What's the difference between Pop and Rock if we take both as being subgenres of the genre Popular Music?

Which of these are rock and which are pop? Are any both? Do they vary? Why?

The difference is testosterone, probably, even when there are girls involved.

Taking the PSBs as the obvious example above, there's a distinct lack of this, a passiveness in the vocals, an unwillingness to hammer the point home and more let it float across.

The waters are muddied here when you remove straightforward vocals and blues influences from the equation (eg Cocteau Twins and Mogwai, both of whom I'd term rock). I'm not sure how this strand really fits in.

Pop is cool with whatever.

How about lyrical content, conceit? Rock as trying to exist externally to culture as platonic essence, Pop as describer, documenter, and component of culture?

Is that not just known as Indie? ;)

I think of 'Iceblink Luck' as a nice pop song tho.

What songs by rock bands seem overtly 'happy' or 'sung with a smile' but somehow you don't consider them 'pop songs' (NB The Lex is exempt from answering this question)?

None that I can think of.

Pop = "popular"; therefore implied relationhip with a (real or imagined) culture/audience.

Rock, OtOH, does not depend on a relationhip with "the audience" to exist as such.

Pop = communicative, rock = expressive.

I like this. What does both? How? Which direction does music that does both come from ore often, i.e. from communication to expression (pop into rock - Talk Talk's parabola) or expression into communication (rock into pop - can't think of one right now)?

Yes, but the only bit of that remix from the original is the screaming - ie the least pop bit.

but somehow he reminds me of Simon LeBon (via Planet Funk)

artists from Nick's list who, whether right or wrong, i've never thought of as makers of pop music/songs/seem the most Rock/Anti-Pop somehow:

Jeff Buckley
Patrick Wolf
My Bloody Valentine
Mogwai
Teenage Fanclub
Suicide
Mercury Rev
The Velvet Underground

rebuttal; this is mistake. a fantasy pretending that the sun sessions or rock around the clock or... was a break with history. is bing crosby rock? is sinatra?

Rock and pop are arbitrary distinctions, and WAAAY too limited. I mean, it's suspect to label all communicative musical art "rock". For better or worse, fairly or unfairly, rock implies "white music." Therefore, attempts to define black forms (rap, soul, jazz, etc.) in terms of this distinction fail.

Pop is a center point. The point at which otherwise defined musical forms drops their pretentions, their selfishness and their genre-identification in an attempt to engage with the word (or, if you're being cynical, to engage with a commercial mechanism).

Therfore, maybe, pop = communicative, non-pop = expressive. And rock is just a tiny corner of the non-pop universe.

And, see, nothing exists in a pure form. All music, unless the music-makers are pathologically solopsistic/sociopathic, has some pop component. It's ALL communicative, to some extent or another. Even the "purest" rock music is tainted (or redeemed) by pop aspiration. All music wants to be heard.

Rock and jazz, in contrast, absolutely depend on authenticity. On the idea that the people producing the music are really "feeling it," in the moment, as the sound is produced. So, even if the lyrics are bullshit whoah-baby-yeah crap, the audience is asked to buy into the idea that the performers are experiencing something "real."

But remember that these lines are blurry and nothing is ever 100% in one camp or another. All rock has some pop component. And pop composers have aped the sounds and styles of rock so well that the distinction between the two is pretty much a moot point.

Pop assumes that the song is a composed artifact intended to communicate/arouse certain feelings. It does not necessessarily document a particular moment, and exists in an idealized state, divorced from its generative circumstances. Pop has no past and always approaches us in the present moment.

Rock (only one of many non-pop forms) assumes that the song exists only as the document of an "authentic" human experience of some sort. Rock is therefore inert. It has no intentions with regard to us. We approach rock, however, in an attempt to vicariously experience the specific human moment as documented.

Rock, OtOH, does not depend on a relationhip with "the audience" to exist as such.

This is madness. 99.9% of rock music exists with the intention that it is played right in front of an audience, that it both communicates AND expresses to them.

The relationship of pop with an audience is more difficult to define, because it's less centred on the live experience, it's the song that becomes all important, not the process that leads to the song. Pop = product, rock = performance.

With "authenticity" I'm referring to this Western modernist idea of an artist/author, which means that in rock the songs should be written by a band member and they should express his/her innermost (i.e. "authentic") thoughts, whereas with pop the song doesn't need to have a specific "author", nor does it need to express anyones's personal thoughts.

(mega-xpost with Fuckedfucker)

I think Matt's summary is pretty good in a pop = capitalism/rock = socialism kind of way, even though in real terms (i.e. what the listener gets out of each) it usually works the other way around, because processes are unlistenable unless they produce tangible results.

For me it's a much simpler divide. Pop is about love, Rock is about sex.

Anything else is, errrr... folk or something.

Boys like authenticity more than girls

This is patently bollocks. For one thing, you're flat-out ignoring the massive popularity of confessional girl pop singers.

(x-post)

And that leads to the real problem with my last post: I was only talking about [i]recorded[/i] pop and rock (or not-pop or whatever)... In performance, things work differently:

While recorded rock is an inert document of a past/passed "true fuck" experience, rock in performance is supposed to be the real thing. The sound of fuck (or, rather, the sound that results from fuck). Thus the demand for authenticity -- nothing is more dissapointing than a fake fuck.

