Pop Music

Pop Music

Pop music tends to fairly short songs of about 2 to 4 minutes long consisting of verses and choruses. Typical tropes are a repeated chorus, hooks which are often short phrases or riffs and a melodic tune helping with its catchy nature. Lyrics often touch on life experiences, typically love and loss as well as other simplistic themes as both The Beatles and Taylor Swift discuss with their music. Pop music involves mass marketing and the use of social media means the audience have become actively involved in the production process and have a high level of influence. This careful crafting allows them to attract the mainstream masses.

Pop music is a genre of popular music that consequentially occurred in the US and UK during the 1950’s as movement away from more orchestral sounds and the heavy focus of American rock and roll but still remains under evolution. These countries continue to dominate the Western music scene demonstrating the Westernisation and Americanisation of the media. The first highly influential and well-known pop artists were people like Elvis Presley before the 1964 British Invasion of The Beatles allowing Great Britain to put its name on the map and therefore have significant impact on pop music to come. Other British artists such as The Who and The Rolling Stones also began launching into American music charts during the 60’s, highlighting the competition and success of breaking into the market the UK witnessed.

The 1970’s saw an increase in keyboards and a blending image of visuals and flamboyant costumes seen through the likes of household names ABBA, Queen and Elton John. There was also an influx of sub-genres; country pop, indie pop, soft rock contributing to pop music’s evolution.

The next decade, the 80’s, was the introduction of the digital synthesiser over the previously used analog synth as well as drum machines and samplers. The creation of MTV allowed for another British Invasion, this time with Duran Duran, Eurythmics, David Bowie and Wham!

Teen pop dominated the 1990’s amongst a resurfaced popularity for boy and girl bands with groups like the Spice Girls becoming large successes.

The first half of the 2000’s had hip-hop and R&B in its sights with the second half focusing highly upon the digital and streaming age pop music was about to immerse itself in allowing the heavily increased use of auto-tune.