When will 'Pop music' stop?

Someone else wrote something similar: "Since the dawn of mankind, before time and recorded history, when man crawled out of the slime and began slithering away in the mud towards green pastures, man's been listening to Top 40 music on the radio," or something like that. No, pop music - indeed, pop culture - has a definite history, an origin in history and aligned with technological developments, social relations and economic development. It's not eternal. It's not even that old; it's relatively new in human history.

Enrico Caruso (1873-1921) records the first million-selling record: Vesti la Giubba (On with the Motley) from Leoncavallo’s opera Pagliacci. It is one of 10 recordings made in the session for Victor Records in the US for which the singer is paid $4,000. By 1952 Caruso’s recordings for RCA-Victor make over $3.5m in royalties—the largest sum earned by any of the company’s recording artists up to that date.

 

I'd say that was a mass-market pop(ular) record and not a high-brow culture recording. If you need to be pedantic about it, that was a crossover just as Katherine Jenkins or Vanessa Mae are crossover... and that's Pop Music.

 

 

That can be alright from an academical point of view but it's distorting the meaning of the OP just for the sake of contradicting. When we informally talk about 'Pop music' we kind of know what we are talking about, at least more or less, even if it's surely not universally defined and not everybody will think exactly the same. But I don't think ELP's Toccata or Yes Close To The Edge will come to mind to most people when they think about the term 'Pop music' .

Are you sure? Top Billboard hits in 1975 include songs by Jethro Tull, 10cc, Paul McCartney & Wings, Queen, Electric Light Orchestra, Styx, Earth, Wind & Fire, Elton John, David Bowie, Al Green, Rod Stewart, Ringo Starr, the Eagles, the Bee Gees, Stevie Wonder, Bachman–Turner Overdrive, Average White Band, Linda Ronstadt, KC and the Sunshine Band, Doobie Brothers. I think I've bought records by nearly everyone above at some point in my life (used most often, or at least checked them out at the library ).

When the thin line between what is a pop tune and what is a prog tune can send people into pyramids of pointless quotes arguing back and forth with no immediate sign of ending then it is safe to assume that that same thin line seperates progressive rock from pop music regardless of any academic musicological classification. Popular does not have to sell in large quantities or to all demographics, it just has to be more popular than the previous fad and the next available fad.

Maybe they wouldn't like to acknowledge that pop also draws from classical music (e.g. ABBA) at times and a lot from jazz.  The difference is mainly in terms of form but rock music of the early 70s was shaped by the mid-late 60s psychedelic rock wave so they were more or less part of a common culture rather than originating from completely different sources.  This trend continued into the 80s and 90s and prog metal became the genre of choice for lots of new bands because metal was ruling the waves either in its full blooded form or in the form of hair/glam metal.  Maybe with retro becoming more and more popular, there is a disconnect now between popular culture and prog.