Pop just doesn't have to worry about this dynamic. Pop as recorded/heard isn't a shadow of something else. It simply IS. And when pop is performed live, the same dynamic obtains, simply attached to a corollary theatrical experience.

Given that the boundaries are blurry, and nothing is ever truly fish or fowl, blah, blah, blah...

Familiar, I think you mean.

Can: Beatles, Rolling Stones, Talk Talk, The The (ESPECIALLY 'Out Of The Blue (Into The Fire)' for that extra edge of squalor), Buckley, MBV, Pulp (two words: Seductive Barry), The Verve, Pink Floyd, Mogwai, Duran Duran, Strokes, Flips, Rev, VU, Byrds.

Can't: The rest (SFA are great but too light-hearted for nookie, and Coldplay I couldn't out of shame. The Stone Roses...erm, unless it was Breaking Into Heaven/Driving South...nope.)

Right. There's a deja vu quality to it.

See, this is the strange way that the definitions of pop vs. rock have almost completely inverted since the originations of both.

In the 60s, Pop was for kids, unquited love, yearning, longing, the sensation of being in love etc. While rock was for teenagers/young adults who were actually Doin' It or if not, singing about Doin' It.

come on, if having sex was like watching a rock band, the human race would not have survived this far.

Yeah, but I'm not talking about what songs are about, or the way the audience uses them. I'm talking about the kind of experience that produces the songs in the first place.

"Real" rock music (and "real" jazz and funk and whatever) depends on the idea/illusion that the performers are "doing it". Not literally that they're fucking up there on stage (or half-naked in their dark, sweaty, boyish little practice spaces), but that they are nonetheless having a physical experience that is somehow analagous to sex.

So long as we're not just saying that rock is guitars and amps and a certain emphasis on the snare, while pop is la-la-la bouncy la with whatever the hell backing is fashionable (and we COULD say that, and it'd be perfectly fine), then rock absolutely depends on that "real fuck" versimilitude.

That's why Coldplay are simply NOT ROCK. The sounds they produce are not the result of fuck. No way, no how, and that's why a purely mechanical/objective definition of rock will always fail to get at what makes the genre meaningful to its fans.

Quite possibly the stupidest statement I've ever read on ILM.

My point isn't that "having sex [is] like watching a rock band," but that being a rock band (in a rock band, whatever, all puns intended) while playing a rock song MUST be like sex, or it isn't the real thing.

Pop doesn't depend on that equation in order to justify itself.

-- fuckfuckingfuckedfucker (icantbelieveitsnotcoloncance...), July 27th, 2006.

Baloney. There are plenty of times rock bands play music live and sex is not on their minds. Sex and rock are closely linked, I would agree but I think this takes it a little far.

"That's the most rockist definition of pop I've ever read."

No offense, but this word (rockist) needs to die. It's amusing, but too pejorative and distracting to be useful.

When we say rockist, we're talking about an attitude that is in no way limited to rock music. I mean, jazz and rap have exactly the same relationship with "the pop narcotic," and jazz's adversarial stance goes back to the bop era, probably earlier. So, rockism is older than rock.

Therefore "rockist" = rockist usage, and that's just too confusing for words.

Yr right, of course. That's what I get for being too literal. When I use the shorthand "fuck", I'm talking about the idea of a real, physical, communal experience that can be said to be (somehow, even if only tangentially) analogous to sex.

But that's such a mouthful. I guess I could shorthand it as RPCEtCbStb(SEiOT)AtS, but I don't think that would lend itself to clarity. And it wouldn't make me go tee-hee-hee.

I'm not saying that all rock music must be about sex, or express sex, or be some kind of distorted misdirection of youthful sex energy (though that last one definitely figures into it, explaining why old folks can't really do it right). I'm trying to get at something fundamentally inexpressible by using clumsy metaphors.

The metaphors will fail, of course, if examined closely. But that doesn't make them totally invalid.

but for this bit "come on, if having sex was like watching a rock band, the human race would not have survived this far."

waht?

"People making rock music don't necessarily know "that it means fuck" (which it doesn't) and they don't need to in order to effectively make rock music - it's not like there's some kind of genetic memory in the word (or in the users of the word) that hangs on to obsolete meanings!"

Totally true. But we don't need to know the history of the word for the deeper point to remain valid. Even if NOBODY consciously knew that rock = fuck in an etymological sense, the equation would still be true in terms of how the form communicates its own authenticity (and sense of authenticity).

In order to be "real," rock has to be (or document) a real, physical, fuck-like experience. A state of instinctual, sensual, rhythmic, aggressive, communal ecstacy. That's what rock is.

Gotcha, and good point. But rock isn't just fuck. That's just point A. Rock is more specifically a state of youthful, hormonal abandon with regard to fuck. Rock is a grotesque sort of sexual frenzy. "Real," but misdirected and even insane.

