I had to learn chord shapes. I bought books with chord charts. I used to listen to all kinds of pop music.
We were so influenced not only by country music but by the rock bands of the ’80s. Our focus was to bring in something different. Country music already had a George Strait and Alabama. We wanted to put some pop music in our show.
I see my music as Emotional Therapeutic Pop music that bleeds into loads of different genres.
I’ve always argued that all Tame Impala melodies are pure pop. It’s just that ‘Lonerism,’ for example, is a completely rumbling, fuzzed out psychedelic rock album. But for me, it was just pop music produced the way that I like to produce it.
The one thing about The Weeknd is that he’s gone between the world of trap music and pop music and blended them together, so it makes it interesting in that way. That’s what I like about him.
Pop music is created by repression – and then the system takes it and makes even more money with it!
I did a pop album, ‘Sogno,’ in 1999. I think it’s important to record another pop album because many people love pop music. By this kind of repertoire, some people can later discover classical music.
I tend to score with songs from Western pop music.
Pop music for me was definitely escapist, but never studious.
I’m trying to break down preconceptions about what pop music is.
I like pop music. Earnestly. Most of the greatest technicians, mix engineers, and players are working in pop music.
I love pop music. I’ve tried to always be honest about that.
A part of ‘Happy New Year’ is inspired by western pop culture, the pop music videos of Michael Jackson, Madonna and Duran Duran in the ’80s.
Rap started as this very black, socio-political type of thing. And now it’s turned into pop music – we laugh about how everybody is doing the same thing in all of their songs.
Pop music has always been about the mainstream and what appeals to the public.
Those that know me know that I’m not 100% in love with commercial pop music. It’s not my preferred genre – I don’t do squeaky clean pop.
For artists of my caliber, we’re not played on the radio, so we don’t really get a chance to get involved in that debate at all. We don’t get a chance, because this weird kind of ageism exists in pop music. If you’re past a certain age, you’re not relevant. That’s the kind of cliched term.
Pop music is a fashion, and fashions come and go. The public retires you as their tastes change.
You had to read what I wrote if you lived in L.A. in 1975 and cared about pop music.
Even though country is a large percentage of what I do. I don’t want to get locked into just one area because I write a lot of different kinds of music and I like doing three-part harmony, minor chords and pop music.
If you write songs and if you write music that’s very sincere and very honest, it’s pop music, but it is pop music with a lot of honesty and a lot of heart.
As a producer, I’m trying to challenge myself to just make something that is of a professional quality – not necessarily pop music, but maybe in the sense that Nine Inch Nails is professional quality.
Singing pop music was not something I planned, but I managed to do it.
Prince turned experimental music into pop music. ‘When Doves Cry,’ the whole ‘Purple Rain’ soundtrack – he was inspired by the Cocteau Twins and new wave pop and brought it into R&B when he first started, and then it became this cool, next-level, kind of hard-to-digest music. Which is what I felt ‘House of Balloons’ was.
Pop music doesn’t challenge anything.
My audiences are generally mixed. Some people like techno, others are into the pop music, and others enjoy my film music.
I grew up listening pretty much just to pop music. But the older I’ve gotten, the more varied my musical tastes have become.
I think people who just know me from my band think I don’t like pop music. The truth is I love pop music.
Pop music has a pretty good track record of embracing queer culture.
No surprise here: Pop music is by far the most conservative art form there is.
I’ve always loved pop music. I’ve always loved indie, even electronic, even trap.
To be honest, for me, my main workout is when I’m on stage. Even though I make pop music, I don’t think I perform in the classic ‘pop star’ sort of way. I’m very active on stage; I always end up dripping in sweat afterwards. It’s always like a full-on, wild performance, so that’s pretty much like my exercise, I would say.
What’s missing from pop music is danger.
I truly thought I was going to be in pop music. And then I joined a choir to meet girls, and everything changed in the first rehearsal.
My grandparents don’t really listen to pop music, and they only speak Spanish and only listen to Spanish music.
The industrial thing came about mainly through giving up trying to write pop songs in the early ’90s. I don’t think I was ever very good at pop music and as soon as I stopped trying, and started to write more the things I loved, it became much heavier and more aggressive.
I think ’80s pop music subconsciously informs what I’m doing.
I’ve always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really.
I like Sam Smith and Taylor Swift. I love pop music, but I also like Sam Smith’s slow songs. That would be more to dance to. I think dancers like different genres of music, compared to just a regular person.
I wanted ‘The South Bank Show’ to reflect my own life and that of the team around me; to stretch the accepted boundaries and challenge the accepted hierarchies of the arts; to include pop music as well as classical music, television drama as well as theatre drama, and high-definition performers in comedy.
Spin Me Round was number one all over the world, everywhere. It changed the face of pop music, no question. We took technology further than Trevor Horn.
If you try to do that in pop music – to play only rare show tunes, for example – people don’t come.
We have always played classical music and always loved dance and pop music.
I sing pop music that I like and that is completely unapologetic – which is actually the term: it’s called ‘unapologetic pop.
The story of American pop music is the story of failure. The blues, country music, it’s not the story of success. People don’t win; they lose.
I didn’t grow up with a musical family. My mom had a lot of CDs in the house, particularly Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, ABBA, all the sort of like diva icons. She’s Swedish, so she loves pop music.
You don’t work in a vacuum. If you’re a visual artist you work in a visual culture. If you’re a pop musician you listen to pop music. If you’re an artist you should know about the art world.
I grew up in Southern California. I played in rock bands out here, and I’ve been around pop music my whole life. I’ve been around all music my entire life.
I was in bands all through my youth. Things started out more acoustic and then piano ballads. Then R&B followed by sappy pop music and then rock, punk and heavy metal.
I love pop music… some hip hop… not super big into rap, but I love Rihanna. I love Alicia Keys. Rihanna was my first concert I went to. I love her.
Anyone who watches a lot of television, or listens to pop music, is familiar with a certain vision of America. If not exactly colorblind, this America is one in which different races easily interact, in which a white person might have an Asian boss, Hispanic stepson, or African-American frenemy.
There is a lot of snobbery towards pop music, to me and pop in general – it’s kind of a despised art form.
For me, personally, the most interesting music comes from the popular sector – from film and pop music – since contemporary classical music got stuck and went into directions where it lost a lot of the public by over-intellectualizing.
You want to embrace what the idea of pop music is. Not necessarily the stereotype of pop music; there was a time when you’d say ‘pop music’ and conjure up images of the Sweet, or Marc Bolan. That, to me, can be avant-garde still.
I’m a pop victim. I love pop music; I love pop culture. I love Olivia Newton-John.
I love polished pop music, but stuff like Neil Young’s Crazy Horse vibe or Waylon Jennings, that stuff is raw and real.
The lines have definitely blurred between country and pop music.
In pop music, the public usually see the results – the hit records, the Grammy Awards performances, the concert tours – but not all the work that goes into getting into the spotlight. And not everyone realizes that, even if you have a lot of talent, chances are you won’t make it.
I have a borderline-embarrassing obsession with pop music.
The experiences of promoting my first album were really something; there is so much illusion in my environment (touring and pop music) that I wanted to clear away.
When I’m dead, I wanna leave a body of work, like authors or great painters do. I don’t wanna get ideas above my station, but why shouldn’t this be comparable? Pop music was supposed to be a flash in the pan, but here we are 50 years later, and it means something to us, and it always will do. It’s incredibly important.
I felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually, rather than just reflecting society or something called ‘rock and roll.’
