meandthestereo

The definition of music varies according to cultural and social context.  Music ranges from what are considered organized compositions through improvised styles of music to aleatoric (based on chance) forms. So, where in all of this does “Pop” music fall?  Short for “Popular”, pop music hasn’t been a genre for long, and it has always fallen under the “Rock” genre.  The Beatles first crossed the rock/pop line with hits like All You Need Is Love, Hey Jude, and Yesterday.  A lot of these songs were intentionally “poppy” in a sense that they were geared toward an audience that liked these songs: young people.  Paul McCartney knew this and continued to write songs of this nature (if you notice the poppy Beatles songs are mostly written by Paul, while the weirder songs are mostly written by John).

Looking further back, the Pop line was crossed in Elvis’ days when he was swinging his hips for the ladies whilst singing Jailhouse Rock.  But, we’ll stick to the Beatles since they made a slightly bigger impact on music (Elvis purists, we can discuss who made a bigger impact later).  In their later years, when they were experimenting, the Beatles discovered such skills as harmonization, guitar feedback, classical inspiration, artificial double tracking, close miking of acoustic instruments, sampling, direct injection, synchronization, and backward tapes.  Many of these same skills would then be adopted by popular musicians today. Although the reason why artists today should be criticized for techniques like sampling is because the way they use it is more of a lazy way. They sample an entire song and just put in their own lyrics, completely ripping off the original musician.

One more thing on the history of Pop Music: Read the rest of this entry →