Read about It and Listen to It: Technology and the Pop Song Format
Read about It and Listen to It: Technology and the Pop Song Format
As mentioned previously, technology plays a huge role in the dissemination of music to a mass or popular audience. Developments in technology have also helped to shaped the formatting of popular music. Open up the link below and listen to the first 2:42 of Rick Karr's segment called Part One: The Original Hardware Upgrade. Note that In middle class homes during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, popular music consisted of a piano, a printed sheet of composed music, and a player, usually a member of the family.
Link to Karr's Recordings at NPR Links to an external site.
NOTE: You will need Real Player to play both files. I am not sure what other players will work. Also, the file is slow to upload, so give it time.
Back in that day, the length of pop songs composed as sheet music sometimes went on well beyond 5 or 6 minutes. However, that changed when the phonograph caught on as a means for recording performances of music. The 78 LP (78 refers to the number of revolutions per minute that the record spun on the turntable) changed all that. Since the 78 LP was limited to about 3 minutes of recording time, pop song composers and performers began to conform the length of their songs and performances to fit the 3-minute format. That format still survives in pop music as the standard even though of course current technology today allows for the recording of longer songs.
Go back to the same link above and listen also in its entirety to Rick Karr's segment called Part Three: The Last Bad Note. Note here how the introduction of magnetic tape recording after WWII once again impacted the recording of music as well as live radio programming. Basically, tape recording allowed the possibility of editing out mistakes made by musicians on recording or by other types of entertainers, such as comedians. Washington State born Bing Crosby was the first to take advantage of recording tape for his radio broadcasts.
More about the Pop Music Format
The idea of a three-minute song format, as noted above, stuck around well after 78 LP records fell by the wayside. Today, a recorded song longer than three minutes will have great difficulty getting played on major AM radio stations. The reason is advertising. Short songs allow for more advertising. There is also probably some truth to the idea that listeners in today's advanced technological world have shorter listening spans than listeners did some 50 or 100 years ago. The three-minute format seems to be about the right length of time before a listener might get bored with a song.
Many pop songs, dating from the Vaudeville days (early 20th Century) to current songs in pop music, country, and other genres, also have something called a verse-chorus (or hook) format. A chorus is that part of the lyrics that repeats; whereas, different verses in a song are new, not repeated. There is some confusion as to the difference between a chorus and a hook. Sometimes, the hook can be the same as the chorus. Usually, it is that part of the song that sticks in one's head even after the song has played. Britney Spears' "Ooops, I did it again" is an example of a hook or that part of the song that repeats at different times, whereas the different verses help to tell the story of the song.