Is POP a Bad Word? - Promoting the NO-BROW Approach | MUSIC is not a GENRE - Season 3 Episode #20

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What is pop music? Whatever your head just said is wrong. Or if not, it’s not the whole story. One definition is it’s anything popular. “Pop” is right there in the word, right? But that’s TOO facile. Let’s dig deeper. Where does “pop”/“popular” come from? The shared root means “people”. Like in “populace” or “population”. So pop music is music of the people, by the people, for the people. It’s the “people’s music”. Music made by people is pop music? That seems super broad and “duh” inducing. Well sit down, because I’m going to tell you how it’s even broader than you think.

The definitions of “pop music” “popular music” I’ve found online bend over backwards to make distinctions & divisions. They are also WRONG because they all start with the base assumption that there’s a difference between “high-brow” and “low-brow” music – that classical, jazz, avant-garde, world, and several other more esoteric forms are worthy of more status & study than rock, hip hop, soul, country, folk. Not only is the assumption of difference WRONG, the distinctions of “high-brow” and “low-brow” themselves are equally meaningless.

People listen to what they want & like what they like. This has never been truer, because the internet gives most of us access to almost every piece of recorded music in history, which includes music created long before sound recording. Assuming one person listens to classical while another listens to hip hop is, plain and simple, profiling. We all have tastes that go beyond our assumed demographic. And by definition, what PEOPLE listen to is POP music. This has included music from every genre & sphere, regardless of status, popularity or financial success. Music floats in & out of the zeitgeist & marketplace all the time. Just like how the stock market has nothing to do with most people’s day to day life, what songs stream the most has nothing to do with the identity of pop.

The only way to describe pop music's sound is: everything. It sounds & has sounded & will sound like every kind of music that’s ever existed, no matter what scholars claim. No other definition is useful or constructive. There's no high-brow or low-brow. ALL music is NO-BROW. Is it fun to research the music of different eras? Absolutely. I love hearing the changes & evolution. But these are cross-sections of a body of work that in no way tell the whole story. They’re as representative of pop as a person’s clothing is to their existence – which is to say pretty much not at all.

We constantly make distinctions & divisions. Every day – often unconsciously – we make decisions about what things, ideas & people are deserving of more status, respect, popularity, power. It’s human nature to categorize & create hierarchies. And it’s the nature of most people in power to reinforce these distinctions to create more division, to the point where we take on their way of seeing the world & start to subdivide ourselves. People who otherwise have 95% in common become enemies because of that 5% difference. It’s important we see this power play, admit our very human part in it & remain aware of it daily, so that we can consciously redirect our judgments & open our thought processes to the notion that all of these distinctions are artificial. Just like how a dance song can be as worthy as Mahler, or a hip hop song can be as deep & meaningful as Miles Davis, people & ideas & organizations & objects & all art are not defined by class or race or mode of communication or look or how much money they cost. What people love is what matters. That's pop & pop is us.

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