Pop rock

{{Short description|Music genre}} {{Use mdy dates|date=July 2025}} {{Distinguish|Pop Rocks}} {{Other uses}}  {{Infobox music genre | name = Pop rock | stylistic_origins = * Pop * rock * doo-wop  | cultural_origins = Late 1950s  | derivatives = * Indie pop * Britpop * soft rock<ref name="AMearly" /> | subgenres = *Power pop<ref>{{Cite book |last=Borack |first=John M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pqtGTJgE4rEC&pg=PA7 |title=Shake Some Action: The Ultimate Power Pop Guide |publisher=Not Lame Recordings |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-9797714-0-8 |page=7 |author-link=John M. Borack |access-date=2017-02-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190816051730/https://books.google.com/books?id=pqtGTJgE4rEC |archive-date=2019-08-16 |url-status=live}}</ref> * jangle pop<ref>{{Cite web |first=Steve |last=Peake |date=February 8, 2017 |title=Profile of '80s Underground Genre Jangle Pop |website=80music.about.com |url=http://80music.about.com/od/genresmovements/p/janglepop.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170219211628/http://80music.about.com/od/genresmovements/p/janglepop.htm |archive-date=2017-02-19 |access-date=2017-02-28}}</ref> | fusiongenres = Pop metal | other_topics = * Brill Building * bubblegum * new wave * glam metal * pop-punk * rockism and poptimism * rock and roll }}

'''Pop rock''' (also typeset as '''pop/rock'''<ref name="Hamelman2004">{{Cite book |last=Steven L. Hamelman |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9jkEJn45tCsC&pg=PA11 |title=But is it Garbage?: On Rock and Trash |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-8203-2587-3 |page=11 |access-date=2017-03-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170302034843/https://books.google.com/books?id=9jkEJn45tCsC&pg=PA11 |archive-date=2017-03-02 |url-status=live}}</ref>) is rock music with greater emphasis on professional songwriting and recording craft, and less emphasis on attitude than standard rock music.<ref name="musicindustryhowto">{{cite web | url=https://www.musicindustryhowto.com/what-is-pop-rock-music/ | title=What is Pop Rock Music? With 7 Top Examples & History | date=8 June 2023 }}</ref><ref name="AMearly">{{Cite web |title=Early Pop/Rock |url=http://www.allmusic.com/style/early-pop-rock-ma0000002763 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190321083948/https://www.allmusic.com/style/early-pop-rock-ma0000002763 |archive-date=2019-03-21 |access-date=2016-11-01 |publisher=AllMusic}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Pop/Rock |url=https://www.allmusic.com/genre/pop-rock-ma0000002613 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180411223749/https://www.allmusic.com/genre/pop-rock-ma0000002613 |archive-date=2018-04-11 |access-date=2018-05-04 |publisher=AllMusic}}</ref> Originating in the late 1950s as an alternative to normal rock and roll, early pop rock was influenced by the beat, arrangements, and original style of rock and roll (and sometimes doo-wop).<ref name="AMearly" /> It is categorized both as a distinct music genre and as continuous categories of pop and rock.<ref name="Hamelman2004" /> The detractors of pop rock often deride it as a slick, commercial product and less authentic than rock music.<ref>S. Jones (2002), ''Pop music and the press'' (Temple University Press), p. 109.</ref>

==Characteristics and etymology== {{Further|Pop music#Etymology}} [[File:Paul McCartney with Linda McCartney - Wings - 1976.jpg|thumb|Paul McCartney and Wings performing in 1976 (Paul and Linda McCartney pictured)]] [[File:The Monkees 1966.JPG|thumb|right|The Monkees in 1966]] Much pop and rock music has been very similar in sound, instrumentation and even lyrical content. The terms "pop rock" and "power pop" have been used to describe more commercially successful music that uses elements from, or the form of, rock music.<ref>R. Shuker (2005), ''Popular Music: the Key Concepts'' (Abingdon: Routledge, 2nd edn.), {{ISBN|0-415-34770-X}}, p. 207.</ref> Writer Johan Fornas views pop rock as "one single, continuous genre field", rather than distinct categories.<ref name="Hamelman2004" /> To the authors Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman, it is defined as an "upbeat variety of rock music" represented by artists and bands such as Andy Kim, the Bells, Paul McCartney, Lighthouse, and Peter Frampton.<ref>L. Starr and C. Waterman (2007), [https://web.archive.org/web/20110102063404/http://www.us.oup.com/us/companion.websites/019530053X/studentresources/chapter11/key_terms/ ''American Popular Music''] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed.), {{ISBN|0-19-530053-X}}, archived from [http://www.us.oup.com/us/companion.websites/019530053X/studentresources/chapter11/key_terms/ the original] on February 17, 2011.</ref>

