Music of choice of Dredmor players

It is ironic.

 

Actually, that is Rock and not Pop.

 

My music-loving friend said this when asked what genre it is:

7:33 PM - jcad: Crap
7:33 PM - jcad: I mean...
7:33 PM - jcad: Excuse me
7:33 PM - jcad: It would largely be classified as "Indie" or "indie rock"
7:35 PM - jcad: It doesn't really have many rock elements though
7:35 PM - jcad: But the backing is inspired by rock, so it might as well be "pop"
7:37 PM - jcad: And since it might as well be "pop", you can pretty much just sweep it under the "Alternative" rug
7:40 PM - jcad: Answered you question? lol

 

What I was saying is that it can be both.

Pop is more of a marketing label.

/edit So is Indie lol -- it has nothing to do with the qualities of the music. Same with Alternative.

 

IMO alternative can refer to the quality of the music - it means it doesn't fit into any of the established categories cleanly.

 

Both songs are folk, because folk simply means that the lyrics were passed down and lyrics were added and/or changed by the people who sang it -- in other words it comes from an oral tradition. Changing the style doesn't change it from being folk.

Modern Folk is another story -- that's a label that has nothing to do with an oral tradition.




Also:

 

Oh, Leadbelly is awesome Heh, I'm quite a bit into music myself, and I do like to categorize things, so I'm not a fan of the "blah, there are no genres!" approach.

TL;DR:
I do think Pop is a musical genre nowadays, it is softer than rock, while still retaining some instruments, voice and melodies without seeming overtly electronical.

I tend to associate terms like Indie, Pop and Alternative more with distinctive music styles than with what they really mean. Indie is Britrock/Pop for me, something like Kaiser Chiefs or Arctic Monkeys, with Bloc Party being close, but not quite. Blur is somewhere there as well, but perhaps edging a bit closer to Britpop than Rock.
Alternative is harder rock that is not quite Grunge, probably Incubus and the Foo Fighters. Incidentally, I find it quite hard to define Grunge, but tend to stick with Alternative that is slightly depressive, and borders a bit more on Metal. There's obviously Nirvana, but also some Melvin stuff and many songs by the Screaming Trees (I've fallen in love with Mark Lanegan's voice even though I'm straight!).
Pop, for me, is fluffy-feeling somehow. No screaming, soft drops, no hard transitions. Instruments including more spherical stuff, synths, soft keyboards... Yeah. Absofacto, some stuff by Soley, The Notwist, some songs by Ben Onono.
Well, genres are very fluid and it's basically a matter of taste, but I do think music can be sorted by genre, though the boundaries are very fluid.
Don't ever get into a discussion about this stuff with me, I can go on for hours

EDIT: And I forgot the music Here comes!

Incredibly relaxing and great to chill out. Pure positive energy, without nasty sideeffects like giving you too much motivation to do anything!


I love Blues as well, my favourite is probably Howlin Wolf. That voice is amazing, kind of a precursor to Tom Waits imho

 

Pop actually means that it has a catchy hook, that the chorus is repeated some times in the song and that it's meant for a wide audience. Everything you posted so far doesn't exactly sound like pop.

 

Pop music, to me, is whatever's popular ('pop' being shorthand for 'popular', I believe). So whilst Hanson and, say, that super-shit Britney & Will.I.Am collaboration are pretty different and like a decade or so apart, they're both pop music because they both entered the major charts and were played on major 'pop' radio stations (e.g. the BBC's Radio 1).

I don't think there's any real rules as to what 'pop music' is, though I would say it tends to be vapid, manufactured, devoid of soul and largely shit these days.

 

No, Popular Music is music that's currently popular. Pop Music is try-hard Popular Music; using all known tricks to make the song more appealing to bigger audiences than e.g indie music.

 

Gods, you just reminded me of that pretentious-as-fuck Taylor Swift record.

Someone *please* kill her high horse.

 

What Pop music is does change from generation to generation -- the only thing that each generation's pop has in common is a catch tune, really. I mean Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, and Lady Gaga don't have a lot in common, other than the fact that a whole lot of their music (maybe not all) is considered pop.

