LECTURE 1: What Is the Pop in Popular Music
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American Pop Music
Pop music fits into the much category of pop culture--stuff that gets mass distributed to the extent that some things like movies or entertainers become household names. Who in America has not heard of Marilyn Monroe? She is one of the quintessential pop images of the 20th Century who omnipresent in many forms of media--art, film, advertising, and so forth. Pop culture can also spread by word of mouth, such as telling a joke or recounting an urban legend to a friend. However, when it comes to popular music--and there are many forms of pop music--technology and media function to disseminate the music to a mass audience. Without radio airplay, CDs, mp3 files, and vinyl recordings (still extant), popular music would not be popular; that is, it would not circulate to a broad audience. In contrast, a music like jazz would probably not be considered popular culture, since its main audience today is a small, niche audience.
Another way to gauge what is popular is by volume of sales. Usually, a pop artist is considered successful when sales of a recording reach 500,000 copies or more. There is in place a ranking system by the Recording Industry Association of America for labeling sales. It is as follows:
- 500,000 recordings sold = Gold
- 1,000,000 recordings sold = Platinum
- 10,000,000 recordings sold = Diamond
Just to throw around some numbers, Michael Jackson's Thriller, Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, and the Eagles, Their Greatest Hits top an elite list of recordings that sold over 40 million copies.
Trivia Question: Michael Jackson's CD "Thriller" has sold to date 65-110 million copies since its release in 1982. Let's say, a top jazz musician (here, I'm not talking about Kenny G or Nora Jones) puts out a new CD. How many copies would he expect to sell?
Technology and Music
The first forms of technology used to reach a mass audience go back at least to the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg (1440), which could reproduce copies of books and distribute them en masse. As far as music is concerned, the printing press contributed to the mass circulation of sheet music. For instance, ballad songs called broadsides were printed and distributed for sale from roughly the sixteenth century through the nineteenth century. Also, ragtime jazz (ca. 1900) was distributed in the form of sheet music, which made Scott Joplin, the most prolific composers of rags, the first black millionaire.
However, the introduction of recording technology was the biggest technological development to affect music and introduce the concept of pop music as we know it today. Jazz began to be recorded around the early 1920s. For instance, jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong became one of the first musical entertainers to reach a wide audience and become a household name. Also there was Bing Crosby and even Hank Williams in country music.
The Superstar
The relationship between a popular audience and pop superstars is complex, if not also weird and strange. I suppose it has something to do with a compelling fascination we have for technology. Like magic, a 30 foot image of Tom Cruse fills the silver screen as millions of viewers watch. Pretty soon, people who do not really know him, find him important and listen to whatever he might say about politics, world conditions, and so forth. It is probably not a good idea for people to form opinions about the world through their pop idols. Maybe it has more to do with the illusion that popular culture and media create. Glamor, success and the "cool" ethic are magnets that draw in consumers. Why? People crave for these in their own lives. Then they become like deer in the headlights when the media dishes out glamorous and cool images to consumers via the products of popular culture. It is much more complex than that, but it would take too much time to explore all these here and now.
Summary
In summary, pop becomes popular because it reaches a mass audience via technological advances, including printing and recording. The role of media in this scenario is one of power and the ability to create mass appeal for the purpose of selling music as well as the artist and his image (the superstar). For this section of the course, you will learn about American pop music, what it is and the different styles that fall under this category.