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Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom. During the 1950s and 1960s, pop music encompassed rock and roll and the youth-oriented styles it influenced. Rock and pop music remained roughly synonymous until the late 1960s, after which pop became associated with music that was more commercial, ephemeral , and accessible.

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55-544: The main title is the music, often later recorded on soundtrack albums , that is heard in a film while the opening credits are rolling. It does not refer to music playing from on-screen sources such as radios, as in the original opening credits sequence in Touch of Evil . A main title can consist of a tune sung by the leading character over the credits, such as Moon River , sung by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's , or

110-473: A chorus that contrasts melodically, rhythmically and harmonically with the verse . The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment. The lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions. Harmony and chord progressions in pop music are often "that of classical European tonality , only more simple-minded." Clichés include

165-449: A film's orchestral score was that for Alexander Korda 's 1942 film Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book , composed by Miklós Rózsa . When a feature film is released, or during and after a television series airs, an album in the form of a soundtrack is frequently released alongside it. A soundtrack typically contains instrumentation or alternatively a film score . But it can also feature songs that were sung or performed by characters in

220-399: A light entertainment and easy listening tradition. Pop music is more conservative than other music genres such as folk, blues, country, and tradition. Many pop songs do not contain themes of resistance, opposition, or politics, rather focusing more on love and relationships. Therefore, pop music does not challenge its audiences socially, and does not cause political activism. Frith also said

275-404: A more dark thriller would compose of hard rock or urban music . In 1908, Camille Saint-Saëns composed the first music specifically for use in a motion picture (L'assasinat du duc de Guise), and releasing recordings of songs used in films became prevalent in the 1930s. Henry Mancini , who won an Emmy Award and two Grammys for his soundtrack to Peter Gunn , was the first composer to have

330-544: A motion picture or television soundtrack. Many top-charting songs were featured or released on a film or television soundtrack album. Nowadays, the term "soundtrack" sort of subsided. It now mostly commonly refers to instrumental background music used in that media. Popular songs featured in a film or television series are instead highlighted and referenced in the credits, not a part of a "soundtrack". In advertisements or store listings, soundtrack albums are sometimes confused with original cast albums . These are albums made with

385-407: A music researcher, states pop music as any type of music that a person has been exposed to by the mass media. Most individuals think that pop music is just the singles charts and not the sum of all chart music. The music charts contain songs from a variety of sources, including classical , jazz , rock , and novelty songs . As a genre, pop music is seen to exist and develop separately. Therefore,

440-498: A pop song is to them, songs from the 1960s turned out to be the most memorable, significantly more than songs from recent years 2000 to 2015. Before the progressive pop of the late 1960s, performers were typically unable to decide on the artistic content of their music. Assisted by the mid-1960s economic boom, record labels began investing in artists, giving them the freedom to experiment, and offering them limited control over their content and marketing. This situation declined after

495-464: A scene (or a cover version of a song in the media, rerecorded by a popular artist), songs that were used as intentional or unintentional background music in important scenes, songs that were heard in the closing credits , or songs for no apparent reason related to the media other than for promotion, that were included in a soundtrack. Before home video became widespread in the 1980s, many soundtrack albums would also feature snippets of dialogue, as this

550-455: A separation which was "also, broadly, one between boys and girls, middle-class and working-class." The latter half of the 20th century included a large-scale trend in American culture in which the boundaries between art and pop music were increasingly blurred. Between 1950 and 1970, there was a debate of pop versus art. Since then, certain music publications have embraced the music's legitimacy,

605-416: A tendency to reflect existing trends rather than progressive developments ; and seeks to encourage dancing or uses dance-oriented rhythms. The main medium of pop music is the song, often between two and a half and three and a half minutes in length, generally marked by a consistent and noticeable rhythmic element , a mainstream style and a simple traditional structure . The structure of many popular songs

