Pop today - and tomorrow

Today, pop is for everyone. When Elvis made Heartbreak Hotel and Jailhouse Rock, pop did not have a past and pop was for the young. Forty years later, the grandfathers of pop - the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Elton John - are now the first old people to make pop music: and old people as well as young listen to it.

Today, pop is everywhere. It is in the street, in the big shops, at the airport. You can get pop twenty-four hours a day on your radio, from your Walkman, from the TV. MTV (Music Television) goes to more than 250 million homes in 60 countries, all watching pop videos of all kinds of music. But MTV has not made pop the same everywhere. MTV Asia is not the same as MTV in Latin America. Today, more than ever, you can choose your own kind of music from many different kinds.

Today pop is big business. People spend 35 billion dollars on records every year. Two in every three records in the world come from just five companies. These companies are very rich. They help the bands whose records they can sell, but not always the bands whose music is good. They can decide who will be a star.

Today you can get pop from your computer. You can buy a CD-ROM which gives you the words of 550 of Bob Dylan's songs; you can see him play and hear him sing - on your computer. On pop CD-ROMs, you can listen to the music and you can change it: make it faster or slower, happier or sadder, use the sounds of different musical instruments.

Today you can get pop through your computer on the Internet. You can read the latest news about some bands, ask for and pay for a new record, and get the music through the Internet into your computer.

And next time you go dancing, not just the music, but the pictures on the walls, moving in time with the music, could come from computers. The technoartist works at the side of the music DJ.

These are some of the new things in pop. But many things stay the same. Reading about pop is fine, but now, why don't you put on a record or go to a concert and listen to some of the great sounds of pop for yourself. Or pick up a guitar and make some.

Steve Flinders: Forty Years Of Pop; Oxford University Press, 1996 (2001), page 18 f.