# What does "Pop" mean w.r.t. music?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-pop-mean-w-r-t-music/407714
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [June 12, 2007, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-pop-mean-w-r-t-music/407714 "2007-06-12T15:17:40Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2007, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-pop-mean-w-r-t-music/407714/1 "2007-06-12T15:17:40Z")
I just encountered the following sentence, said of XTC:
> [@](#):
>
> They never had hits, because their unabashed pop was never in fashion.
This is a puzzling sentence, if you take “pop” to mean “in the popular style.”
And indeed, I’ve never quite understood what “pop” means in a musical context. Can someone explain it?
-FrL-
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### Author:  [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2007, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-pop-mean-w-r-t-music/407714/2 "2007-06-12T15:41:53Z")
I’m willing to try. Pop is short for popular, no doubt. I think “popular” was originally used to indicate “as opposed to classical (to mean “serious”)” as if those were the two areas of music one could aspire to. Then the waters became muddied by Jazz, Folk, Country, Blues, Ethnic, and certainly Rock (in its various incarnations and subgenres).
Nowadays, Pop is usually used for the “and other” variety of music that can’t be pigeonholed into a more descriptive and limiting term like Techno, House, Reggae, Latin, Electronica, Emo, Easy Listening, Elevator Music, and probably at least 100 more categories.
Oldies (whatever than means – older than last year?) tend to be either Pop or “Classic Rock” (an oxymoron in the birthing phase). Artists tend to be dead or nearly so. Tony Bennett would qualify if some weren’t bent on making him a Jazz singer or a Legend.
Others will doubtless flesh this out more, but it’s a start.
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### Author:  [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2007, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-pop-mean-w-r-t-music/407714/3 "2007-06-12T16:48:09Z")
From [AMG](http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=77:283):
> [@](#):
>
> In a broad sense, pop is any music based on memorable melodies, repeated sections (usually, but not always, verses and choruses), and a tight, concise structure that keeps the listener’s focus on those elements. Pop music has been a profitable industry in America since the 19th century, but for these purposes, pop is a style that took shape in the post-rock & roll era, once the more conservative elements of the record industry had come to terms with the new musical landscape. Pop emerged in the late '50s, as the initial rock & roll craze began to die down, and a lighter, smoother (but still similar) alternative to rock was needed. Mostly a singles medium, pop was influenced by the beat, arrangements, and style of rock & roll (and sometimes doo wop), and it didn’t sound bad on the radio next to rock & roll. But pop didn’t rock as much as rock & roll. It was about professional craft, both in the songwriting and the studio production, and had little to do with the edge or attitude of rock. As the '60s wore on, pop began to incorporate touches of psychedelia and blue-eyed soul; by the '70s, pop had mellowed substantially, thanks in part to the singer/songwriter movement and Bacharach’s brand of smooth adult pop. Some of pop’s biggest acts in the '60s included the Beach Boys, the Four Seasons, the Everly Brothers (entering a different phase of their career), the Association, the Rascals, the Righteous Brothers, and (in the U.K.) the Walker Brothers and Petula Clark; other major figures included composer Burt Bacharach, producer Phil Spector, and Brill Building songwriting teams like Barry/Greenwich and Goffin/King. The classic '60s-style strain of pop morphed into AM pop and soft rock by the mid-'70s, but today it dominates good-time oldies radio formats.
They have links to some related and more contemporary genres.
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### Author:  [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2007, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-pop-mean-w-r-t-music/407714/4 "2007-06-12T16:58:29Z")
I’ve always thought “pop” described music for the fun of it. That is, music that contains no deep meanings, no symbolism or hidden messages, and had (and I don’t mean this in a bad way) no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The subject matter was usually inoffensive: let’s dance, let’s sing, let’s go out on a date; but we will only _imply_ anything further. Pop music broke no new ground musically or technologically; it simply had a great beat and you could–usually–dance to it.
This definition excluded most Folk (pressing for social change), Heavy Metal (let’s act in ways our parents would disapprove of), Psych/Acid/Progressive Rock (the deep meanings), Country (lotta cheatin’ goin’ on), and so on. But by the above definition, Pop would include Disco (let’s dance), Bubblegum (do I really have to explain this one?), and similar broad genres. Mary Hopkins, Olivia Newton-John, Sheena Easton, Andy Kim, the pre-Saturday Night Fever Bee Gees, all the Kasenatz-Katz studio bubblegum groups, Britney Spears, Tiffany–all pop stars. But Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Aerosmith, Genesis, Bob Dylan, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hank Williams, Joni Mitchell–not pop acts.
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### Author:  [@Hippy\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hippy_Hollow)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2007, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-pop-mean-w-r-t-music/407714/5 "2007-06-12T18:19:22Z")
I think the AMG definition is pretty good. Pop is accessible, short, and lyrically about the personal, I think. Pop songs don’t go on about the evils of the World Bank, but they talk about having one’s heart broken, wanting to get one’s leg over, or despising the weather.
Ironically, I think XTC got the pop label through their own doing - they released a single, “This is Pop?” and it stuck. Poor XTC. They should have been so much bigger, and I think they might have been in the 1990s if Virgin hadn’t been such tossers and allowed them out of their contract. I think it would have come together for them if they recorded at the time when Britpop and bands like the Dandy Warhols were making a splash. And now it seems that Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding aren’t interested in playing together anymore. ☹☹☹
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### Author:  [@installLSC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/installLSC)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2007, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-pop-mean-w-r-t-music/407714/6 "2007-06-12T19:07:38Z")
I’ve got to disagree with the AMG definition. I’ve always heard “pop” have two different meanings:
1. Whatever top 40 radio plays, regardless of genre
2. Music that sticks to traditional verse/chorus/verse structures that emphasizes melody over loud guitars or heavy rhythms. Depending on the context, it can refer to Sinatra-style crooners or what’s called “indie rock” (Rilo Kiley, Belle and Sebastian, Feist, etc.).
XTC’s “pop” by the second defintion. The reason this has caused them problems is because they’re too loyal to this version of pop to kowtow to the latest production fads.
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### Author:  [@SpartanDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpartanDC)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2007, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-pop-mean-w-r-t-music/407714/7 "2007-06-12T19:13:25Z")
Yeah, I agree with **installLSC**. There are two functioning definitions in music terminology today. One is bad — the Britney Spears variety of pop. The other refers, much like the AMG definition, to music that doesn’t rock enough to be actual rock. Some go so far as to say the Beatles were a pop band, not a rock band. The Beach Boys and anything with Phil Spector’s name on it most definitely were. Pop bands in this sense still exist today: The New Pornographers might be the best practitioners of the genre.
The latter variety of pop can address serious situations and have serious lyrics. That said, when it does so, it does it with a wry or humorous bent.
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### Author:  [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2007, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-pop-mean-w-r-t-music/407714/8 "2007-06-13T22:41:50Z")
I usually capitalize when I intend it to include such artists as Kate Bush or XTC or Peter Gabriel or whoever. These are artists who work in the Pop idiom–short songs, usually collected in an album, intended largely to be heard as a recording. This is Pop as opposed to “academic” music: music that sprang “from the people” rather from the dusty schools of composition. It includes almost every kind of music that is not meant (usually) to be played by an orchestra and listened to by well dressed people with a program on their lap.
That being, there are really very few boundaries or rules left, so this definition is the vaguest generality is rife with exceptions.