Rock vs Pop

[McSeven]

Whats the difference between Rock and Pop in your minds, and how did Zep fit into these molds?

I feel that Zeppelin became more pop with ITTOD. Rock to me has to have danger. Like when you see an action movie. Pop has no danger. Fool in the rain has no danger. In my time of dying has danger.

Even STH has danger to it.

Mc7

[Otto Masson]

I don't agree, and you seem to presuppose that rock in itself is a valuable tag. But there's lots of rock music - I mean unquestionably rock - that is only silly, not to mention awful. In these cases, what is missing is not the "rocking" quality, but just quality. And there's loads of absolutely great pop music that also is intelligent and has a real depth to it. It seems pretty easy to argue that this is the case with The Beatles, ELO and 10 cc at their best, Karl Wallinger, etc. to name just a few people.

One thing that is probably more definitive of rock than of pop is the desire to shock, to be outrageous, and to encompass "evil" in that sort of way. But even so, it often ends up being only stupid.

As for LZ, yeah, basically a rock band. There are many different influences in their songs, but the result almost never is something you would call a pop song; like The Rain Song, for instance, the beginning of which is a Beatles quote (similar chord progression as in "Something").

Edited October 30, 2008 by Otto Masson

[widget]

Good points Otto. When you boil it down, the labels are meaningless. Pop music, being short for Popular music, could be taken as anything. To not listen to or dislike something because eg. it's "jazz" is IMO, narrowing your enjoyment of what music is.

Meg

I don't agree, and you seem to presuppose that rock in itself is a valuable tag. But there's lots of rock music - I mean unquestionably rock - that is only silly, not to mention awful. In these cases, what is missing is not the "rocking" quality, but just quality. And there's loads of absolutely great pop music that also is intelligent and has a real depth to it. It seems pretty easy to argue that this is the case with The Beatles, ELO and 10 cc at their best, Karl Wallinger, etc. to name just a few people.

One thing that is probably more definitive of rock than of pop is the desire to shock, to be outrageous, and to encompass "evil" in that sort of way. But even so, it often ends up being only stupid.

As for LZ, yeah, basically a rock band. There are many different influences in their songs, but the result almost never is something you would call a pop song; like The Rain Song, for instance, the beginning of which is a Beatles quote (similar chord progression as in "Something").