Pop Music Has a Wider Interpretation

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the phrase pop music? Now a days, the terminology pop music has a really narrow definition, meaning only today’s most current crop of performers. I think that pop music as a term needs to have a much wider interpretation. This should include the decades in which popular music began.

Mass media definitely contributed to the widespread distribution and influence of pop music to the world. With regards to the music industry, pop music in general is encompassing over the whole public consensus with regards to tunes and music considered nice for enjoyment on an everyday basis, without having to pay particular attention to the complex ways and means of classical music. Pop music as a genre is spanning through so many decades. If you listen carefully, you will surely hear the cultural influences of Big band, the Flapper era, Swing, Barry Manilow and Barbra Streisand. Not like classical music, all that pop music really needs is a beat that is simple and catchy. With that, it is easy to strike a chord and make the listening public sing along.

The movement known as pop music was officially inroads back in 1970s as sort of a backlash statement against those advertisement jingles that were so popular in the music world during the 1950s.

So now, you may also begin to think when pop music began to bridge the gap of what was known as popular music with today’s own brand of pop music as we know it?

Back in the 70s, emphasis was on the flamboyance, with all the neon-colored outfits, large prints and design, costume jewelry being worn and a lot of those plastic, sparkly and shiny outfits. Everything was big – hair, shoes and accessories. At this time, mass media was young still and it had only began to explore its power and influence based on its medium. It did not take long for popular culture to be a huge part of daily life and closely related too. You can look at fads, fashion and trend straight from the TV. It was easy to know the things considered in, groovy and hip.

The pop music scenery of the 1970s was like a more sanitized and mechanical version of what is was in the 1960s. It reached a point when a lot of people wanted to go against the trend that this became trendy. Everyone wanted to be more different to the other, and thus pop music became the trend at that time.

It was in the middle of the 1970s that music videos made the public more aware of pop music. A new audience was reached and captured by the music of Olivia Newton John, Michael Jackson and Barry Manilow. With flashy costumes and steady  beat, catchy tunes was the criteria for what was appealing to the people.

The youth of the late 1990s grew tired of the lifestyle represented by pop music. Image has surpassed talent and pop music became dumbed down. So what in store for fans of pop music? Let’s wait and see!

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