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American popular music

American popular music (also referred to as "American Pop") is popular music produced in the United States of America and is a part of American pop culture. Distinctive styles of American popular music emerged early in the 19th century, and in the 20th century the American music industry developed a series of new forms of music, using elements of blues and other genres. These popular styles included country, R&B, jazz and rock. The 1960s and 1970s saw a number of important changes in American popular music, including the development of a number of new styles, such as heavy metal, punk, soul, and hip hop.

"American pop" redirects here. For the film, see American Pop.

American popular music is incredibly diverse, with styles including ragtime, blues, jazz, swing, rock, bluegrass, country, R&B, doo wop, gospel, soul, funk, pop, punk, disco, house, techno, salsa, grunge and hip hop. In addition, the American music industry is quite diverse, supporting a number of regional styles such as zydeco, klezmer and slack-key. Though these styles were not always in the sense of mainstream, they were commercially recorded and therefore are examples of popular music as opposed to folk or classical music.


American popular musical styles have had a significant influence on global culture.

1990s[edit]

Perhaps the most important change in the 1990s in American popular music was the rise of alternative rock through the popularity of grunge. This was previously an explicitly anti-mainstream grouping of genres that rose to great fame beginning in the early 1990s. The genre in its early stages was largely situated on Sub Pop Records, a company founded by Bruce Pavitt and John Poneman. Significant grunge bands signed to the label were Green River (half of the members from this band would later become founding members of Pearl Jam), Sonic Youth (although not a grunge band they were influential on grunge bands and in fact it was upon the insistence of Kim Gordon that the David Geffen Company signed Nirvana) and Nirvana. Grunge is an alternative rock subgenre with a "dark, brooding guitar-based sludge" sound,[71] drawing on heavy metal, punk, and elements of bands like Sonic Youth and their use of "unconventional tunings to bend otherwise standard pop songs completely out of shape."[72] With the addition of a "melodic, Beatlesque element" to the sound of bands like Nirvana, grunge became wildly popular across the United States.[73] Grunge became commercially successful in the early 1990s, peaking between 1991 and 1994. Bands from cities in the U.S. Pacific Northwest especially Seattle, Washington, were responsible for creating grunge and later made it popular with mainstream audiences. The supposed Generation X, who had just reached adulthood as grunge's popularity peaked, were closely associated with grunge, the sound which helped "define the desperation of (that) generation."[74] Bands such as Foo Fighters and Creed became a form of alternative rock known as post-grunge, popular because it was radio friendly unlike the grunge bands by which they were musically influenced. Pop punk bands like Green Day and Blink 182 also gained popularity. In the second half of the 1990s nu metal arose with bands such as Linkin Park, Korn, Limp Bizkit and Slipknot. The independent culture slumbered in the underground scenes with new genres such as lo-fi (Beck, Sparklehorse, Guided By Voices), math rock (Slint, Shellac) and post-rock (Explosions in the Sky, Tortoise). Emocore and Post-hardcore became more known with bands such as At the Drive-In and Fugazi.


Gangsta rap is a kind of hip hop, most importantly characterized by a lyrical focus on macho sexuality, physicality and a dangerous, criminal image. Though the origins of gangsta rap can be traced back to the mid-1980s raps of Philadelphia's Schoolly D and the West Coast's Ice-T, the style is usually said to have begun in the Los Angeles and Oakland area, where Too Short, N.W.A and others found their fame. This West Coast rap scene spawned the early 1990s G-funk sound, which paired gangsta rap lyrics with a thick and hazy tone, often relying on samples from 1970s P-funk; the best-known proponents of this sound were the breakthrough rappers Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg.

2000s[edit]

By the end of the 1990s and into the early 2000s pop music consisted mostly of a combination of pop-hip hop and R&B-tinged pop, including a number of boy bands. Notable female singers also cemented their status in American and worldwide popular music, such as Beyoncé (with her solo career and as lead singer of Destiny's Child), Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. Also notable was the influence of hip-hop producers on popular music in the mid-late 2000s, who made the sounds first heard on Usher's Confessions and Nelly Furtado's Loose imitated throughout popular radio with artists Madonna, Akon and Lady Gaga. In the late 2000s into the early 2010s, pop music began to move towards being heavily influenced by the European electronic dance music scene, taking root in the college crowd through producers like David Guetta, Calvin Harris, Swedish House Mafia and Skrillex.


Hip hop/pop combination had also begun to dominate 2000s and early 2010s. In the early 2010s, prominent artists like Bruno Mars, Drake, Lil Wayne, 2 Chainz, Kendrick Lamar, Machine Gun Kelly, and Macklemore began to dominate the mainstream music scene.


The predominant sound in 1990s country music was pop with only very limited elements of country. This includes many of the best-selling artists of the 1990s, like Clint Black, Shania Twain, Faith Hill and the first of these crossover stars, Garth Brooks.[75]


On the other hand a guitar revival took place and raised a new generation of alternative guitar bands often described as post-punk revival or garage rock revival. Prominent US bands of this generation are White Stripes, The Strokes, and The Killers.

International and social impact[edit]

American popular music has become extremely popular internationally. Rock, pop, hip hop, jazz, country and other styles have fans across the globe. The combination of parts of international and American popular music has been attempted between the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. However, the results of synthesis were for the most part unsuccessful.[43] BBC Radio DJ Andy Kershaw, for example, has noted that country music is popular across virtually the entire world.[76] Indeed, out of "all the contributions made by Americans to world culture ... (American popular music) has been taken (most) to heart by the entire world".[77] Other styles of American popular music have also had a formative effect internationally, including funk, the basis for West African Afrobeat, R&B, a major source for Jamaican reggae, and rock, which has profoundly influenced most every genre of popular music worldwide. Rock, country, jazz and hip hop have become an entrenched part of many countries, leading to local varieties like Australian country music, Tanzanian Bongo Flava and Russian rock.


Rock has had a formative influence on popular music, which had the effect of transforming "the very concept of what popular music" is.[78] while Charlie Gillett has argued that rock and roll "was the first popular genre to incorporate the relentless pulse and sheer volume of urban life into the music itself".[79]


The social impacts of American popular music have been felt both within the United States and abroad. Beginning as early as the extravaganzas of the late 19th century, American popular music has been criticized for being too sexually titillating and for encouraging violence, drug abuse and generally immoral behavior.

Blackface

Rockabilly

American Idol

Christian pop culture

British Invasion

Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music

Traditional pop

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at the Middle Tennessee State University

Center for Popular Music

popular songs in American history

Database of

at the University of Pittsburgh

Center for American Music

Popular Songs from the Civil War to the Cold War