Can Pop be Prog?

Philéas wrote: Certif1ed knows what he's talking about!  Great post!

I second the motion!

some thoughts:

1.pop is a genre.. even though pop is short for popular, someday, it reached a point where this word expressed a certain kind of music... just like prog is short for progressive and was used to state the actual meaning of the word applied to that new sound back then but after the 70's it remained to classify that certain kind of music...
2.just because Blackfield, Hawkwind etc are in here labeled as prog, doesn't make them prog to me, so i can't say anything about arguments such as Blackfield being pop prog...
3.Queen and Pink Floyd sold millions of copies.. this doesn't make them pop or any less of prog bands...

anyway..

To state that prog cannot be pop takes away the band members' desire to make it financially, for, as everyone in the sixties and even seventies knew, a 'hit' brought public awareness, and record sales---which means food on the table and conert ticket sales. If you can show me a band who purposely denied their record label, and their public, the sale of a 'hit single' I'd be impressed. I bet even Robert "Dusty Roads" Fripp has enjoyed income boosted by a 'hit single.' Thus, if a band creates a song and that song inadvertently becomes a pop 'hit' is that song or that band no longer considered progressive rock? Strawberry Fields Forever, Nights in White Satin, Conquistador, I Know What I Like, Hocus Pocus, Bloody Well Right, Bungle in the Jungle, Fly by Night, Wonderous Stories, Solsbury Hill, Another Brick in the Wall, Part II---do these songs automatically disgrace these groups from the 'hallowed halls' of Progressive Rock? And what of confessed 'pop-oriented' artists who produce fresh, innovative music with all the bells and whistles and other signature 'prog rock' qualities? For example, Kate Bush's Seventh Wave, many David Sylvian songs, Cocteau Twins Treasure and Tiny Dynamite period, U2 Boy, Police Ghosts in the Machine. When groups or individuals are experimenting with the latest technology and with concept album themes, and with variable song structures or vocal and instrumental delivery styles (Eno, Fripp, Sylvian, Gabriel, Elizabeth Frazier, etc. etc. etc.!!) to me, that constitutes repeated and careful listening BECAUSE IT IS PROGRESSIVE! Now if training in classical music and the incorporation of jazz and classical instrumental virtuosity is what is required then there are a whole lot of current prog/neoprog groups who are automatically disqualified. ANd if song length is the ultimate determiner, then, again, your llist of true progrockers shrinks to barely a milkcarton full. I guess what it comes down to is how you CHOOSE to define 'progressive'. I thought it meant forward thinking, innovative, creative, risk-taking.
Sorry to get so hot. http://www.progarchives.com/forum/smileys/smiley7.gif.http://www.progarchives.com/forum/smileys/smiley2.gif I just don't like narrow-mindedness and limitation---in myself as well as others.

boo boo wrote: I think Super Furry Animals fit the difinition of "prog-pop" very well.

the name sure as hell fits hahhaha

Aloha does some OK progpop

I still believe the term Prog Pop or Pop P¨rog is a natural contadiction.

Of course a band can play in the borderline of both genres, but it's one or the other, not both simultaneously.

Iván

The basic reason for the disagreement here between knowledgeable people who have thought carefully about this question is the slipperiness of the terms 'prog' and 'pop'. They are being used here as a binary - that is, two ends of a spectrum - without acknowledgment that the spectrum is huge and crossovers happen all the time. They overlap differently for different people: many lovers of 'classical' music consider prog to be a part of pop - to them, even the so-called 'complexity' of prog does not differentiate it sufficiently from pop, and after all, it sprang from pop music. To them, prog is pop.

The borders are blurred. It's only our desire to compartmentalise things that drives us to define things and then debate endlessly those items that don't fit into our definitions.

I still believe that when you cross that blurry line, you enter in territory of one or another.

That there are Prog bands with Pop leanings or Prog bands that made Pop tracks, I agree completely, but POP and PROG IMO don't exist simultaneously, or you are in territory of one or the other.

Music isn't exclusive. Anything and everything can be mixed.

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: cacho wrote: I see what you mean... so what is Money by Pink Floyd? I'm thinking on others but of what you said they're prog or pop... It's a mainstream song in a Prog album, but the track alone is just mainstream, I won't call it POP either, I will call it Rock, has all the Blues structure and jazzy leanings.Supertramp's Breakfast in America and Famous last Words are definitly pop prog albums. For me, Supertramp shouldn't be here from a start, but they have a few Prog songs in mainly POP albums Also every Post Hackett album. For me ATTW3 is POP, Duke is Pop with a few prog tracks and the rest is pure bland POP, I know many will disagree, but that's my honest point of view. Yes' Talk? Yes Union? Yes The Ladder? Tormato? ... Yes Talk is a hybrid, I can't say they fit in Prog or POP, The Ladder has some Prog songs and UNION is a blend of Pop songs wih boring prog songs. Tormato is Prog, bad Prog, but Prog at the end. Iván

Fine to me. It convinces me, but I don't agree, if that's fine with you, it's fine with me. As I being pretty much younger than you, there's a really high percent that you're right(not only because you're older, because you lived those years).