1. Pop Music
Pop music is made up by elements of many different genres
of music including Urban, Dance, Rock and Country.
‘Pop’ is a term that originally comes from the abbreviation
of popular, as pop music is simply a popular style of music
originating in the 1950’s

2. How do you define Pop music?
 The core elements defining pop music are things such as
the length of the song and the format of the song. Pop
songs tend to be short to medium in length and written in
a very basic format. Pop music is melodic and the lyrics in
Pop music tends to be very repetitive, especially during
the chorus, which could be seen as annoying by some
listeners. Pop songs are full of catchy hooks, which
catches the ear of the listener and makes the song
memorable. Catchy hooks are supposed to make the
song more appealing to the listener but can sometimes
do the opposite and put them off the song and be seen
as annoying.

3. The Pop music industry
 Pop music is commercially recorded to gain popularity
from a wide audience. Within pop music the emphasis is
on recording and producing and using technology such
as autotune to make the track sound of high quality.
There is less emphasis on artistic quality in pop music
unlike acoustic or rock music where the emphasis is on
live performance, and the artists are arguably more
talented.

4. Aims and intentions of pop music
 The main goal in pop music is to make it easy and
pleasurable to listen too, rather than having much focus on
artistic depth. To achieve this Pop artists often include
meaningless lyrics simply to make the verse to rhyme
 Pop music aims to appeal to a general audience rather
than a particular sub culture or ideology. To ensure that the
music appeals to a mass audience, pop tracks reflect
current existing trends and fashions. Tracks within the genre
are rarely diverse so people arent put off, and continue to
be interested by the music.
 Pop music is intended to encourage dancing, this is done by
the dance beats and rhythms throughout pop songs.

5. Development of pop music
 Pop music has absorbed influences from most other popular
music genres. The features of many other music genres have
been used to develop pop music as we know it today.
 The form of a pop song comes from sentimental ballards
 The vocal harmonies have been gained from gospel and
soul music
 The intrumentation is influenced by jazz country and rock
music
 The orchestration comes from classical music
 The tempo of pop music comes from dance music
 The backing of pop songs id influenced by electronic music
 And recently the use of spoken passages have been used
in pop songs, which is influenced by rap music.

6. Exploring pop as a genre
Dance-pop
 Dance-pop is a sub genre of pop music developed from
post-disco and synth-pop music. Dance orientated pop
music originates from the early 1980s, it is up tempo and
intended for clubs.
 In the late 70s/early 80s disco started to go out of fashion,
and sub genres such as post-disco and synth-pop were
created. These genres were in essence more modern
versions of disco music, and were more experimental and
producer/dj driven.
 Examples of current artists creating dance-pop music are
Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Kesha, Britney Spears and Christina