Posts Tagged ‘Pop Music’
What is ‘pop music?’ Where did this distinction arise and what is it’s purpose? If it has a purpose, who does it serve?
On close examination, you see that it’s the way society absorbs a thing; the way the tiger is defanged. It’s another useful illusion from society’s toolbox of illusions. All through my school years, I had to put up with this prattle about ‘serious music,’ and ‘pop music.’ Oh sure, I bought into it a bit, at first. But one only has to question the status quo.
First of all, we all know what it means, this business of ‘pop music’ and ‘serious music.’ It depends a lot on what side of the fence you’re sitting on, of course. If you’re a ‘serious musician,’ ‘serious music’ is ‘good,’ and ‘pop’ music is ‘bad.’ Of course we all know that ‘serious music’ will make you no money. Why? Because it’s ‘good,’ of course, and the majority of people don’t know about ‘good.’ They only pay for music that’s ‘bad.’
Now to be fair, if you’re on the other side of this particular fence, ‘serious music’ is ‘boring,’ (that’s bad) and pop music is ‘cool.’ (That’s ‘good’). Moreover, this historically speaking, has tended to be ‘radical’ and ‘revolutionary.’
Some people really hate pop music. For these people pop music is the product of a system which rewards banality, the biggest profit margins and style over substance. This type of music is manufactured without remorse and actively tunes in to the part of the brain most susceptible to rhythmic patterns, so you find yourself practically incapable of not humming the latest No.1 inexplicably on the bus, despite having only caught a whiff of the song on an advert the night before.
For other people, pop music is awesome. They can’t get enough, and finding another opportunity to devour it insatiably is a great thing. For that reason here are some ways which you can scoop a few more dollops of pop into your daily ear trough.
X Factor
The format of this show demonstrates the pop music machine. It takes people that want to be famous, parades them in front of the public for a few months to find out who is the most popular, paints their lovable back stories and then declares a winner. This winner is then dealt a No.1 record thanks to the hype of the show, makes lots of money for the record company, then pitches them into a spiral of depression as their fame dries up. You can watch X Factor in ITV on Saturday and Sunday nights. You can also catch up on their website.
Pop music is music that is really contemporary music. Today whatever music you hear, music that is moving with the times, all of it is pop music. Fifty five years before, the music which was contemporary in that era was also pop and the fathers of pop, Bob Dylan etc lived. But today’s music is also called pop, so pop is really a genre of contemporary music throughout all ages, which is flexible enough to change its form from one to another and still maintain some integrity.
So you can have rock, jazz, blues, R&B, dance numbers and many other genres influencing this one particular genre of music. Sometimes even elements of folk and country music has been found to be present in pop. The basic trick that pop music undertakes to maintain its popularity is use melody that would stay in the minds of people. They do not use catchy tunes but tunes and rhythm which forces you to remember it. Also, the songs are barely filled with lots of music, there is one tempo which goes through the entire song and doesn’t change. But this is an element which has drawn much criticism around the song. Critics often say that pop is too simple and therefore maybe worthless.