Pop Music

Pop music is a subculture of devoted followers. The songs produced from this musical style has traits of emotional singing, lyrics about love or sex, a danceable beat, clear melodies, simple harmonies and repetitive structure so that people can catch on and join in. Some popular music icons of the millennium are Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Gwen Stefani, Justin Timberlake, and Nelly Furtado. Since pop is such a broad category of music sounds many genres of music have divided off from mainstream pop to form their own categories. Bubblegum pop is one of the smaller genres. The defining characteristics of bubblegum pop include catchy melodies, three-chord structures, simple harmonies, and repetitive lyrics. Bubblegum pop has lightweight lyrics which may include nursery rhymes or nonsense lyrics. The theme of these lyrics are often about romance and courtship, and overall happy subjects. Nothing dark or brooding. The followers of this specific genre are usually preteens and adolescents. Synthpop is a different genre of pop which uses artificial synthesizers to produce a robotic, electronic sound. The style uses mechanical rhythms and vocal arrangements in contrast to the artificially produced instruments. This genre of pop music came to inspire what would later be known as techno. J-pop music is an integral part of Japanese popular culture. It is used throughout the culture in anime, commercials, movies, radio shows, TV shows, and video games. Recently, J-pop has become an international craze through video games and anime. In the case of anime, shows are normally sold in the West with their original soundtracks, affording more direct exposure. Some shows aired on television even become commercially available as ring tones.