Pop music DOES tend to have a catchy tune, a catchy beat (it's not NECESSARILY upbeat, but usually is), simple, straight-forward lyrics, is usually between 2 to 3 and a half minutes in length, and is *rarely* 'edgy' in its subject matter (one exception is Velvet Underground/Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" is definitely a pop song because of its catchy tune, beat, and chorus, and the fact that it got a lot of air play, but only because MOST of the general public didn't understand what the song was about).

 

Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground, by all rights SHOULDN'T be pop music, but here ya go:




The main thing that makes it pop (besides the catchy tunes) is that they got a lot of air play. That's pretty much it.

 

This all got me thinking... we are now in an age where radio is fairly irrelevant as far as music is concerned. So that probably explains the shift in definition. Because originally, it was what got played on AM radio (as opposed to FM).

Back when I was a kid/teenager listening to the radio, my family didn't have access to FM radio, and there was a distinct difference between what got played on AM and FM. Really, there was kind of an economic divide as far as access to music. And so pretty much, only what got played on AM earned the 'Pop' music label, only because FM wasn't mainstream.

Eventually, when FM became cheaper, more people got exposed to what was going on there, and the definition kind of shifted a bit. Now that radio is fairly irrelevant (read 'horrible'), it's more about television play.

 

It's funny how even that got reversed, nowadays every cell phone has FM, but hardly nothing has AM. And television isn't all that important either imho, mainly because there are no channels that still serve music as a focus.
You can get a pretty good grasp of popularity on a) YouTube, b) spotify/last.fm/pandora or c) from the sales charts. Television isn't a major factor anymore.
And I still maintain that Absofacto is pop, albeit very good one

 

I don't think it's irrelevant. I think radio is still pretty much here to stay, but things have changed, definitely. The charts are now based on download figures, not sales of singles.

There was a time when MTV really made headway, and it had a big impact on the alternative culture with shows like Beavis & Butthead and Daria, but it now plays to the mainstream with "shows" like Jersey Shore and has moved away from its musical roots. But even alt stations like Kerrang! changed, going from (in my teen years) nu-metal and more 'stable' genres of music into more emo/screamo music like Bring Me My Avenged Valentine Who Will Mutilate Your Mother's Gallows or whatever they're called, which itself is kinda mainstream.

I don't know what role music TV and radio will have to play, though. For now it seems iTunes and YouTube have replaced them to some degree.

 

One of the problems with radio is that it's dominated by just one or two corporations now -- Clear Channel is the big one. Wonder why it sucks? It's because Clear Channel has a formula, and they stick to it. If it's not on the play list, the song doesn't get played. And because it's so dominant, it's hard to find a station within your chosen genre that plays anything beyond that playlist.

That wasn't always true, though. I remember stations here in New York and in LA (when I was in College) that were serious trend-makers and breakers. Without that, punk music and new wave and rap and so on, might have remained stuck in the big cities.

But instead of saying that radio is 'irrelevant', I should have said that it is increasingly irrelevant, simply because,t as you point out, it's influence has been watered down by the internet.

And btw, I wasn't talking about music television, I was talking about shows that feature music, everything from talk shows to Saturday Night Live (even though I've lost all love for it in recent decades, it does play a lot of music), and even some dramas (don't laugh -- I used to watch Grey's Anatomy with my mom, now I refuse to -- I think it's terrible music overall, but it's still music).

 

I'm definitely not laughing, I used to watch Grey's Anatomy with my mum as well, though we both agreed it was a bad replacement for Emergency Room. Though I think the influence they wield is rather small - most of the music used is more the quiet, folksy variant which doesn't have too many listeners, and then people have to seek out the name of the song, YouTube it, etc... If Oprah started getting into music, that would be something different though...

 

In my never humble opinion, Pop is a label used to denote that the music in question is unworthy of listening to. Some people think that is a reason to listen to it. Fair enough. I also think eating from a toilet is bad, but some people listening to crap may want to eat as well too.

That said, my favorites are Led Zeppelin and Nine inch Nails and almost any String Quartet.

Clear Channel is a 'effing abomination. They owned Christian stations and pretended to be a Christian business while they had a "Rock" station playing "Unholy Roller" at the same damned time. Please do not tell me it did not happen. I remember it clearly.

The point should be to enjoy your music of choice, but do not pay any heed to whomever owns the stations, nor who makes the music nor what it is classified as.

Shitty bands make good music too from time to time. Good bands make terrible crap as well. Decide for yourself what is good and what is not.