Pop


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Often used as a term interchangeable with “popular music,” pop refers more precisely to a genre of
popular music or an attitude toward making popular music that is typically seen as distinct from
other genres such as rock, soul, or country. Indeed, pop is often defined in negative terms; Simon
Frith argues that pop is “what’s left when all the other forms of popular music are stripped away.
. . . From this perspective pop is defined as much by what it isn’t as by what it is.” While a
genre like Rock has identifiable sonic markers and characteristics—such as an emphasis on electric
guitar, extensive use of blues-influenced structures, an ideology of authenticity and sincerity—pop
as a genre cannot be said to have a coherent style. Pop’s voracious borrowing and adaptation leads
not only to new stylistic combinations but also to “pop” versions of country, rock, hip hop, heavy
metal, and other styles. Rather than a specific set of sounds, pop is a sensibility.

Pop performers frequently pick and choose repertoire and mimic effects from other genres in
crafting new material. The magpie-like nature of pop leads Eric Weisbard to call it “a hybrid, a
category fouler” and Ann Powers to identify Prometheus the thief, rather than Orpheus the rebel, as
pop’s favorite god. In the face of charges of being derivative and banal, pop remains cheerfully
indifferent to the value of originality. At the same time, the creators and producers of pop are
often pioneers of new technologies, sounds, and styles, so that pop is frequently at the vanguard
of experimentation. This paradox is one of many that make definitions of pop slippery and elusive.

While “pop” derives from “popular,” the designation is often applied in the absence of market
success or other indicators of actual popularity. Thus, a song or other piece of music can achieve
tremendous popularity without being thought of as pop, and a song with a certain sensibility is
considered pop even if it does not catch on with a wide audience. Consider the massive popularity
of Nirvana’s 1991 “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in contrast to Debbie Gibson’s release of that year,
“Anything is possible,” ineluctably pop even though its sales were modest. For such reasons pop is
a classification that may be assigned on the basis of sonic qualities, expressive themes, expected
fan base, or assumptions about artistic integrity, rather than empirical evidence of popularity.

Note also that this comparison points to gendered associations of rock with masculinity and pop
with femininity. Pop of the type produced by Gibson is generally considered the province of female
performers and listeners, if only because of its safe, predictable language and thematic content.
While rock culture encourages rebellion, models a quest for independence, and fits well with the
expectations and standards of manhood, pop is family-friendly and connected to women and girls
above all, reaffirming the ideology of romance and the safe, domestic space. Thus, while a young
female performer of rock like Joan Jett had to work hard to prove herself along the lines of an
honorary male, a young male performer of pop like Justin Bieber finds that his masculinity is
called into question.

Age also has a bearing on the “pop” associations of individual performers. Pop is often associated
with youth (and childhood) and produced by young (and sometimes child) performers; a connection to
young, female audiences and performers can be sufficient to conjure the designation pop. Thus, when
19-year-old former television star Miley Cyrus included “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in her 2011
“Gypsy Heart Tour” (dedicating it to her little brother at home, because they had grown up singing
it together), she was seen to have brought the song into the realm of family-friendly pop rather
than having the performance transform her into a rock artist, even though her raspy vocals evoked
Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain more than Debbie Gibson.

At the same time, pop is also linked to middle-aged listeners, particularly middle-class
suburbanites and most particularly women. Comforting older artists such as Barry Manilow are
overwhelmingly understood to offer tame material oozing with false sentimentality and clichés, and
their fan bases are largely assumed to be housewives, seeking the illusion of intimacy. The anodyne
character of music associated with middle-aged housewives also connects it more strongly with bland
fare suitable for family consumption, reinforcing associations with domesticity, conventional
femininity, and children. A young listener’s turn away from family-sanctioned pop to music genres
associated with nonconformity can be perceived as a step toward adulthood, so that adult listeners
preferring pop can be seen as immature.

Pop music is inextricably associated with commercial concerns, mass production, and charges of
pandering to the least sophisticated tastes. The songwriter Stephen Foster, arguably the first
purveyor of pop in the United States, wrote unfailingly pleasing tunes that relied exclusively on
diatonic melodies, major keys, and basic harmonic movement, although he had received formal
training in music and presumably was capable of greater complexity. Foster sought simplicity and
transparency, crafting a language that could be grasped quickly by the majority of listeners after
only one or two hearings. Such direct and pleasing pop music is often criticized on the grounds
that it is simple to the point of inanity, and its fans unsophisticated and passive. This line of
analysis, expressed most forcefully in the work of Theodor Adorno, assumes the existence of cynical
businessmen, with no genuine interest in making good music, assembling shoddy product and
force-feeding it to the mindless masses. Whether or not one subscribes to Adorno’s position, there
is no doubt that pop’s appealing hooks and grooves worm their way into our consciousness, often
without our consent or awareness, as in the famous Noël Coward line “Extraordinary how potent cheap
music is.”

Much of pop music’s simplicity is deceptive, however. The creations of Burt Bacharach and Hal David
in the 1960s, for example, frequently employ shifting meters and surprising melodic and harmonic
language, but this did not prevent songs like “I say a little prayer for you” (originally recorded
by Dionne Warwick, 1967) from being “catchy” and popular. Bacharach, a formally trained composer,
drew on his familiarity with the European art music repertoire, and many of his peers associated
with the Brill Building similarly employed a harmonic palette wider than the I–IV–V language of the
blues. Likewise, earlier Tin Pan Alley songwriters reworked familiar classical works into songs
such as “I’m always chasing rainbows” (1918, based on Chopin’s Fantasy-Impromptu, op.66) or “Our
Love” (1939, based on Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet); this strategy is also used in the 1975 hit
“Midnight Blue” (based on the second movement of Beethoven’s “Pathétique” sonata, op.13). The
association of this sort of pop music with learned music practices also connects it with privileged
middle- and upper-class listeners.

