"Popular music" is a broad category, like "classical music". The term "classical music" usually refers to the hundreds of years of development of western art music, part of which includes the "Classical period" which refers to a shorter time period from around 1750 to 1820 and included composers like Mozart and Beethoven. The classical period came after the Baroque period and was followed by the Romantic period.
The term "popular music" refers to the music that the greatest number of people, literally what is popular. It includes a number of styles, like Country, Hip-hop, Rock, and Pop. In this class we will refer to all of these and others as styles of popular music. "Pop music" is an abbreviation of "Popular Music". In this class when we talk about a "Pop song" we will mean a song written in pop music style, as opposed to a "Country song" or "Rock song" that is written in one of those other sub styles of popular music.
Pop music came out of rock and roll and artists like Elvis Presley. According to Pete Seeger, pop music is "professional music which draws u pon both folk music and fine arts music." Another way to look at it is a softer alternative to rock aimed at a youth market. The Beatles set the standard for pop music. From 1962 to 1970 they dominated the charts in the United States and Britain. Popular music is usually professional produced, often in multi-track studios. The Beatles decided to stop performing live and concentrate on studio recording. The emphasis now is on recording, production, and technology over live performance. Typical song forms include songform elements of verse, pre-chorus, chorus, and bridge. Pop music is often released as singles and has dance music influences. The harmony is fairly simple using diatonic chords and an occassional secondary dominant.
Examples from 1970s
Michael Jackson - Official YouTube channel
ABBA - Swedish Europop
Pop music was also bit in the 1980s. Some pop stars:
Wham! (with George Michael)
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