HISTORY

In the history of music, the term 'pop music' was first used in 1926. It was used to describe 'a piece of music having popular appeal'. Commercially recorded music, consisting of relatively short and simple love songs is known as 'pop music'. It is associated with the 'rock and roll' style, often tailored for the youth market, that utilizes technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes. Pop music history informs us that the term 'pop music' originated in Britain in the mid-1950s and implied 'concerts appealing to a wide audience' or 'music that induced dancing spirit' or 'the non classical music, usually in the form of songs', performed by such artists as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Abba, etc.

If you go through 80's music history, you will notice that pop music, throughout its development has been influenced by most other genres of popular music. Pop music picked up instrumentation from jazz and rock music, vocal harmonies from gospel music and soul music formed from the sentimental ballads, tempo from dance music, support from electronic music and spoken passages from rap. In 1950s television was introduced and visual presence of pop stars helped to gain more popularity. In 1960s, inexpensive portable transistor radios were introduced, which helped teenagers to listen to music even outside the home. By 1980s MTV favored the artists like Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna who had a strong visual appeal. Widespread use of the microphone, multi-track recording, digital sampling were the other technological innovations which were responsible for the increasing popularity of pop music. In 1980s, when video technique was introduced, pop albums gained tremendous popularity. Every region has its own history of music, the same rule applies to pop music too.

Though pop music had been dominated by the American music industry, most regions and countries have their own form of pop music. The American pop music history provides us information about the fact that the 1960s and '70s saw a number of important changes in the American popular music, for instance, development of a number of new styles, including heavy metal, punk, soul and hip hop. Here is an overview of the history of pop music.