Portal:Pop music
The Pop Music Portal
Pop music is a type of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom. During the 1950s and 1960s, pop music encompassed rock and roll and the youth-oriented styles it influenced. Rock and pop music remained roughly synonymous until the late 1960s, after which pop became associated with music that was more commercial, ephemeral, and accessible.
Identifying factors of pop music usually include repeated choruses and hooks, short to medium-length songs written in a basic format (often the verse–chorus structure), and rhythms or tempos that can be easily danced to. Much of pop music also borrows elements from other styles such as rock, urban, dance, Latin, and country. (Full article...)
Cher (/ʃɛər/; born Cherilyn Sarkisian; May 20, 1946) is an American singer, actress and television personality. Often referred to by the media as the "Goddess of Pop", she has been described as embodying female autonomy in a male-dominated industry. She is known for her distinctive contralto singing voice, for having worked in numerous areas of entertainment and for adopting a variety of styles and appearances. Cher rose to fame in 1965 as one half of the folk rock husband-wife duo Sonny & Cher before releasing her first solo top-ten singles "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" and "You Better Sit Down Kids". Throughout the 1970s, she scored the US Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves", "Half-Breed", and "Dark Lady", becoming the female solo artist with the most number-one singles in US history at the time.
After her divorce from Sonny Bono in 1975, Cher released the successful disco album Take Me Home (1979). Her music career revival in the late 1980s saw the releases of rock-inflected albums Cher (1987), Heart of Stone (1989), and Love Hurts (1991), all of which yielded hit singles such as "I Found Someone", "If I Could Turn Back Time", and "Save Up All Your Tears". Cher reached a new commercial peak in 1998 with the dance-pop album Believe, which featured pioneering use of Auto-Tune to distort her vocals, known as the "Cher effect". The title track became the number-one song of 1999 in the US and the best-selling single of all time by a female artist in the UK. She continued to make music, with the albums Closer to the Truth (2013) and Dancing Queen (2018) both debuting at number three on the Billboard 200 and becoming her highest-charting solo albums in the US. (Full article...)Let Go is the debut studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Avril Lavigne, released on June 4, 2002, by Arista Records. For a year after signing a record deal with Arista, Lavigne struggled due to conflicts in musical direction. She relocated to Los Angeles, where she recorded her earlier material for the album, the sound of which the label did not approve. She was paired with the production team the Matrix, who understood her vision for the album. Critics have described Let Go as an alternative rock album with a pop-punk and post-grunge-oriented sound.
The album was credited as the biggest pop debut of 2002 and was certified 7x Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the United States. It was released to generally positive reviews, although Lavigne's songwriting received some criticism. It also did extremely well in Canada, receiving a diamond certification from Music Canada, as well as reaching multi-platinum in many countries around the world, including the UK, in which she became the youngest female solo artist to have a number-one album in the region. (Full article...)General images
"Diamonds" is a song recorded by Barbadian singer Rihanna for her seventh studio album, Unapologetic (2012). It was written by Sia together with its producers, Benny Blanco and Stargate. The song premiered on September 26, 2012, during the Elvis Duran and the Morning Show and was digitally released the following day as the lead single from Unapologetic. "Diamonds" is a mid-tempo pop, electronic and R&B ballad that features heavy synthesizers, orchestral sounds and electronic rhythms. The song's lyrics serve as a departure from the themes of unhealthy relationships that were on Rihanna's previous singles contrasted to the song's portrayal of lovers as "diamonds in the sky".
"Diamonds" topped music charts in over twenty countries, including the United States, where it became Rihanna's twelfth number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 and tied her with Madonna and the Supremes for the fifth-most number-one singles in the chart's history. "Diamonds" was certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and sold over 3.5 million digital copies in the country. It also peaked at number one on the UK Singles Chart and became Rihanna's seventh number one song in the country; it was certified three-times platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). By May 2013, it had sold over 7.5 million copies worldwide. (Full article...)Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that the lap steel guitar was the first "foreign" musical instrument to gain a foothold in American pop music?
- ... that Eternal Blue, a metalcore album, was inspired in part by 1980s pop music?
- ... that 22-year-old singer Milena Warthon has created a new genre, pop andino, by fusing pop and Andean music?
- ... that the first episode of the British pop music TV show Top of the Pops was broadcast on 1 January 1964 from Dickenson Road Studios, a converted church in Manchester?
- ... that Mirror, a Hong Kong Cantopop music group which does not want to go for a "K-pop feel", performed Korean pop songs at a concert?
- ... that Pachelbel's Canon is notorious for being widespread in pop music, but it actually isn't?
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Pop music by decade
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- Wikipedia:WikiProject Pop music was created with the purpose of assembling writers and editors interested in Pop music.
- The aim of this project is to standardize and improve articles related to the various genres of Pop music, as well as to create missing articles.
- To become a member of the WikiProject (anyone may join), simply click here and add your username.
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