Pop music is overcoded, rooted in its cultural moment without pretensions of transcendence or
lasting value. Pop’s appetites range widely, often irreverently combining sounds of the moment and
fashioning new hybrids, as when heavy metal guitarist Eddie Van Halen soloed in support of Michael
Jackson (the anointed “King of Pop”) on “Beat It” (1984). Even before the studio wizardry of Phil
Spector and Brian Wilson in the 1960s, pop has historically stood at the forefront of exploration
with new technologies of music and recording. We hear these qualities in “This Diamond Ring,” a
1965 multitracked and overdubbed studio recording attributed to Gary Lewis & the Playboys (though
its vocals were not even provided by the ostensible singer, Gary Lewis) and “Believe,” the 1998
single by Cher that became a worldwide sensation in large part for its intriguingly distorted
vocals. The production used Auto-Tune, a studio tool, to create what would come to be called “the
Cher effect.” Although Auto-Tune was originally designed to unobtrusively correct imprecise
intonation, her producers used it to exaggerate the artificiality of abrupt pitch correction, a
technique that became widespread in pop recordings and live performance throughout the first decade
of the 21st century.

Yet pop may also lean toward the old-fashioned and nostalgic, recycling sounds and styles that were
once associated with other genres. Pop relies on cultural amnesia, presenting “new” music uncannily
resembling old music and seeming tame, even quaint, in its new setting. Sounds that shocked
audiences when played by punk bands in the 1970s had become mainstream pop 25 years later in the
hands of pop-punk groups. Often, pop artists specifically revive long forgotten songs to appeal to
new listeners; the careers of teen idols such as Connie Francis and Leif Garrett (among many
others) involved the strategic use of decades-old hits such as “Who’s Sorry Now” and “Put your head
on my shoulder.” Old songs presented by young performers—thus combining fresh, youthful energy with
reassuringly old-fashioned sounds—offer reactionary alternatives to new, subversive musics. Pop
thus presents its listeners a distraction from contemporary musics and subcultures that threaten
the status quo. In times of widespread duress, pop music also can offer soothing relief, as Rudy
Vallee demonstrated with “Life is just a bowl of cherries” (1931), recorded during the
Great Depression.

Pop’s preference for personal themes, involving relationships and feelings, rather than explicitly
political ones, helps it to exist simultaneously on the margins and at the center of social
experience. Pop’s essence is, perhaps, its ephemerality; pop songs can seize the public ear for a
brief time and then evaporate, often ceding the ground to other musical styles when histories of
music come to be written. Thus, the accepted narrative of significant music in 1969 attaches
importance to Jimi Hendrix’s accomplishments, but not to those of the Fifth Dimension or Tommy
James and the Shondells, both of which groups far outpaced Hendrix that year in terms of chart
success. The pleasures of James and the Shondells’ “Crimson and Clover,” though widely enjoyed,
were easily discarded, leaving no lasting trace on the historical record.

At the same time, some pop songs pass into the vernacular and endure for decades or more—like the
song “Oh! Susanna” (1848), originally composed by Stephen Foster for performance on the minstrel
stage—in some cases coming to be understood as folk songs that seemingly exist apart from the
commercial music publishing industry. Pop’s later inclination for the single format
characteristically has made its recorded products quicker and cheaper to make and distribute than
the album format long preferred in rock culture (particularly rock with pretensions of grandeur and
timeless artistic merit). Even confections such as the Archies’ “Sugar Sugar” (1969)—a studio
concoction credited to the band from a children’s cartoon—have proven relevant and recognizable 40
years on. Created in a single recording session as a novelty song, “Sugar Sugar” has proven
surprisingly durable, gaining “oldies” radio play in the 2010s comparable to that of art rock album
tracks months in the making (for example, “Money” from Pink Floyd’s 1973 Dark Side of the Moon).

Arguably, the freshness and unambiguousness of a pop confection like “Sugar Sugar” is the key to
its lasting appeal, still audible decades after its creation. The banality of clichés used to
convey commonplace emotions and experiences are in this way crucial to pop, leading to songs that
express the familiar and acutely personal to the widest possible range of listeners. Unburdened
with any claim to serious artistic worth, a pop song can articulate profound personal sentiment
with breathtaking immediacy. Urging its listeners to dance or sing along, pop music offers
transparency, directness, and access to innermost feeling.


See also ADULT CONTEMPORARY; BOY BANDS; BUBBLEGUM; GIRL GROUPS; NOVELTY SONG; POPULAR
MUSIC; SYNTHPOP; and TEEN IDOL.



Bibliography

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Rock,” Popular Music and Society, xx/4 (1996), 89–102

D. Brackett: Interpreting Popular Music (Berkeley, CA, 2000)

S. Frith: “Pop Music,” The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock,
ed. S. Frith and W. Straw (Cambridge, England, 2001), 93–108

G. Wald: “I Want it That Way: Teenybopper Music and the Girling of Boy
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K. Emerson: Always Magic in the Air: the Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era (New
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D. Scott, ed.: The Ashgate Research Companion to