The pop group, the Monkees, who made some of the most appealing pop singles in the late 1960s. As well as making records, they also launched a successful TV series.
The term “pop music” refers specifically to a branch of popular music during the modern rock era, and it is particularly associated with young people and with the explosion in record sales since the late 1950s and early 1960s. It encompasses a wealth of modern genres, including rock, rock’n’roll, surf music, Doo-wop, British beat music, and many more. Originally intended as dance music, it inevitably includes songs.
It has been fashionable, at times, for academics and others to look upon pop music with disdain and to criticise its listeners and performers as philistines, while lauding the sophisticated merits and superiority of so-called “serious” music. Others feel that it is wise to remain aware of the emotional, social, and political impact of pop music. The criticism of one generation’s music by the preceding generation is not new. Each new generation and its music, styles, and fads have been subjected to the same harsh scrutiny.
One music critic put it this way: “By the time I reached [his] concert on Tuesday last week, the opening number was over, the audience in bold enthusiasm, and the piano a wreck… [he] is at least exhilarating; and his hammer play is not without variety but his touch, light or heavy, is the touch that hurts; and the glory of his playing is the glory that attends murder… Besides, the piano is not an instrument upon which you can safely let yourself go in this fashion.” Was the reviewer referring to Nat King COLE or Jerry Lee LEWIS, Elton JOHN or Billy Joel? No. The review, written by George Bernard Shaw in 1890, was of a concert given by Ignacy Jan Paderewski, a great classical concert pianist of that era.
Although the style and popularity of the group delivering the song is crucial to its success, some elements are common to all good pop songs. “Song forms” (structures) used to create pop music include the 8-, 12-, or 16-bar blues, or the 32-measure AABA song form used by the “golden era” composers of popular songs—George GERSHWIN, Cole PORTER, and Jerome KERN. One of the most important elements of any pop song that seeks to attain mass appeal is a memorable, melodic, and catchy refrain (also known as a “chorus” or “hook”). Songs that lack this hook are unlikely to become popular. The repetition of a central idea or theme is also important.
The pop group, the Monkees, who made some of the most appealing pop singles in the late 1960s. As well as making records, they also launched a successful TV series.
A song from a group or artist of a particular style that has broken-out of its “niche market” and has become a mass-market (national or international) hit is said to have “crossed-over.” Most artists in one of the various pop music genres seek, at one time or another, to have a major million-copy “crossover” hit.
Record sales and radio airplay time for the various styles and sub-genres that make up the fabric of American and British pop are tabulated using several methods. These determine a song’s position on the charts (such as those published by Soundscan, Billboard, Radio and Records, and Rolling Stone). Sales charts and radio/video hits have in turn spawned a number of hit-oriented radio formats, such as Top 40, Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR), and others. This crossover marketing approach is not entirely new: the Top 40 and CHR programs have their origins in radio and television shows dating back to the early 1960s, such as Your Hit Parade, American Bandstand, and Britain’s Top of the Pops. Naturally when a group appears on one of these shows, it materially increases sales, thus lengthening the time its hit number remains on the charts. In other words, the pop music industry is largely a media-driven phenomenon.
From the 1950s onward, pop music has been virtually synonymous with rock music. In this context, “rock” has a much broader meaning than the term might seem to imply—it includes music as stylistically diverse as rockabilly, rhythm and blues (R&B), SOUL, funk, country, rap, disco, progressive rock, punk, HEAVY METAL, doo-wop, acid, alternative, techno, and a host of sub-genres that have developed since the early days, when rock was created as an amalgam of African-American blues, white country music, and SWING.
Pop music in the rock era has been viewed as primarily dance-oriented music for a young audience. Most of these records are marketed to a consumer audience that includes preteens through college-age individuals. While the strong beat of the music encourages dancing, the lyrics are often poignant and sympathetic to the emotional state of young people.