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660-472: A thriving pop music industry, most of which is devoted to Western-style pop. Japan has for several years produced a greater quantity of music than everywhere except the US. The spread of Western-style pop music has been interpreted variously as representing processes of Americanization, homogenization , modernization, creative appropriation, cultural imperialism , or a more general process of globalization . One of

715-483: A trend referred to as " poptimism ". Throughout its development, pop music has absorbed influences from other genres of popular music. Early pop music drew on traditional pop , an American counterpart to German Schlager and French Chanson , however compared to the pop of European countries, traditional pop originally emphasized influences ranging from Tin Pan Alley songwriting, Broadway theatre , and show tunes . As

770-464: A very strong difference in a roadshow theatrical release between an overture and a main title. The overture in such films is heard on pre-recorded tape or film, before the film even begins, while the house lights are still up and there is yet no picture on the screen. The main title begins when the film actually starts. In the case of The Sound of Music though (and also Fiddler on the Roof ) , no overture

825-434: A widespread hit with a song from a soundtrack. Before the 1970s, soundtracks (with a few exceptions), accompanied towards musicals , and was an album that featured vocal and instrumental, (and instrumental versions of vocal songs) musical selections performed by cast members. Or cover versions of songs sung by another artist. After the 1970s, soundtracks started to include more diversity, and music consumers would anticipate

880-501: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Soundtrack album A soundtrack album is any album that incorporates music directly recorded from the soundtrack of a particular feature film or television show . The first such album to be commercially released was Walt Disney 's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , the soundtrack to the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , in 1938. The first soundtrack album of

935-425: Is all the collective clubs around the world. Radio is just doing its best to keep up." Songs that talked of escapism through partying became the most popular, influenced by the impulse to forget the economic troubles that had taken over the world after the 2008 crash . Throughout the 2010s, a lot of pop music also began to take cues from Alternative pop . Popularized by artists such as Lana Del Rey and Lorde in

990-652: Is essentially conservative". It is, "provided from on high (by record companies, radio programmers, and concert promoters) rather than being made from below (...) Pop is not a do-it-yourself music but is professionally produced and packaged". According to Frith, characteristics of pop music include an aim of appealing to a general audience, rather than to a particular sub-culture or ideology, and an emphasis on craftsmanship rather than formal "artistic" qualities. Besides, Frith also offers three identifying characteristics of pop music: light entertainment, commercial imperatives, and personal identification. Pop music grew out of

1045-583: Is largely the story of the intertwining pop culture of the United States and the United Kingdom in the postwar era.  — Bob Stanley According to Grove Music Online , "Western-derived pop styles, whether coexisting with or marginalizing distinctively local genres, have spread throughout the world and have come to constitute stylistic common denominators in global commercial music cultures". Some non-Western countries, such as Japan, have developed

1100-462: Is most in line with the tastes and interests of the urban middle class." The term "pop song" was first used in 1926, in the sense of a piece of music "having popular appeal". Hatch and Millward indicate that many events in the history of recording in the 1920s can be seen as the birth of the modern pop music industry, including in country , blues , and hillbilly music . According to the website of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ,

1155-410: Is simply used for promotional purposes for well known artists, or new or unknown artists. These soundtracks contain music not at all heard in the film/television series, and any artistic or lyrical connection is purely coincidental. However depending on the genre of the media the soundtrack of popular songs would have a set pattern; a lighthearted romance might feature easy listening love songs, whilst

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1210-430: Is that of a verse and a chorus, the chorus serving as the portion of the track that is designed to stick in the ear through simple repetition both musically and lyrically. The chorus is often where the music builds towards and is often preceded by "the drop" where the bass and drum parts "drop out". Common variants include the verse-chorus form and the thirty-two-bar form , with a focus on melodies and catchy hooks , and

1265-434: The barbershop quartet-style harmony (i.e. ii – V – I) and blues scale -influenced harmony. There was a lessening of the influence of traditional views of the circle of fifths between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s, including less predominance for the dominant function . In October 2023, Billboard compiled a list of "the 500 best pop songs". In doing so, they noted the difficulty of defining "pop songs": One of

