In Tom Stoppard’s play The Real Thing, Henry, an intellectual writer, is asked to choose his favourite music for BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs programme. It’s a beautifully humorous sequence. Henry’s issue is about whether to pick the type of music that he believes his audience would appreciate him for, or whether to be honest and choose the pop music that he likes.
Humans have already been generating music for as long as they have existed – maybe even longer. A flute discovered in a cave in northeastern Solvenia in 1995 was dated at roughly 40,000 years old.
It wasn’t until the mid-1950s that pop music started to take on a life of its own. The pop industry developed an empire well with the advent of rock’n’roll music. Producers led by Phil Spector delivered three-minute pop symphonies as rich and multi-timbered as Wagner at his peak, with songwriters in New York’s famed Brill Building crafting their masterpiece.
Pop culture embraced art like never before throughout the following two or three years. Let’s not forget that many of the greatest pop bands, like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, David Bowie, Queen, REM, Blur, Pulp, Lady Gaga, and too many more, have their beginnings at art colleges. As a result, battle lines were formed.
Another intriguing case study is ABBA, the Swedish Eurovision champions. Nothing could be farther from the art inside the pop world than this yearly Europe-wide songwriting competition, right? Furthermore, ABBA’s recordings were in high demand. The fact that individuals who wouldn’t ordinarily pay attention to the pop charts fell in love with their well-crafted morsels of pop should have sunk the Swedish great four’s reputation. And it’s possible that was correct at the time. However, they are now credited with elevating pop music to new heights.
Throughout the 1970s, many young pop fans levelled snobbish allegations, particularly against the prog-rock camp’s more intellectual noodlings.
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