Can Popular Music Ever Really Be Unplugged?

If we take popular by William's definition of "well liked," it is hard to imagine how this would be possible, as Theberge claims, "without electronic technology, popular music in the twenty first century is unthinkable.”

A key development in the creation of rock and roll, a precursor to modern pop was the electric guitar. Developed in 1932 by Adolph Rickenbacker, it is now one of the most widely used instruments in modern music. The Fender Stratocaster is easily identified by people who have even the tiniest amount of musical knowledge. The electric guitar is a staple in most popular music.

To be able to spread, and listen to, music, amplification and microphone technology would be essential. Today, almost everyone has access to mp3 technology, so even if a song was simply a singer and acoustic acompaniment it would need technology to be heard and to ensure it became "well liked."

Week One - Pop Goes The Culture

The lecture began by filling in a questionnaire about our musical tastes, stretching across the class from Nirvana to Lady Gaga, then discussing what we thought pop music was and then looked at Williams' (1979) progression of the word, which started as “base or vulgar," and progressed to meaning "widely favoured." We looked at Kassabian's description of pop as" art and culture of the people" and why this was a dubious description - art of the people should be accessible, but T-Rex's Strange Orchestra showed that it wasn't, art of the people should be oppositional to "high culture" but sales of Nessun Dorma would argue otherwise.

Roy Shuker's definition of pop as a "hybrid," an "economic product," with "ideological significance." – was possibly the most all-encompassing definition possible.

By the end of the lecture, we had learnt that the idea of popular music was not as clear-cut as we may have thought.