Pop Music, Origins and Characteristics
The origins and history of pop music, from the 60s to today. The most important pop artists of all time, from Elvis Prestley to Madonna, who have made the history of pop music.
The pop music is a style of music appeared in the 60s in the United States and initially appreciated by teenagers, which is why the songs were often and are used to the rhythms associated with the dance, and they are mostly short songs about d ‘ love or relationships between women and men. The pop music is a genus belonging to popular music, as we have already mentioned, originated in the 60s in the US, but has its origin in its modern form derivation of rock and roll.
Origins of Pop Music
The phrase popular music appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in order to distinguish the repertoire of popular songs from the production of cultured music and was used to indicate musical forms with a mostly simple and trophic structure, devoid of tempo changes, of dynamic variations based on pentatonic scales. It all began in the late 1950s, when industrialization began to advance as well as economic well-being and the birth of increasingly advanced digital equipment, gave the people the possibility of development and new hope, a few years after the end of World War II which brought destruction, death, crisis and much more.
The pop music begins to advance at a very slow pace, also thanks to the spread of radio and television, where more and more often the first pop songs were advertised and advertised. From the United States, pop music gradually began to spread also in Europe, gaining more and more space both on radio and television and in England in the 60s the first bands began to appear, which have written the history of pop music. Alongside rock, which finds its greatest interpreter in the legendary Elvis Presley, American teenagers begin to play ballads and songs with a dynamic and fun rhythm and it was precisely in that period that pop music has sunk its roots. Musicians that made the pop music were born!
Origin Pop Music in Europe
In those years the pop music was spreading, offering highly appreciated songwriters and lyricists, but it was between the end of the 70s and the end of the 90s that pop music reached its maximum exposure. In the 60s the term pop was little used, because as already anticipated, the term pop music was quite in vogue, but gradually pop music began to make its debut. Initially the pop genre united the set of popular music, but the peculiarity of this musical style remains that of the absorption of other genres, such as folk, rhythm and blues, jazz, soul, funk, pop music, classical music, techno, music extra European and also the Latin one. The worldwide diffusion of this music through radio and television broadcasts has certainly made an important contribution to the rise of the genre. Over the years, pop music began to arouse people’s interest as it was able to arouse emotional reactions in the public; through pop music, the artists in the form of melodic pieces were able to speak on topics such as romantic love and it is precisely for this reason that pop music began to spread and in a short time to conquer a large audience.
How Pop Music Evolved Through Time
Pop Music Three Revolutions in 50 Years
According to reports from a group of researchers from Queen Mary University and Imperial College London, it seems that pop music has undergone several changes in 50 years, so much so that there are three revolutions dated respectively 1964, 1983 and 1991. The researchers above statements have come to this conclusion, after analyzing a sample of 17 thousand songs inserted between 1960 and 2010, in the Billboard Hot 100 chart on the most listened songs in the United States.
The first revolution:
This takes place in 1964 driven by what is called the British Invasion of groups including the Beatles and Rolling Stone, who have inserted some rock chords in what was the pop genre. They contributed to the change, both the colonization of British bands in the US market but also the result of trends that have occurred since the 1960s.
The second revolution:
This second revolution, as already anticipated, took place in 1983 thanks to the spread of new technologies, new instruments such as synthesizers, electronic drums and samplers.
The third revolution:
This came in 1991, the year in which rap and hip pop are rampant at the expense of rock, thanks to the rise of artists such as Public Enemy, Busta Rhymes, Nas and Snoop Dogg.
Characteristics of Pop Music
The pop music, also called light music, looks like a relatively simple music, catchy and easy to comprehend, whose main purpose is to entertain, to sing and make people dance. Over the years pop music has been enriched in terms of instrumentation which is very varied, such as guitar, double bass or bass, drums, piano or saxophone; over the decades the pop genre has been enriched with the use of guitar with various effects pedals, and keyboards with very different sounds, such as mellotron, synthesizer, electric piano. The salient features of this new genus are:
- quirky looks
- sensual texts;
- love as the main theme;
- nature accessible to the general public;
- harmonic richness;
- enveloping rhythms.
The pop music, moreover, is characterized by the immediacy of the choruses, which means that a pop song is generally built on the form verse-chorus-modulation to a higher-chorus ad lib tone. This genre of music has essentially remained the same over time, if not for some small variation or interference of other musical genres.