That's the sense in which "rockism" is a valid term. We can't use the phrase "that rocks" to describe Mahalia Jackson's overt ecstacy, because it isn't exactly the same thing. In Mahalia's universe, authenticity doesn't depend on hosing down the walls with adolescent sex-juice.

Therefore, in Mahalia's universe, you can still "do it" when you get old. That ain't true in rock. In rock, you must be young, or at least young-like in order to function properly. You must be able to thrust out your hips and rub your dick/pussy and say, "Ungh!" and really MEAN IT -- mean everything -- mean the whole gloriously cum-drenched fucking universe.

That (particularly adolescent) feeling and point-of-view is the essence of rock 'n' roll.

I realize that the "state of instinctual [blah, blah] rhythmic [blah, blah] ecstacy" I described is MUSIC more than anything specifically rock.

But I'm really talking about non-pop here. And my previous post tries to distingish between rock-making (as a specific youth/sex phenomenon) and music-making as experiental phenomenon in general.

I'll try to give it a rest, now...

fuckfuckingfuckedfucker wrote:
Pop = communicative, rock = expressive.

Wootoo wrote: Hahaha! You noticed.

But what you've got to understand (I'm reading ILX as I go along) is that its a question of aim, not achievement.

So, I'm a writer for Motown and its 1964 and I want a paycheck (and fuck, I've probably got something on my mind or my soul that I NEED to get out - the two aren't mutually exclusive). I have to write a song. My aim is to pack that song full of hooks. It has to be accessible.

Its not "I'm doing this because I need to, and if anyone else likes it thats cool". This is "I need to express myself - for reasons that might be financial or spiritual or whatever - and I'm aiming to channel that expression, so that its really accessible; ie 'communicate' that 'expression', or that feeling / melody / lyric / idea etc.

This is pop.

Rock disregards the last step: the Rock artist says; "Look at me! I'm FUCKING great!!!! In fact, I FUCKING ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But I've got something on my mind and my soul that I NEED to get out. I have to write a song. And the thing is I ROCK! So bollocks if no one else likes it, or if people take offence at the fact that I'm gonna include a 12 minute guitar solo, or at the fact that I wrote a tuneless, hook-free dirge to get my lyrical ideas across, or the fact that it won't mean anything to anybody else but me and my girlfriend. My aim is expression. Pure and true. I ROCK, after all."

That doesnt mean that Rock doesnt communicate. Of course it does. Or that Pop doesn't express. Its all about the aim. Pop aims for populism, innit.

Did they close the "mojo" forum down, or something?

Or so I've been told...

The Rolling Stones
Rock

The Stone Roses
Debut was pop, followup was mostly rock

Talk Talk
Pop

The The
Pop performed in a rock-influenced way

Manic Street Preachers
Rock with pop melodies

Jeff Buckley
Kind of hard to categorize. Would call him rock, although a softer version than most rock

Kate Bush
Pop

My Bloody Valentine
Rock

Pulp
Pop

The Kinks
First 3 singles and first couple of albums were rock. Then pop up to and including "Arthur", then rock for the rest of their output.

Blur
Pop with some rock songs (particularly on the "Blur" and "13" albums)

Oasis
"Morning Glory" was pop. The rest is mostly rock with pop melodies.

The Verve
Some songs are rock, others are pop

Pink Floyd
Generally viewed as a rock band although they sound more like pop to my ears.

Michael Jackson
A mixture between pop and R&B. Certainly not rock.

Embrace
Rock with lots of pop elements

Coldplay
Pop with rock elements

Mogwai
Rock

Super Furry Animals
Pop

Teenage Fanclub
Pop with rock elements

Tears For Fears
Pop

Suicide
Rock, in spite of the lack of guitars

Pet Shop Boys
Pop with a major P

Happy Mondays
More rock than any other baggy act

Duran Duran
Pop

The Strokes
Rock

Ocean Colour Scene
Generally pop although "Riverboat Song" was rock.

The Flaming Lips
Pop for their past three albums. More rock before that.

Mercury Rev
Rather close to pop

The Velvet Underground
Most songs were rock, some were pop

The Beach Boys
Pop

The Byrds
Pop

[/nerdtalk]

Aside from that, pretty accurate I'll grant ya...

What songs by rock bands seem overtly 'happy' or 'sung with a smile' but somehow you don't consider them 'pop songs'?

side meta question: what's the bigger crime in relation to this thread/ILM, laziness or repetition?

popping stuff = rock also, some 'd say

[Tuomas:] With "authenticity" I'm referring to this Western modernist idea of an artist/author,

Wait wait, the Western what idea? Surely Romantic rather than Modernist? And then by extension obv pop is Classicist, ie

rock = http://tonalsoft.com/enc/v/viennafiles/beethoven.jpg, pop = http://library.thinkquest.org/22326/composers/mozart.gif

La laa la, sorry, can't hear you, la la, got my fingers in my years, la la laa!

These are exclusively pop:
Talk Talk
Kate Bush
Michael Jackson (well, part pop, part R&B)
Tears For Fears
Pet Shop Boys
Duran Duran

The rest are all a little of both, some more pop (Blur, Pulp, Beach Boys, Beatles) others more rock.

"Cherry Darling" by Bruce Springsteen. :)