Important styles from the 1950s include New Orleans, doo-wop, rockabilly, and jump blues. DJ and rock impresario Alan FREED is often credited with coining the term “rock’n’roll” for the type of blues, BOOGIE-WOOGIE, and R&B music played on his radio show; but no one is certain of the derivation of the term. Famous radio personalities who helped popularise the music during this era were Freed and Frank “the Hound-Dog” Lorenz, from WKBW-AM in Buffalo, New York. The Hound-Dog played blues, R&B, and doo-wop on a popular program called The Blue Room, which could be heard on the “Mighty KB” all along the East Coast as far as Florida. Another important personality who popularised rock music in the 1950s and 1960s was television celebrity Dick Clark, host of a dance party show called American Bandstand. Early record labels that were devoted exclusively to rock’n’roll included Sun (owned by Sam Phillips, credited with discovering Elvis PRESLEY), Dot, and later, Chess (originally a blues label owned by brothers Phil and Leonard Chess).
In the 1960s, the music evolved and split into several sub-styles that extended the musical and lyrical vocabulary of pop. The sounds of the early rockers continued to find an audience, but were joined by the slick female vocal groups of Berry Gordy’s MOTOWN Records and the highly produced pop-symphonies of songwriter and arranger Phil SPECTOR. There was also a resurgence of a phenomenon from the 1950s known as the “one-hit wonder”—a prefabricated artist or group put together in the recording studio, usually enjoying a meteoric, yet unrepeatable, rise up the pop charts.
The Monkees, launched in the mid-1960s, ostensibly typified this type of band and took it further into the TV age. Having been manufactured by Columbia Pictures for a series of television shows, they did not even play on their early, successful, hits. They were the first of many contrived bands who are conceived simply as a mass-media, money-making operation. However, they did go on to produce some great pop songs of their own, which to many are viewed as lightweight but accurate reflections of several musical movements of the time—particularly psychedelia and folk rock. However, perhaps unsurprisingly, as the Monkees became more in control of themselves musically, their popularity dwindled.
The 1960s also saw the advent of the first wave of the “British invasion” of America. Bands like Gerry and the Pacemakers, The KINKS, Freddie and the Dreamers, and Herman’s Hermits became smash hits in the U.S., supplanting the previously all-powerful Motown groups like Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, the Supremes, and the Ronettes. But the most influential British group, and possibly the most important pop group of all time, arrived in 1964—the BEATLES.
The Beatles took the world by storm and had an incredible string of hit singles and albums. Songs such as “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” “And I Love Her,” “Hard Day’s Night,” “Help,” “Revolution,” “Norwegian Wood,” “Yesterday,” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” drove the band to the top of the charts and cemented their place in pop history. Part of their appeal to their enormous following of fans was their talent for quick-fire repartee when questioned by journalists. When they were asked “How do you find America?” (meaning “How do you like it?”) they replied “Turn left at Greenland.”
The musical craftsmanship of the Lennon-McCartney partnership still influences pop songwriters. By the time the Beatles finally disbanded, they had set world records in concert ticket and record sales. Other important British groups of the 1960s included THE WHO, the Yardbirds, and the ROLLING STONES.
The Rolling Stones helped to bring about the blues revival in Britain. Mick Jagger’s singing and Keith Richards rhythm guitar playing were influenced by the Chicago R&B of blues legend Muddy WATERS and the rock’n’roll of Chuck BERRY. Many of the young British musicians and fans, seeking the sources of American rock’n’roll, also discovered Chicago blues artists like Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. American blues artists who had fallen out of fashion in the U.S. were enthusiastically welcomed in the U.K. The blues boom also spawned a number of top British blues bands like Graham Bond’s Blues Organization and Alexis Korner. Important rock musicians that came out of the blues revival equipped with their own sound include Eric Clapton, the Animals, and Fleetwood Mac. The blues revival in Britain had two major effects: it created a similar revival in the U.S. (showcased by the early versions of the J. Geils Band, the Steve Miller Band, and the Jimi HENDRIX Experience), and it was the impetus for the later evolution of the hard-rock proto-heavy metal groups such as LED ZEPPELIN, Deep Purple, and Uriah Heep.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. in the late 1960s and early 1970s, rock’n’roll was dominated by the heavy, psychedelic-influenced “acid” bands that proliferated between 1967 (the “summer of love”) and 1969 (the year of Woodstock, the first major rock festival held in the U.S.). Popular groups had names like the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Sly and the Family Stone, and Jimi Hendrix.