1320-516: The music of Bollywood , usually sells more than Indian pop records. Pop music Identifying factors of pop music usually include repeated choruses and hooks , short to medium-length songs written in a basic format (often the verse–chorus structure ), and rhythms or tempos that can be easily danced to. Much of pop music also borrows elements from other styles such as rock, urban , dance , Latin , and country . The terms popular music and pop music are often used interchangeably, although

1375-435: The American and (from the mid-1960s) British music industries , whose influence has made pop music something of an international monoculture, but most regions and countries have their own form of pop music, sometimes producing local versions of wider trends, and lending them local characteristics. Some of these trends (for example Europop ) have had a significant impact on the development of the genre. The story of pop music

1430-499: The Laurence Olivier Richard III , the soundtrack of which was released as a 3-LP album by RCA Victor in 1955. Sometimes tracks not in the movie are included in the album, especially on a CD release of the soundtrack as opposed to an LP. Some of these may be "outtakes" (songs or instrumental music recorded for use in the movie but "cut" in the final edit as released), or they may have been used in trailers but not in

1485-770: The decade, it was common for pop producers, songwriters, and engineers to freely experiment with musical form, orchestration , unnatural reverb , and other sound effects. Some of the best known examples are Phil Spector 's Wall of Sound and Joe Meek 's use of homemade electronic sound effects for acts like the Tornados . At the same time, pop music on radio and in both American and British film moved away from refined Tin Pan Alley to more eccentric songwriting and incorporated reverb-drenched electric guitar, symphonic strings, and horns played by groups of properly arranged and rehearsed studio musicians. A 2019 study held by New York University in which 643 participants had to rank how familiar

1540-454: The early 1960s, [the term] 'pop music' competed terminologically with beat music [in England], while in the US its coverage overlapped (as it still does) with that of 'rock and roll'". From about 1967, the term "pop music" was increasingly used in opposition to the term rock music, a division that gave generic significance to both terms. While rock aspired to authenticity and an expansion of

1595-444: The first three minutes, after which the dialogue was abruptly cut off and the musical score of the film took over, forcing listeners to "see the film if they wished to know what the mystery was all about." In a few rare instances, the complete soundtrack for a film — dialogue, music, sound effects, etc. — has been released. One notable example was a 3-LP set of the 1977 Rankin-Bass film The Hobbit . Because this particular film

1650-428: The former more accurately describes all music that is targeted for mass appeal (compare art music ) and includes many disparate styles. Although much of the music that appears on record charts is considered to be pop music, the genre is distinguished from chart music . David Hatch and Stephen Millward describe pop music as "a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz, and folk music". David Boyle,

1705-578: The genre evolved more influences ranging from classical , folk , rock , country , electronic music , and other popular genres became more prominent. In 2016, a Scientific Reports study that examined over 464,000 recordings of popular music recorded between 1955 and 2010 found that, compared to 1960s pop music, contemporary pop music uses a smaller variety of pitch progressions, greater average volume, less diverse instrumentation and recording techniques, and less timbral variety. Scientific American ' s John Matson reported that this "seems to support

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1760-409: The home. By the early 1980s, the promotion of pop music had been greatly affected by the rise of music television channels like MTV , which "favoured those artists such as Michael Jackson and Madonna who had a strong visual appeal". Multi-track recording (from the 1960s) and digital sampling (from the 1980s) have also been used as methods for the creation and elaboration of pop music. During

1815-414: The late 1970s and would not reemerge until the rise of Internet stars. Indie pop , which developed in the late 1970s, marked another departure from the glamour of contemporary pop music, with guitar bands formed on the then-novel premise that one could record and release their own music without having to procure a record contract from a major label. The 1980s are commonly remembered for an increase in

1870-401: The late 20th century that became global superstars include Whitney Houston , Michael Jackson , Madonna , George Michael , and Prince . At the beginning of the 2000s, the trends that dominated during the late 1990s still continued, but the music industry started to change as people began to download music from the internet. People were able to discover genres and artists that were outside of

