Pop as a genre.

Nick

    • 17,570
    Posts
    20
    Years
    • Seen May 9, 2024
    I was under the impression that pop was meant to be used for popular music, but when I go onto music stores or sites or blogs of sort that dedicate their entire site to music of all kinds, I always find things being labeled as pop from artists and bands I've never heard of before. I mean, I see unknown indie bands being classified as pop because of the sound when typically they should be classified as electronic or something. And what exactly is indie pop anyway? How can something be indie pop?! Now it just seems like pop is usually just a sound of dance + electronic music, for the most part. And I sit here wondering why something is labeled as pop if it contains these elements when it can just be labeled as dance or electronic instead. Am I the only one who, um, finds this reeeaaaally frustrating? Why is pop even a genre?

    Can someone please validate/disprove/justify my observation so I can feel better?!
     
    Last edited by a moderator:
    dance music:

    electronic music:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVgEaDemxjc
    all are vague terms

    then there's music like nicki minaj, rihanna, lady gaga, whatever else is popular etc. which are all mainly lyrically based with a simple electronic music structure in the background, they all follow the same sort of song structure. seems definitive enough to be able to throw a blanket term at it; and that's all a genre is really, you find massive variations within all of them.

    pop = simple song, with choruses and verses with simple chord progression and a supposedly high replay value, designed for the radio

    indie pop = modern pop rock, same as pop, but usually guitar driven rather than electronic, alternatively just more experimental kinds of electronic
     
    Pop is just the word we use for new music that doesn't fit into another category very easily until the music gets old and we call it 80s or 90s or 00s or whatever.

    I dunno. It seems like a throwaway category. Like they go down a list and say "Is it rap?" "Is it disco?" "Is it ____?" and if nothing really sticks they ask "Is it pop?" "Yes! That's it!"

    But genres are annoying in that sometimes they talk about the specifics of the music based on the instrumentation and themes and that kind of stuff. So like if your music has guitars that twang and your lyrics are about pickup trucks and sunsets then you are safely in country & western territory. But then what if you twang, but also have a techno beat? I don't know what you'd call that exactly. Or if you could even do that.

    I've lost my train of thought so I'm going to stop here.
     
    When it's described those ways, then that leads me to a very terrible confusion of why it's the mainstream thing. Why is it pop music is what's on most radio stations, and the type of music that charts, and that mostly everyone in the world knows names like Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Britney Spears as opposed to other more talented musicians with more complex songs?
     
    Calling Lady Gaga not complex or talented? Didn't expect that lol

    Because people who only listen to pop listen to it not for the music, the guitar or how complex it is, but how catchy it is. They want the songs that stick in their head and don't care why or how.

    Although I'm pretty firmly of the belief that if pop moved aside a bit and made room for more complex music on the radio, people would like it as well, and part of the liking is just that that's what they're used to and what's available.
     
    Who's Nicki Minaj?

    And yes, if "pop" moved aside then people would like whatever took its place. Exposure to something enough times makes people like something. Not always, but often enough. Lady Gaga & co. are loved partially because they were promoted everywhere and you can't help but hear their music. Even someone who doesn't like Gaga's music (aka me) must grudgingly admit to tapping my foot to a song or two of hers when I happen to hear them from friends or wherever. I can't help it. I can't escape it.
     
    Toujours said:
    Calling Lady Gaga not complex or talented? Didn't expect that lol

    Because people who only listen to pop listen to it not for the music, the guitar or how complex it is, but how catchy it is. They want the songs that stick in their head and don't care why or how.

    Although I'm pretty firmly of the belief that if pop moved aside a bit and made room for more complex music on the radio, people would like it as well, and part of the liking is just that that's what they're used to and what's available.
    Click to expand...
    I'm not sure about that. I wish that happened, but even when a pop artist looks at releasing singles, they always seem to pick the most mainstream that they have on the album. I mean, there are some really different, interesting sounding songs on Lady Gaga's Born This Way album, like Bloody Mary, Electric Chapel, Heavy Metal Lover, Government Hooker, and Highway Unicorn (kind of) [even though those four sound kinda similar]. And yet songs like Judas, Born This Way, Yoü and I, and Edge of Glory take priority over them because, as people say, they're more "radio friendly."

