Pop music

Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom.[3] During the 1950s and 1960s, pop music encompassed rock and roll and the youth-oriented styles it influenced. Rock and pop music remained roughly synonymous until the late 1960s, after which pop became associated with music that was more commercial, ephemeral, and accessible.

Identifying factors of pop music usually include repeated choruses and hooks, short to medium-length songs written in a basic format (often the verse–chorus structure), and rhythms or tempos that can be easily danced to. Much of pop music also borrows elements from other styles such as rock, urban, dance, Latin, and country.

The terms popular music and pop music are often used interchangeably, although the former more accurately describes all music that is popular and includes many disparate styles. Although much of the music that appears on record charts is considered to be pop music, the genre is distinguished from chart music.

  1. ^ Traditional Pop, AllMusic Archived 2017-10-19 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 25 August 2016
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Grove was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), ISBN 0-521-55660-0, pp. 95–105.
  4. ^ "Pop/Rock » Punk/New Wave » New Wave". allmusic.com. Archived from the original on 8 March 2021. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  5. ^ "The 50 Best New Wave Albums". Paste. 13 October 2020. Archived from the original on 1 October 2017. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  6. ^ "Q&A with Theo Cateforis, author of Are We Not New Wave? Modern Pop at the Turn of the 1980s" (PDF). University of Michigan. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 November 2021. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  7. ^ "Hyperpop or overhyped? The rise of 2020's most maximalist sound". Independent. 27 December 2020. Retrieved 21 July 2023.