1925-449: The main orchestral theme as written by the composer, such as the famous The Pink Panther Theme . It can also be a medley of themes from the film, as in the 1959 Ben-Hur . In the film A Hard Day's Night , the title tune was heard over the opening credits showing The Beatles running from their fans. An overture may serve as a main title, as in The Sound of Music . However, there is

1980-501: The main purpose of pop music is to create revenue. It is not a medium of free articulation of the people. Instead, pop music seeks to supply the nature of personal desire and achieve the instant empathy with cliche personalities, stereotypes, and melodrama that appeals to listeners. It is mostly about how much revenue pop music makes for record companies. Music scholar Timothy Warner said pop music typically has an emphasis on recording, production, and technology, rather than live performance;

2035-508: The mainstream and propel them to fame, but at the same time smaller artists had a harder time making a living because their music was being pirated. Popular artists were Avril Lavigne , Justin Timberlake , NSYNC , Christina Aguilera , Destiny's Child , and Britney Spears . Pop music often came from many different genres, with each genre in turn influencing the next one, blurring the lines between them and making them less distinct. This change

2090-448: The manner in which pop has been disseminated", which helped to move pop music to "a record/radio/film star system". Another technological change was the widespread availability of television in the 1950s with televised performances, which meant that "pop stars had to have a visual presence". In the 1960s, the introduction of inexpensive, portable transistor radios meant that teenagers in the developed world could listen to music outside of

2145-403: The mid-1960s, pop music made repeated forays into new sounds, styles, and techniques that inspired public discourse among its listeners. The word "progressive" was frequently used, and it was thought that every song and single was to be a "progression" from the last. Music critic Simon Reynolds writes that beginning with 1967, a divide would exist between "progressive" pop and "mass/chart" pop,

2200-425: The movie involved in other events (example: King of Pirates , from FLCL ). The unusual first soundtrack album of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz , issued in 1956 in conjunction with the film's first telecast, was virtually a condensed version of the film, with enough dialogue on the album for the listener to be able to easily follow the plot, as was the first soundtrack album of the 1968 Romeo and Juliet , and

2255-524: The movie itself. Examples include the South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut soundtrack. Two other well-known examples are the soundtrack albums to Rodgers and Hammerstein 's Carousel and The King and I both of which include two or more songs not heard in the finished film. Soundtrack albums account for the bulk of the Indian music industry . Music from the Indian film industry , particularly

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2310-431: The movie; the score contains only music by the original film's composers. Contemporaneously, a soundtrack can go against normality, (most typically used in popular culture franchises) and contains recently released or exclusive never before released original pop music selections, (some of which become high-charting records on their own, which due to being released on another franchises title, peaked because of that) and

2365-417: The original stage cast of a musical , and are recorded by the cast either in live performance or in a studio, not transferred from a movie soundtrack. In some cases, recorded dialogue may be incorporated into the soundtrack album. This comes in two kinds: audio clips from the movie itself (used on the albums for Pulp Fiction and Apollo 13 , for example) or radio dramas that involve the characters from

2420-802: The pop music styles that developed alongside other music styles is Latin pop , which rose in popularity in the US during the 1950s with early rock and roll success Ritchie Valens . Later, Los Lobos and Chicano rock gained in popularity during the 1970s and 1980s, and musician Selena saw large-scale popularity in the 1980s and 1990s, along with crossover appeal with fans of Tejano musicians Lydia Mendoza and Little Joe . With later Hispanic and Latino Americans seeing success within pop music charts, 1990s pop successes stayed popular in both their original genres and in broader pop music. Latin pop hit singles, such as " Macarena " by Los del Río and " Despacito " by Luis Fonsi , have seen record-breaking success on worldwide pop music charts. Notable pop artists of

