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.
51-574: Scott McKenzie (born Philip Wallach Blondheim III ; January 10, 1939 – August 18, 2012) was an American singer and songwriter who recorded the 1967 hit single and generational anthem " San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) ". Philip Wallach Blondheim III was born in Jacksonville, Florida , on January 10, 1939, the son of Philip Wallach Blondheim Jr. and the former Dorothy Winifred Hudson. His family moved to Asheville, North Carolina , when he
102-473: 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
153-399: 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
204-407: 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,
255-555: A new version of The Mamas and the Papas. With Terry Melcher , Mike Love , and John Phillips, he co-wrote " Kokomo " (1988), a number 1 single for The Beach Boys . By 1998, he had retired from the road version of The Mamas and the Papas, and resided in Los Angeles until his death. He appeared at the Los Angeles tribute concert for John Phillips in 2001, amongst other 1960s contemporary acts. McKenzie died on August 18, 2012, in Los Angeles at
306-498: 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
357-455: 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,
408-558: A song, "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)." Phillips reported writing the song in about 20 minutes. The song is credited with bringing thousands of young people to San Francisco during the late 1960s. Different issues of the recording use slightly different titles, including: "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)"; "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)"; and "San Francisco 'Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair'". Released on May 13, 1967,
459-416: 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
510-472: 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
561-483: 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
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#1732868753644612-425: 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
663-652: 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
714-583: 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
765-462: 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 ,
816-403: Is said to have sold over seven million copies worldwide. The song has been featured in several films, including Frantic (1988), The Rock (1996) and Forrest Gump (1994). It was also played occasionally by Led Zeppelin as part of the improvised section in the middle of "Dazed and Confused" . U2 's Bono also led the audience in a sing-along during their PopMart performances in
867-430: 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
918-772: The San Francisco Bay Area on June 18 and 19, 1997. New Order covered it on July 11, 2014, at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. A cover by Michael Marshall appears in the film The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019). Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. French singer Johnny Hallyday recorded the song in French, with the title "San Francisco". His version reached number five in Wallonia (French Belgium) in 1967,
969-434: 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
1020-645: The counterculture movement of the 1960s , including the Hippie , Anti-Vietnam War and Flower power movements." The song has also been widely regarded as a defining song of the Summer of Love along with the Beatles ' " All You Need Is Love ". According to Paul Ingles of NPR, "...local authorities in Monterey were starting to get cold feet over the prospect of their town being overrun by hippies. To smooth things over, Phillips wrote
1071-435: 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
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#17328687536441122-596: The English tracks came out on the Compilations' "Femme Fatales of Music" Vol. 1 & 2, credited to Vanessa White Smith, the main vocalist with Psykick Holiday. All releases were on Future Legend Records and made available on iTunes. American rock band Greta Van Fleet is also known to have covered the song live during their early career. Traces of the song can be heard in their unreleased song called "Written in Gold". This version of
1173-624: The age of 73. He developed Guillain–Barré syndrome in 2010, which lasted until his death. Other single releases San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) " San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) " is an American pop song , written by John Phillips , and sung by Scott McKenzie . It was produced and released in May 1967 by Phillips and Lou Adler , who used it to promote their Monterey International Pop Music Festival held in June of that year. John Phillips played guitar on
1224-770: 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
1275-454: 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
1326-456: The folk group The Journeymen at the height of the folk music craze. They recorded three albums and seven singles for Capitol Records . After The Beatles became popular in 1964, The Journeymen disbanded. McKenzie and Weissman became solo performers, while Phillips formed the group The Mamas & the Papas with Denny Doherty , Cass Elliot , and Michelle Phillips and moved to California . McKenzie originally declined an opportunity to join
1377-428: 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,
1428-578: 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
1479-462: The group, saying in a 1977 interview "I was trying to see if I could do something by myself. And I didn't think I could take that much pressure." Two years later, he left New York and signed with Lou Adler 's Ode Records. John Phillips wrote and co-produced " San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) " for McKenzie. Phillips played guitar on the recording, and session musician Gary L. Coleman played orchestra bells and chimes. The bass line of
1530-409: 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
1581-414: 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
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1632-401: 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
1683-501: 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;
1734-508: 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
1785-448: 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
1836-403: 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,
1887-802: 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
1938-400: 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
1989-448: 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
2040-503: 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
2091-628: The recording and session musician Gary L. Coleman played orchestra bells and chimes. Bass guitar was supplied by session musician Joe Osborn . Hal Blaine played drums . The song reached the fourth position on the US charts and the number one spot on the UK charts. In Ireland, it was number one for one week, in New Zealand the song spent five weeks at number one, and in Germany it was six weeks at number one. McKenzie's version has been called "the unofficial anthem of
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2142-688: The song is very reminiscent to the version heard on The Song Remains the Same by Led Zeppelin, which the band is often compared to in terms of style and influences. Notes Bibliography 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
2193-603: The song was an instant hit. By the week ending July 1, 1967, it reached the number four spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, where it remained for four consecutive weeks. Meanwhile, the song rose to number one in the UK Singles Chart , and most of Europe. In July 1967, McKenzie's previous record label, Capitol, claimed that the "follow-up" to this was their re-release of his earlier single, "Look in Your Eyes." The single
2244-470: The song was released in October 1967. 7-inch single Philips B 370.454 F (1967) 7-inch EP Philips 437.380 BE (1967) British band Psykick Holiday did a cover in 2017 to mark the 50th anniversary of the song. It was a double A-side single with " Let's Go to San Francisco " as the other track. The band also did a Summer of Love EP featuring a French & Spanish version of both songs. In 2020 and 2022,
2295-542: The song was supplied by session musician Joe Osborn . Hal Blaine played drums. It was released on May 13, 1967, in the United States and was an instant hit, reaching number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 2 in the Canadian RPM Magazine charts. It was also a number 1 in the UK and several other countries, selling over 7 million copies globally. McKenzie released the single "Like an Old Time Movie", which Phillips wrote, composed, and produced, and which
2346-573: 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
2397-409: 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
2448-623: 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
2499-649: Was a top-40 hit (number 24 on Billboard; number 27 in Canada). His first album, The Voice of Scott McKenzie, was followed with an album titled Stained Glass Morning . He stopped recording in the early 1970s, living in Joshua Tree, California and Virginia Beach, Virginia. McKenzie wrote and composed the song " What About Me " that launched the career of Canadian singer Anne Murray in 1968. (Murray's United States breakthrough, with Gene McLellan's "Snowbird", would not follow for several years.) In 1986, he started singing with
2550-453: 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
2601-832: Was six months old. He grew up in North Carolina and Alexandria, Virginia , where he became friends with John Phillips , the son of one of his mother's friends. In the mid-1950s, he sang briefly with Tim Rose in a high-school group named The Singing Strings. He graduated high school from St. Stephens School for Boys in Alexandria. Later, with Phillips, Mike Boran and Bill Cleary, he formed the doo wop band The Abstracts. In New York City , The Abstracts became The Smoothies and recorded two singles with Decca Records , produced by Milt Gabler . During his time with The Smoothies, Blondheim decided to change his name for business reasons: In 1961, Phillips and McKenzie met Dick Weissman and formed
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