The term "pop" has been used since the early 1940s to refer to popular music in general, but in the mid-1950s, it began to be used for a distinct genre, aimed at a youth market, often characterized as a softer alternative to rock and roll.<ref name="Firth2001">S. Frith (2001), "Pop music" in S. Frith, W. Stray and J. Street, eds, ''The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), {{ISBN|0-521-55660-0}}, pp. 93–108.</ref><ref name="AMearly" /> In the aftermath of the British Invasion, from about 1967, it was increasingly used in opposition to the term rock, to describe a form that was more commercial, ephemeral and accessible.<ref name="Warner2003">T. Warner (2003), ''Pop Music: Technology and Creativity: Trevor Horn and the Digital Revolution'' (Aldershot: Ashgate), {{ISBN|0-7546-3132-X}}, p. 3.</ref>

As of the 2010s, "guitar pop rock" and "indie rock" are roughly synonymous terms.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Plemenitas |first=Katja |title=Words and Music |date=2014 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |isbn=978-1-4438-6438-1 |editor-last=Kennedy |editor-first=Victor |page=79 |chapter=The Complexity of Lyrics in Indie Music: The Example of Mumford & Sons |access-date=2017-06-07 |editor-last2=Gadpaille |editor-first2=Michelle |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E9UxBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA79 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200714051232/https://books.google.com/books?id=E9UxBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA79 |archive-date=2020-07-14 |url-status=live}}</ref> "Jangle" is a noun-adjective that music critics often use in reference to guitar pop with a bright mood.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Kamp |first1=David |url=https://archive.org/details/rocksnobsdiction00kamp |title=The Rock Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon Of Rockological Knowledge |last2=Daly |first2=Steven |publisher=Broadway Books |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-7679-1873-2 |page=[https://archive.org/details/rocksnobsdiction00kamp/page/54 54] |url-access=registration}}</ref> [[File:Panic at the Disco (Hurricane 2008).JPG|thumb|Panic! at the Disco performing in 2008]]

==Debates== {{See also|Rockism and poptimism}} Critic Philip Auslander argues that the distinction between pop and rock is more pronounced in the US than in the UK. He claims that in the US, pop has roots in white crooners such as Perry Como, whereas rock is rooted in African-American music influenced by forms such as rock and roll. Auslander points out that the concept of pop rock, which blends pop and rock, is at odds with the typical conception of pop and rock as opposites. Auslander and several other scholars, such as Simon Frith and Grossberg, argue that pop music is often depicted as an inauthentic, cynical, "slickly commercial", and formulaic form of entertainment. In contrast, rock music is often heralded as an authentic, sincere, and anti-commercial form of music, which emphasizes songwriting by the singers and bands and instrumental virtuosity.<ref>P. Auslander (1999), [https://books.google.com/books?id=jXCTAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA66&dq= ''Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180910133006/https://books.google.com/books?id=jXCTAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA66&dq= |date=2018-09-10 }} (London: Taylor & Francis), {{ISBN|0415196892}}.</ref>

Frith's analysis of the history of popular music from the 1950s to the 1980s has been criticized by B. J. Moore-Gilbert, who argues that Frith and other scholars have overemphasized the role of rock in the history of popular music by naming every new genre using the "rock" suffix. Thus, when a folk-oriented style of music developed in the 1960s, Frith termed it "folk rock", and the pop-infused styles of the 1970s were called "pop rock". Moore-Gilbert claims that this approach unfairly puts rock at the apex and makes every other influence become an add-on to the central core of rock.<ref>B. J. Moore-Gilbert, ''The Arts in the 1970s: Cultural Closure?'' (London: Routledge, 1994), {{ISBN|0-415-09906-4}}, p. 240.</ref>

In ''Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies'' (1981), Robert Christgau discussed the term "pop-rock" in the context of popular music's fragmentation along stylistic lines in the 1970s; he regarded "pop-rock" as a "monolith" that "straddled" all burgeoning movements and subgenres in the popular and semipopular music marketplace at the time, including singer-songwriter music, art rock, heavy metal, boogie, country rock, jazz fusion, funk, disco, urban contemporary, and new wave, but not punk rock.<ref name="CG">{{Cite book |last=Christgau |first=Robert |title=Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies |publisher=Ticknor & Fields |year=1981 |isbn=0899190251 |chapter=The Decade |author-link=Robert Christgau |access-date=April 6, 2019 |chapter-url=https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-cg70/decade.php |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190402183403/http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-cg70/decade.php |archive-date=April 2, 2019 |url-status=live |via=robertchristgau.com}}</ref>

==See also== {{div col|colwidth=10em}} * Beat music * Indie pop * Post-punk * Twee pop {{div col end}}

==References== {{Reflist|30em}}

Category:Pop rock Category:Pop music genres Category:Rock music genres Category:Fusion music genres Category:1960s in music Category:1980s in music Category:2000s in music Category:American styles of music Category:British styles of music