Words we love: pop

What’s poppin’ kids? I’m inclined to argue that ‘pop’ is one of the greatest words in the English Dictionary: the ultimate onomatopoeia. Whiz, bang, POP!

An abbreviation of the word popular, pop stands for everything mass. Pop music – music for the masses*; pop culture – “cultural artefacts or media content produced for mass audiences,” as the Oxford Reference Dictionary defines it; Pop Art – a movement celebrating mass culture and making the mundane fabulous (Andy Warhol’s soup cans anyone?).

Pop is associated with fun; with all things accessible. But pop is often unfairly stigmatised as ‘uncool’.

In the 90s, pop was the polar opposite of indie. Indie music, indie movies made outside the studio system, that was where the cool kids were getting their fix. Where indie became a code for alternative, not mainstream, natch cool, pop became a slur (which in hindsight is fair enough if you’ve sat through a rerun of a 90s Top of the Pops). If you admitted that you liked pop music, the NME readers around you would slowly shake their heads in disgust as they popped some indie rock band back into the CD player and wiped crumbs off their band t-shirt.

But pop should be celebrated. It’s through mass music that whole world and societal problems have been helped. The 80s Ethiopian crisis? Thank Bob Geldof and Midge Ure for Band Aid’s pop-tastic ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’ See also Madonna breaking rules and using her voice through the power of pop to battle stigma around sexuality, LGBTQ+, HIV, and empowering women and driving equality, amongst many other things.

Last year pop made a solid comeback. Either ironically, with the lovable Rickrolling Rick Astley appearing everywhere, from a Tesco advert, to TikTok reminding us why in an unstable world (and let’s agree 2023 was very unstable) you need someone like him to say he’s ‘never gonna give you up or let you down’; and his unconventional and unexpected Smiths secret cover set at Glastonbury (alongside his first Glasto experience on the Pyramid stage).

Or absolute pop seriousness with Harry Styles delighting over 5 million fans dancing around in multicoloured feather boas on ‘Love on Tour’, or Taylor Swift being Spotify’s most downloaded artist in 2023 and adding $5.7 billion boost to the US economy from her Eras tour.

I have no shame in saying I love pop music because sometimes it’s exactly what you need to sort your mood out. It might be a guilty pleasure, but perhaps it shouldn’t be so guilty, given that numerous studies have shown that listening to it can significantly alter our dopamine and serotonin levels, with dopamine linked to making us feel euphoric and serotonin associated with positive well-being. Tell me something I don’t know!

Those first bars of Madonna’s Get into the Groove will have me spinning around the kitchen in no-time (and had me spinning at the O2 back in October on her sell-out Celebration Tour).

As we crawl through winter, my suggestion is to kick off your shoes, put some tunes on and ‘dance like nobody is watching,’ as Mark Twain recommended. Pop music is the antidote we all need at this time of the year.

* the ironic title of the 1987 Depeche Mode album, which they felt definitely wasn't for the masses

Sources:

• Salimpoor, V. N., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. J. (2011). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature Neuroscience, 14(2), 257-262.