It’s a musical genre, a sound, it has many definitions depending on context. It isn’t just a literal abbreviation of the word “popular”, not since about the 1950s anyway.
No that's exactly what it is. It used to be if it was on the radio, it was pop. Now I guess it would be if it goes viral on Tiktok or trending on streaming platforms.
But if you are going to claim its an actual genre, like I've seen many do, then you will need to provide a description of the style that manages to include what people generally consider pop while excluding what they don't. And I've yet to see someone succeed. Because pop isn't a genre.
> But if you are going to claim its an actual genre, like I've seen many do, then you will need to provide a description of the style that manages to include what people generally consider pop while excluding what they don't. And I've yet to see someone succeed.
This is impossible for any musical genre that isn't effectively dead. Genres change over time as artists experiment. Hip hop today isn't hip hop from the 90s, but both are hip hop. Rock in the 90s was different from rock in the 60s, and both are different from you'll see released by rock bands in 2022.
Pop isn't just a genre, it has tons of subgenres - bubblegum pop, synth pop, dance pop, hyperpop, K-pop, J-pop - that have distinct differences. There's crossover with other genres sometimes (which is also true of every other genre), but not all popular music is pop, and not all pop is popular.
It's not a traditional genre as much as a characterization, but it definitely has hallmarks that you can identify without reference to its popularity. From Wikipedia:
> Identifying factors usually include repeated choruses and hooks, short to medium-length songs written in a basic format (often the verse-chorus structure), and rhythms or tempos that can be easily danced to.
BTW, Wikipedia also draws a distinction between "pop music" and "popular music", where the latter is defined as you describe.
Roots in blues, and its composition is based on blues paradigms like the pentatonic scale and writing structure, 4/4 or 3/4 time signature. Instrumentation has but is not limited to, at least one electric guitar, bass, drum kit and a vocalist. Song structure will usually adhere to a verse chorus verse chorus bridge trope.
I'm not sure I agree with this definition - I was a teenager in the 80's when radio dominated the music industry, and they played a lot of stuff that wasn't "pop music".
John Peel's show on Radio 1 in the UK was practically the definition of counter-culture music at the time, yet that was the mainstream music radio station.
We don’t need another semantic battle over who gets to gatekeep what defines a genre. It’s all subjective but you can also get the gist on the general case pretty easily.
