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Pop music explained

Pop music
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Stylistic Origins:Rock and roll, jazz, folk
Cultural Origins:1950s, United States and United Kingdom
Instruments:Electric guitar - Bass guitar - Drums - Synthesizer - Keyboard - Drum machine - Sequencer - Sampler - Vocals
Popularity:Continuous worldwide since emergence
Subgenrelist:List of popular music genres
Subgenres:Avant-pop - Baroque pop - Bastard pop - Bubblegum pop - Dance-pop - Girly-pop - Disco - Indie pop - Manufactured pop - Noise pop - Operatic pop - Power pop - Sophisti-pop - Space age pop - Sunshine pop - Synthpop - Teen pop
Fusiongenres:Country pop - Dream pop - Electropop/Technopop- House-pop - Jangle pop - Pop folk - Pop punk - Pop rap - Pop rock - Psychedelic pop - Urban pop

Pop music is a music genre that features a noticeable rhythmic element, melodies and hooks, a mainstream style and a conventional structure.

The term "pop music" was first used in 1926 in the sense of "having popular appeal" (see popular music), but since the 1950s it has been used in the sense of a musical genre, originally characterized as a lighter alternative to rock and roll.[1] [2]

Style

The standard format of pop music is the song, customarily less than five minutes in duration, with instrumentation that can range from an orchestra to a lone singer. Pop songs are generally marked by a consistent and noticeable rhythmic element, a mainstream style and traditional structure. Common variants are 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.[3] Lyrics in pop music are frequently about love, relationships and life experiences. The primary objectives of the pop music genre are audience enjoyment and commercial success.[4] This of course does not imply that those goals are achieved by every song in this genre.[5]

History

Some musicologists trace the origins of pop music to 1679, when Alessandro Scarlatti composed his first opera, or even earlier, when Francesco Provenzale coined the musical language that Scarlatti popularized: light, lively and catchy. They placed the emphasis on arias, clearly separated from the "recitativo", and grounded the arias on a strong sense of rhythm and melody. The song "Slide, Kelly, Slide", released by Edison Studios in 1894, is sometimes credited as the first "pop hit" record.

See also

Bibliography

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Online Etymology Dictionary: pop. 2007-12-01. html.
  2. Web site: Allmusic genres: pop. 2007-12-01. html.
  3. Web site: Allmusic genres: pop. 2007-12-01. html.
  4. Book: Hill, D.. Designer Boys and Material Girls: Manufacturing the 80's Pop Dream. 1986. Blandford Press. Pop implies a very different set of values to rock. Pop makes no bones about being a 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 intelligentyahoo.com..
  5. Web site: United Kingdom Broadcasting Act 1990 — Part III, chapter I, article 85, point 6. 2007-12-01. Pop music includes rock music and other kinds of modern popular music which are characterised by a strong rhythmic element and a reliance on electronic amplification for their performance (whether or not, in the case of any particular piece of rock or other such music, the music in question enjoys a current popularity as measured by the number of recordings sold). html.

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