Talk:Popular music
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Popoular or non-popular
Nice page but it is off point in drawing the dichotomy between pop and other styles as being based on being performed for enjoyment. It is plainly obvious that numerous pop artists performed for enjoyment and at times were even part of the non pop genres before being discovered. I understand the point that is being attempted but it would be more accurate to work in the following facts: *Pop music can be of virtually any genre.
- Pop music artists often perform for enjoyment (take the last few years of the singer songwriter onslaught led by John Mayer and Jack Johnson). Singer songwriters are definitely producing music that is "like so tru to how they feel" but for enjoyment might be contraversial sense the feelings they seek to "share with the world" are as often anguishing as enjoyable. They are epitomes of self absorbtion. A better example might be Eminem or the likes.
- Pop music artists are often not considered pop until after they get airplay (phantom planet was not pop until recently) and therefore pop music is often an a posteriori claim not an a priori one.
- When it is an a priori claim (that is when a local band or artist is referred to as pop before they have entered the pop culture via mass media) it is usually used pejoratively and to signify that the artist/s isn't/aren't creating music that is true to the essence of the genre from whence they came (greenday was known as pop punk before ever entering the pop culture)
These are just a few suggestions and my main beef with the page is that it seems to at times present the pop artist as being a tool of the industry execs when it could actually be the other way around, such as in rage against the machines decision to enter pop culture with the intention of spreading decidedly non-pop messages.
Genres sections
I appreciate the clarity that is created by the sections Popular_music#Genres and Popular_music#Genres_that_are_not_popular_music, but the actual situation is more complex, with some genres being considered a part of popular music by different writers at different times, and othertimes not. For example, some theories describe folk music as a large genre within popular music, some theories distinguish popular music from classical in that it is a part of folk music. Hyacinth 19:10, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Lists
Should the following pages:
be changed to "List of pop performers" and "list of rock and roll performers"? For that matter, I'm not sure how we should distinguish between the two. At any rate, I think they should be moved out from subpages. Tarquin, Wednesday, June 19, 2002
- I think the best solution (after moving from subpages) would be to make one big list of Popular Music Performers. For each genre (such as rock, but also disco, funk, Britpop; anything) there should be a short list of representative performers - included in the article, preferable accompanied by some text (like "Band x were the first to score a number 1 hit with a genre y song").
- This will avoid including some names in many lists (it is not always easy to determine which genre a performer is playing, and it may change over time and the exact properties music genres highly debatable). The list of popular music performers will serve the purpose of listing all mentioned artists and bands in the Wikipedia. -- jheijmans
- What should we call the kind of popular music I like (mostly popular from late '40s to mid '50s)? The music of the period before is commonly referred to as big band music; the music of the period afterward as Rock 'n' Roll but there seems to be no name for this kind of popular music and if we give genres, we need to use some name for this music - represented by such as Doris Day, Perry Como, etc. -- BRG
Date of origin
User 152.163.253.100 raises the important point of when popular music began. The date of the 1950's cannot be correct, since it leave out big bands (1930-40's), ragtime (ca. 1900), parlor music like "Listen to the Mockingbird" (1855), and perhaps earlier stuff I'm not aware of.
I'd suggest that each genre, in its own article, be given a date of origin; we can't really generalize at this level except to identify the earliest popular music of any kind. Opus33 15:19, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I wholeheartedly agree with Opus33. Listing the emergence of each form by date will remove the some of the unrigorous flabbiness from this article, such as saying that Big band music or jazz isn't popular music because it "isn't popular any more", or some of the other weak categorizations made here. Remove all the categories and put dates on everything, then list in chronological order.Ortolan88 23:50, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- I'd be happy to be rid of the "no longer popular" category--I put it in only as an effort to be tactful with another editor, a practice which (as I am learning) does not generally lead to good results...
- Putting in accurate dates of origin for the genres is not at all easy. We need a serious expert, or at least someone who has a serious book. Opus33 00:19, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- Let's delete the article on popular music, since it doesn't make sense. User:4.161.5.187 Oct 15 2004