pop music

Pop music (a term that originally derives from an abbreviation of "popular") is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented towards a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple love songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes. Pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, but as a genre is particularly associated with the rock and roll and later rock style.

Popular commercial music, with its audience mainly among the young, current since the late 1950s. In c.1900 the name ‘pops’ was given to a series of concerts of light music promoted annually by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. But the singular, pop, refers to the kind of music inaugurated by rock and roll, and which has since diversified to such an extent that it is now most easily defined in terms of its market. The Beatles in the 1960s were one of the first groups to experiment radically with the basic rock format. Since then, pop music has taken in and adapted elements from a diverse range of musical sources, including blues, soul, reggae, country and western, and various ethnic styles. Pop musicians have also been very quick to exploit the possibilities of electronic music, particularly for such dance styles as hip-hop and rap music.