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Popular
music has been
with us, is with us, and will continue to be with us. It comes
to us via musicals and shows, from stage and screen, and from
the pens of prolific American and British songwriters such
as Irving Berlin, Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein, Paul
McCartney, George and Ira Gershwin, Leonard Cohen, Bernie
Taupin and Elton John, Brian Wilson, Jerry Goffin and Carol
King, and Diane Warren.
Popular
music is multifaceted, and its arms reach into many
directions. The country music genre based in Nashville,
Tennessee in the USA has spawn many lasting songs -- songs
that continue to be sung and will continue to be sung for
many years, songs from the pens of great songwriters like
Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Victoria Shaw, Vince
Gill, Matrica Berg, and Alan Jackson. Songwriting is alive
in the R&B genre as well.
Folk
music is also a popular music genre. In fact, it is the
original popular music genre. American folk tunes, with
roots in England and Ireland, are still well known and sung
today, just as are the spirituals of the black man. And folk
music is found in all parts of the world, and this music is
important as it often speaks more clearly from the soul than music created in the ivory towers of the academy.
The founding country group, the Carter Family, sang many
folk tunes from the Appalachian mountains.
Jazz,
although considered by many to have advanced beyond its
roots in bars an brothels to a higher cultural status of
tuxedos and evening dresses, is based in popular
music. In fact, most of the jazz standards are
popular tunes.
Each
nation has a popular music genre, and some of the songs from
these genres have become international hits such as Nel Blu,
Dipinto Di Blu from Italy, Skokian from South Africa,
and La Mer (Beyond the Sea) from France (a country with an amazing
popular music culture).
As
far as America's own popular music. A
high point was reached during the mid-1950s with the super
romantic music of that time. This was followed by the great
early rock and roll records. But then the music of the UK took
over in the 1960s, topped by amazing groups
like the Beatles and the Moody Blues.
During
the 1970s, popular music began it's downturn as heavy drugs began
influencing the music, and during the last twenty years of the century
the market was besieged by music of lower quality. Popular music
remained steady in Europe, however, even with the onslaught of Grunge, Heavy
Metal, and Rap. In the UK, we find artists such as the Bee Gees, Phil Collins, and Sir Elton John who
have continuously created popular music that is more memorial
and "popular" than any of the tunes created by the
grunge, punk and heavy metal groups.
Canadian-born
popular artists Brian Adams and Celine Dion have maintained
international careers. Celine's French albums, made in
collaboration with the great French songwriter Jean-Jacques
Goldman have sold more copies in France than those of any
other singer. The fantastic singer Mariah Carey has achieved
world-wide status and former singer with Take That, Robby Williams,
has become a super star, except in the US where he is almost
unknown.
Pop music
is pop music, even though it may wear different labels, and
crossover is proof of that. The country hits I Swear
and I Can Love You Like That by John Michael Montgomery were covered by
All-4-One, entering the R&B charts. Diane Warren's
songs have reached the top position on pop, R&B, and
country charts. The great Irish boy band Boyzone has made
hits of several US country tunes.
In
Sweden the group ABBA has influenced many popular musicians with their
memorable songs as well as fellow countryman Max Martin, who
wrote the first great tunes for the Backstreet Boys.
The
Backstreet Boys really reintroduced popular music to the
USA, which had plunged so far into alternative styles of
music that many people laughed at the group's sweet-sounding
harmonies and Max Martin's beautiful melodies. Many in the
US thirty-something generation made comments such as
"The Backstreet Boys are ruining music!" The
opposite was true, however, as this group brought back into
the US the pop music that was thought to be "too uncool." Considered
to be mearly a teenage girl group, this was general
assesment was really
unfair. The sound of the Backstreet Boys came from R&B,
influenced primarily by the incredible R&B group Boys II
Men, by Brian McKnight, and the harmony groups Jodeci and Shai.
When
they first began singing, the Backstreet Boys, hailing from the US,
could not even get airplay on their own grunge- and heavy
metal-laden radio stations and had to go to Europe instead, where
boy groups, such as Ireland's Boyzone, were
already major hits. The Backstreet Boy's first hits with Max Martin in
Sweden became major hits in Europe, but it would be two
years before they could get airplay in their native country.
Ireland is a pop music haven. With its roots so tied
into its own beautiful folk music, this country has produced
some major pop stars who sell millions of records in other
countries, but whose music fall on deaf ears in the US.
Chris De Burgh's famous tune Lady In Red did
manage to become a hit in the US, but few people in the US
realize what a pop star he is in Europe. Westlife, is a
young Irish boy band of incredible talent and who have
recorded a great number of fantastic songs, and the fabulous
Corrs, a young Irish family group produced by LA's David
Foster, have sold -- it has been said -- 26 million records in
Europe, while being rarely accepted in the country of their
producer.
The
fabulous French singer
Lara Fabian move to Canada to attempt entry into the North
American market, and began a struggle that has lasted for
years. Gradually, the strong-hold that the alternative forms
of music have had over the American public will probably
loose its grip and it is hoped that there were be a reemergence
of popular music in the US. Already the signs
are there, with the emergence of the phenomenal young Josh
Groban in 2001.
There
are many people who believe that popular music and classical
music should be considered two different genres that can never
mix. Arguments continue to go on among classical music aficionados
trying to separate there music into the category of Art, and placing popular and folk music into a
category of
"fleeting music that appeals to the masses." No one
need to be this narrow minded. Often these kinds of ideas are
developed by people who need to feel that what they are doing
is above the mass consciousness, and by enjoying popular
songs, they are somehow lowering themselves. There is talk of
"Three chord" songs, song with just three chords, as
if that is something that is retarded. But classical music
with three chords is not hard to find. Wagner's overture to
Das Rhiengold has only one. The chart-topping song Amazed
sung by the country group Lonestar is written using three different keys,
a different key for different sections.
Just
to show the thin line that separates classical
from popular music, during
the 1940s and early 1950s there was a prominent crossover from
the lighter
side of classical into popular music: The tunes for the
popular Broadway musical Kismit for example (Stranger in
Paradise and
Baubles, Bangle's and Beads) were all based on melodies from
Russian composer Alexander Borodin, and themes from
Rachmaninoff's wonderful 2nd piano concerto not only was
used as the main theme for Full Moon and empty arms,
a 1940s hit tune, but also in the 1970s as the inspriation
for Eric Carmen's wonderful All By Myself. Also
during the early 1950s, pop tunes reached the airwaves based
on melodies from Greig, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, and Franck.
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