What Is Pop?

A video essay about what "pop" actually means.

Produced by Matt Beat. Music by Patrick Patrikios. All images and video found in the public domain or used under fair use guidelines.
My band: https://open.spotify.com/artist/62BsMJGRfRgX5rmsSPa4b6?si=zT4a6kpYThCV14K5VNy3dA
My other channel: @iammrbeat

What is pop?
Well, the conventional wisdom tells us that it’s just whatever is popular.
As a younger man, I would smugly say “huh, ya know….pop is just short for popular, so if something enters the mainstream, it’s automatically pop.”

But I’ve been thinking a lot more about this lately, and I think I disagree with my younger self, as I often do.

Usually, the word “pop” describes not only art, but culture. More specifically, the practices and beliefs of society, and the people and objects dominant in that society. Pop culture refers to categories such as music, film and other mediums of video, video games, sports, politicians, technology, fashion, and even slang.

The Dictionary defines pop culture as “modern popular culture transmitted via the mass media and aimed particularly at younger people.”

Or here’s another one: “cultural activities or commercial products reflecting, suited to, or aimed at the tastes of the general masses of people.” Well, younger people are often the ones driving the masses of people since they are more open to new things and advertisers know they’ll often hold on to those things for the rest of their lives.

So according to both definitions I shared with you about what pop culture is, the PURPOSE of the creation is a part of the definition that needs to be emphasized.

To better understand this, let’s take music as an example. When music journalists first distinguished pop from rock in the 1960s, they classified it as music designed to appeal to everyone, as opposed to rock, which aspired to being authentic and creative, pushing the boundaries of music. But today, some of the most innovative music is classified to some degree as pop. Take Animal Collective, who are even often classified as “experimental pop.”

So let’s break this down. Say you have a musician. Often, a musician doesn’t set out to make “pop music.” They make music, and if they are so fortunate, it enters the mainstream and then becomes pop music.

When the English new wave band Japan released the song “Ghosts,” they were probably the most surprised that it was such a big hit. It is a ridiculously unconventional song. Everything about it is not what you would typically hear in a pop hit, and yet, it was popular. It was technically...pop.

Then you have another type of a musician- one who specifically is trying to make a song they know the most people will like. So what do most people like in a song? They like a song with a steady rhythm, a repetitive chord or note progression that fits that rhythm like a glove, a memorable melody that is easy to sing along to, a predictable verse-chorus-bridge structure, with the verse building up to a strong chorus, and that chorus better repeat at least 2-3 times in the song.

More often than not, this musician loves all of those elements in a song, so it doesn’t feel forced at all. But occasionally you do get a team of songwriters who might as well be a machine because they are pumping out a formula that is a much safer bet to be commercially successful.

Spotify adds at least 20,000 songs each day, and has more than 30 million songs in its entire catalog. I would argue the vast majority of these songs are wannabe pop songs. Yep, the musicians that make them strive to give them a steady rhythm, a repetitive chord or note progression that fits that rhythm like a glove, a memorable melody that is easy to sing along to, a predictable verse-chorus-bridge structure, with the verse building up to a strong chorus, and that chorus better repeat at least 2-3 times in the song. But only a fraction of those 20,000 songs released every day are actually classified “pop,” and even of those classified as “pop,” an even smaller fraction will enter the mainstream culture.

Which brings us to an interesting development- there are many, MANY subgenres of pop. There’s the aforementioned experimental pop, pop rock, power pop, synth pop, electropop, noise pop, teen pop, J pop, K pop, chamber pop, indie pop…..that’s a weird one. I would say there are 50 different definitions of what indie pop actually is. But anyway, yeah, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are lots of pops. Lots of pop subgenres.

So as a whole, pop just means stuff that lots of people just so happen to already like. It doesn’t mean it can’t push the boundaries of art and culture, but it does mean that it tends to be a safer bet to be accepted by the mainstream. Even when the mainstream ignores it, it can still be pop.

#popculture #videoessay #thebeatgoeson

Видео What Is Pop? канала The Beat Goes On