Although the late 1970s saw a continuation in popularity and the evolution of the hard rock bands, there was also a resurgence in the importance and popularity of African-American music. This was manifest in the wide acceptance of funk (Rufus, Funkadelic, Rick James, and Earth, Wind, and Fire), and its weak derivative, disco, which was made known to white dance-crazy audiences by groups such as the Commodores, Chic, the outrageous and prefabricated Village People, and K.C. and the Sunshine Band. The 1970s also saw the emergence of artists with major crossover potential, such as Elton John and Billy Joel; as well as more one-hit wonders—disposable, million-selling crossover pop singers and groups such as Carl Douglas, Debbie Boone, Rick Dees and his Cast of Idiots, Terry Jacks, Andy Kim and C. W. McCall.
Toward the end of the 1970s and the early 1980s, the middle-of-the-road music of such artists as the Carpenters contrasted with the fast and furious sound of rap that began to be heard all over the world. Originating from Jamaicans who had emigrated to the U.S., rap was heard only in the black ghettos of New York until 1979. Its first toe-hold was in the “urban contemporary” charts, with hits by groups such as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and the Sugar Hill Gang. Also the REGGAE sound was heard outside of its native Jamaica, thanks largely to Bob MARLEY and the Wailers.
In 1977, Britain fostered another movement in rock’n’roll that was to have a profound effect on pop music on both sides of the Atlantic: the punk explosion. Punk drew on sources as diverse as Jamaican reggae and the home-made garage band sounds of the 1960s. Punk music was typified by purposefully outlandish and painful fashions, and by groups like the SEX PISTOLS and the Clash. British punk, however, owed a debt to both the American “glam” rock and nascent punk scenes, exemplified by groups and artists like Patti Smith, the New York Dolls, and the Ramones. These bands in turn were heavily influenced by earlier minimalist rockers such as Lou Reed and the VELVET UNDERGROUND.
Out of the radical punk explosion came the pop bands of the early 1980s—“new wave” artists such as the Cars, the Knack, Blondie, and minimalist art rockers like the Talking Heads. Smart pop, exemplified by the Police, ruled the charts and the dance floor. Synth-pop, dance-oriented acts, such as Gary Numan, boldly combined sci-fi looks, techno sounds, and disco beats with punk cynicism, and reached a zenith in popularity.
The new wave did not eclipse mainstream pop. Artists such as Michael JACKSON, PRINCE, Phil Collins, Billy Ocean, Elton John, and Billy Joel broke sales records in the mid- to late 1980s, while rappers such as MC Hammer became million-selling crossover artists. One significant factor that has become extremely pronounced in the business of pop music since the 1980s is the increasing prominence of music video. The rise of popular music TV networks and video networks such as MTV, VH-1, and TNN (The Nashville Network) have seriously altered the course of pop history and have at least partially wrested the reins of hit-making machinery from radio.
In the 1980s and 1990s, all the various pop styles were found on the sales charts while struggling for supremacy in the minds, hearts, and wallets of the record-buying public. Boy bands, such as Hanson, gained popularity with a young audience.
Part of the continuum of new styles emerging and evolving includes rap, alternative, dance hall, techno, and ambient sounds; as well as the reappearance of the prefabricated pop group, for example, the Spice Girls.
Regardless of what is on the pop music horizon in the next millennium, it is sure to demonstrate three important elements: it will be media-friendly, be easy to dance to, and, most of all, it will be popular.
Gregg Juke
SEE ALSO:
BLUES; BRITISH BEAT MUSIC; COUNTRY; DANCE MUSIC; DISCO; FUNK; JAZZ; POPULAR MUSIC; PROGRESSIVE ROCK; PUNK; RAP; ROCK MUSIC; ROCK’N’ROLL; SURF MUSIC
FURTHER READING
Roberts, Chris. Idle Worship: How Pop Empowers the Weak, Rewards the Faithful, and Succours the Needy (London: Faber, 1995);
Smith, Giles. Lost in Music: A Pop Odyssey (London: Picador, 1996).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Beatles: Let It Be; Magical Mystery Tour; Eric Clapton: 461 Ocean Boulevard; The Doors: Strange Days;
Jefferson Airplane: Crown of Creation; Billy Joel: An Innocent Man; Elton John: Here and There; Jimi Hendrix: Electric Ladyland;
Michael Jackson: Dangerous; Thriller; Monkees: Headquarters;
Elvis Presley: From Elvis in Memphis; Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers; Spice Girls: Spiceworld; T. Rex: Electric Warrior.