2475-400: The popular anecdotal observation that pop music of yore was "better", or at least more varied, than today's top-40 stuff". However, he also noted that the study may not have been entirely representative of pop in each generation. In the 1960s, the majority of mainstream pop music fell in two categories: guitar, drum and bass groups or singers backed by a traditional orchestra. Since early in

2530-448: The possibilities of popular music, pop was more commercial, ephemeral, and accessible. According to British musicologist Simon Frith , pop music is produced "as a matter of enterprise not art", and is "designed to appeal to everyone" but "doesn't come from any particular place or mark off any particular taste". Frith adds that it is "not driven by any significant ambition except profit and commercial reward [...] and, in musical terms, it

2585-503: The reasons pop can be hard to summarize is because there’s no real sonic or musical definition to it. There are common elements to a lot of the biggest pop songs, but at the end of the day, "pop" means "popular" first and foremost, and just about any song that becomes popular enough...can be considered a pop song. In the 1940s, improved microphone design allowed a more intimate singing style and, ten or twenty years later, inexpensive and more durable 45 rpm records for singles "revolutionized

2640-518: The soundtrack albums of The Taming of the Shrew (1967 version), Cromwell , and Little Big Man . In the case of Patton , the bulk of the album featured the film's musical score, while the opening and final tracks featured George C. Scott 's opening and closing speeches from the movie. The highly unusual soundtrack album of the 1972 mystery film Sleuth was designed as a sort of teaser , with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine 's voices heard for

2695-573: The term "pop music" "originated in Britain in the mid-1950s as a description for rock and roll and the new youth music styles that it influenced". The Oxford Dictionary of Music states that while pop's "earlier meaning meant concerts appealing to a wide audience [...] since the late 1950s, however, pop has had the special meaning of non-classical mus[ic], usually in the form of songs, performed by such artists as The Beatles , The Rolling Stones , ABBA , etc." Grove Music Online also states that "[...] in

2750-409: The term "pop music" may be used to describe a distinct genre, designed to appeal to all, often characterized as "instant singles-based music aimed at teenagers" in contrast to rock music as "album-based music for adults". Pop music continuously evolves along with the term's definition. According to music writer Bill Lamb, popular music is defined as "the music since industrialization in the 1800s that

2805-623: The use of digital recording , associated with the usage of synthesizers , with synth-pop music and other electronic genres featuring non-traditional instruments increasing in popularity. By 2014, pop music worldwide had been permeated by electronic dance music . In 2018, researchers at the University of California, Irvine , concluded that pop music has become 'sadder' since the 1980s. The elements of happiness and brightness have eventually been replaced with electronic beats making pop music more 'sad yet danceable'. Pop music has been dominated by

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2860-453: Was epitomized in Spears' highly influential 2007 album Blackout , which under the influence of producer Danja , mixed the sounds of EDM , avant-funk , R&B , dance music , and hip hop . By 2010, pop music impacted by dance music came to be dominant on the charts. Instead of radio setting the trends, it was now the club. At the beginning of the 2010s, Will.i.am stated, "The new bubble

2915-469: Was heard before the lights in the theatre went down; therefore, in these cases, the main title did serve as an overture. Both films had pre-credits opening sequences; during these, the first song from the film was sung, and immediately afterwards, the main title music followed. In movie musicals, the main title nearly always consists of one or more of the songs from the film, played by the orchestra. This article related to film or motion picture terminology

2970-464: Was one of the few ways to re-experience a film after its original release apart from television broadcasts or theatrical reissues. Soundtracks are usually released on major record labels (just as if they were released by a musical artist), and the songs and the soundtrack itself can also be on music charts, and win musical awards. By convention, a soundtrack record can contain any kind of music including music "inspired by" but not actually appearing in

3025-446: Was produced for television, it lent itself well to the LP format: built-in commercial insert points were used to end each LP side, thus avoiding any additional editing. Another example was the above-mentioned Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet – the movie proved so popular that two years after the film's original release, an album set of the complete soundtrack was released. Still another example was

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