    I was listening to the radio for like the first time in forever (aside from talk shows I tend to tune into) the other day and I found a radio station run by college kids with a more diverse sound than just playing Billboard charts, with artists that I've never heard of before, and yet it's one of the most unpopular stations. And I can't even begin to understand why. The songs they play, even though they aren't the types of songs that are played on Billboard charts, are songs that sound so great to listen to.
     
    Last edited by a moderator:
    Vendak said:
    because most people aren't music fans
    Click to expand...

    Hahaha, this just made my day. Genre's are so vague these days due to people creating obscure and random names for certain bands. I would consider pop a genre though. It has branches, like Pop/Punk, and Indie Pop. Even though I do think it was originally intended to describe what's more popular despite it taking on an actual sound.
     
    I guess that "pop music", for want of a better term, is radio-friendly, highly listenable, easily digestible, relatively uncontroversial music. Your standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle 8-chorus-end type fare. There's nothing inherently wrong with that structure (and many non-pop music songs follow it), but there's very little experimentation involved, due to it being perceived as un-radio-friendly.

    Radio play dominates the non-music fan's extent to new music, and it's a vicious circle in many ways: Radio stations want to put on popular music (not necessarily "pop music" at this stage) to attract listeners to their stations and help their funding through adverts. Station head honchos look towards the music charts to help determine what is 'popular' in order to secure rights and other such technicalities. Charts - at least in the US - are determined by a combination of sales and the aforementioned radio play. People buy music singles, for the most part, from what they hear on the radio. The cycle continues forever and ever, with relatively few exceptions.
     
    Even Adele is considered pop, I can't see any element in 21 & 19 that are mainly pop.

    I do think that people classified each artist as pop is because of the influence of pop music to certain degrees of different music genres, as I have said, even a Soul/Blues singer is considered as pop.

    Weird, eh? :3; But that's how the music industry is now, today.
     
    Patchisou Yutohru said:
    When it's described those ways, then that leads me to a very terrible confusion of why it's the mainstream thing. Why is it pop music is what's on most radio stations, and the type of music that charts, and that mostly everyone in the world knows names like Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Britney Spears as opposed to other more talented musicians with more complex songs?
    Click to expand...

    Because that's not where the money is. There's no such thing as a major record corporation trying to push 'talented music' when it's not very accessible. If it's tough to listen to, odds are, most people aren't going to immerse themselves in it. It's not going to get played on the radio because radio hits are easy listening songs that make you want to dance to the music, not try and understand what's going on behind the scenes. Unless it's a masterpiece, this so-called 'talented music' isn't going to sell a lot either. It's just not a good investment to bring in a new type of artist when it's not going to bring you money back. And that's all the corporations care about - money. Independent record companies tend to offer artists of a more creative sort but they're less in it for the money I suppose.

    Of course, if the general population of the world knows this is true - why are we still listening to this obvious marketing? I believe it comes down to two things: marketing and listening. When you see Rihanna or whoever on the front of the iTunes store, that's advertising. It's all around you and most of it is voluntary: radio stations play easy listening songs to keep people tuning in; shopping stores always have pop songs in the background because people don't want to leave when there's a nice song in the background.

    The listening is a little bit more subjective but a lot of these so-called 'more talented acts' use instruments or techniques unusual to our ear. For example, see weird time signatures as as basic one... then, if you want to keep going, check out baroque pop. It's using classical musical instruments in modern pop songs. Weird vocoder usage; odd loops... it all builds up but most of it sounds weird to us at first listen and a lot of people out there don't understand that to get used to it, you're going to have to listen to it a couple of times. They'd rather listen to pop music.

    As for what pop music actually is... I'm not going to go near that one. Don't want to write an essay.
     
    You must log in or register to reply here.
    Back
    Top