the then-novel premise that one could record and release their own music without having to procure a record contract from a major label. The 1980s are commonly remembered for an increase in the use of digital recording, associated with the usage of synthesizers, with synth-pop music and other

electronic Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic co ...

genres featuring non-traditional instruments increasing in popularity. By 2014, pop music worldwide had been permeated by electronic dance music. In 2018, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, concluded that pop music has become 'sadder' since the 1980s. The elements of happiness and brightness have eventually been replaced with electronic beats making pop music more 'sad yet danceable'.

International spread and crosspollination

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. Some of these trends (for example

Europop Europop (also spelled Euro pop) is a style of pop music that originated in Europe during the mid-to-late 1960s and developed to today's form throughout the late 1970s. Europop topped the charts throughout the 1980s and 1990s, with revivals and ...

) have had a significant impact on the development of the genre."Star profiles" in S. Frith, W. Stray and J. Street, ''The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock'' (Cambridge University Press, 2001), , pp. 199–200. 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".P. Manuel, "Pop. Non-Western cultures 1. Global dissemination", ''Grove Music Online'', retrieved 14 March 2010. Some non-Western countries, such as Japan, have developed a thriving pop music industry, most of which is devoted to Western-style pop. Japan has for several years produced a greater quantity of music than everywhere except the US. The spread of Western-style pop music has been interpreted variously as representing processes of Americanization, homogenization, modernization, creative appropriation, cultural imperialism, or a more general process of globalization. One of the pop music styles that developed alongside other music styles is Latin pop, which rose in popularity in the US during the 1950s with early rock and roll success

Ritchie Valens Richard Steven Valenzuela (May 13, 1941 – February 3, 1959), known professionally as Ritchie Valens, was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. A rock and roll pioneer and a forefather of the Chicano rock movement, Valens was killed ...

. Later, as Los Lobos garnered major

Chicano rock Chicano rock is rock music performed by Mexican American (Chicano) groups or music with themes derived from Chicano culture. Chicano Rock, to a great extent, does not refer to any single style or approach. Some of these groups do not sing in Span ...

popularity during the 1970s and 1980s, musician

Selena Selena Quintanilla Pérez (; April 16, 1971 – March 31, 1995), known mononymously as Selena, was an American Tejano singer. Called the " Queen of Tejano music", her contributions to music and fashion made her one of the most celebrated Mex ...

saw large-scale pop music presence as the 1980s and 1990s progressed, along with crossover appeal with fans of

Tejano music Tejano music ( es, música tejana), also known as Tex-Mex music, is a popular music style fusing Mexican and US influences. Typically, Tejano combines Mexican Spanish vocal styles with dance rhythms from Czech and German genres – particular ...

pioneers Lydia Mendoza and Little Joe. With later Hispanic and Latino Americans seeing success within pop music charts, 1990s pop successes stayed popular in both their original genres and in broader pop music. Latin pop hit singles, such as "

Macarena "Macarena" is a dance song by Spanish pop duo Los del Río, about a woman of the same name. The song uses a type of clave rhythm. Originally appearing on the 1993 album '' A mí me gusta'', a subsequent remix by Miami-based producers The Bays ...

" by

Los del Río Los del Río (, "Those from the River"), also known as The Del Rios, are a Spanish Latin pop and dance duo which was formed in 1962 by Antonio Romero Monge (17 February 1948) and Rafael Ruiz Perdigones (10 November 1947). They are best known fo ...

and " Despacito" by Luis Fonsi, have seen record-breaking success on worldwide pop music charts.

21st century

At the beginning of the 2000s, the trends that dominated during the late 1990s still continued, but the music industry started to change as people began to download music from the internet. People were able to discover genres and artists that were outside of the mainstream and propel them to fame, but at the same time smaller artists had a harder time making a living because their music was being pirated. Popular artists were Avril Lavigne, NSYNC,

Christina Aguilera Christina María Aguilera (; ; born December 18, 1980) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and television personality. Known for her four-octave vocal range and ability to sustain high notes, she has been referred to as the " Voice of ...

, Destiny's Child, and Britney Spears. Pop music often came from many different genres, with each genre in turn influencing the next one, blurring the lines between them and making them less distinct. This change was epitomized in the album

FutureSex/LoveSounds ''FutureSex/LoveSounds'' is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Justin Timberlake, released on September 8, 2006 by Jive Records and Zomba Group of Companies, Zomba. Following a three-year writing hiatus, Timberlake conceived ...

, which under the influence of producer

Timbaland Timothy Zachery Mosley (born March 10, 1972), known professionally as Timbaland, is an American record producer, rapper, singer, songwriter, and record executive. He has received widespread acclaim for his innovative production work and distinc ...

, mixed the sounds of R&B, dance music, and hip hop. By the year 2010, pop music impacted by dance music came to be dominant on the charts. Instead of the radio setting the trends, it was now the club. "The new bubble is all the collective clubs around the world. Radio is just doing its best to keep up," said Will.i.am. at the beginning of the decade. Songs that talked of escapism through partying became the most popular, influenced by the impulse to forget the economic troubles that had taken over the world after the 2008 crash. The most popular artists of this era were Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, the Black Eyed Peas, Katy Perry and One Direction

References

External links

The Consumption of Music and the Expression of Values: A Social Economic Explanation for the Advent of Pop Music
Wilfred Dolfsma, '' American Journal of Economics and Sociology'', October 1999. {{DEFAULTSORT:Pop Music Western culture 1920s neologisms Music genres