Lesson 2: Defining Pop Music

Defining Pop Music

More than likely, a great deal of the music that you are familiar with is music being produced today. Today’s music, in all its variable forms, can be thought of as popular music. Popular music is any music since industrialization in the mid-1800s that is in line with the tastes and preferences of the middle class. When we break this definition down, we find that popular music encompasses a wide range of music: from rock to rap and from country to heavy metal music. These forms of music have been influenced by many of the same earlier forms of music throughout history. We might also note that popular music today has an economic component. In other words, popular music is often produced and distributed in a way that creates profits for the artists and music companies. This may be tied into areas such as concerts and merchandise, as well as the actual music product.

One type of popular music that we often see around us is pop music. These two terms can be somewhat confusing because of their similarity. While pop music is one example of popular music, popular music consists of more genres and types of music than just pop music. Pop music is music produced for a mass audience with typically shorter songs about love and other existing themes. Pop music often involves technological innovations, and it is typically oriented towards youth within the culture. In practice, many of the types of popular music have a great deal of overlap with each other and clear distinctions are often difficult to make. The exact boundaries of pop music are impossible to draw. For our purposes, however, we will try to treat pop music as a distinct genre of music as we examine this form of music.

The term pop music first began to be used widely in the mid-1950s. (There are earlier instances of “pop music” usage, but these usages are generally more in line with what we might now term “popular music.”) In the 1950s, pop music was sometimes used to refer to the music that was being produced for a youth audience. That music was what we would now call rock and roll. In some ways, we might think of the usage at this time to reflect most non-classical forms of music. However, by the late 1960s, pop music had begun to refer to a particular style of music that was often in opposition to what was defined as rock music. While not all of the distinctions between rock and pop were clear-cut, rock was increasingly used to define “authentic” music that had an edge or attitude. Pop music, in contrast, stood for the music that was viewed as commercial and accessible. In other words, pop music was music that was produced not just for art’s sake, but to make money, and was designed to appeal to a wide audience. Pop music was music that almost everyone would like and listen to. It was also increasingly produced and intentionally manipulated by record companies, who had a greater input into the final product than the artists.

If you are thinking that this all sounds like most music produced today, you are probably correct. Over the last half century, many forms of music have become more economic and more accessible for a wider population due to the advances in technology that allow us to consume music easily. While rock was once seen as “authentic,” it is also true that many rock artists today produce music for an economic purpose and do so to a wide range of people. Today, rock music is often distinguished from pop music in that it is seen as “harder,” more innovative, and more aggressive than pop music.