I Love #1s - 1958

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Last week we saw that 1986 was a smashing year for number ones, with Diana Ross, Falco and Europe all getting 30 ticks or more. However Queen Madge reigned supreme with 36 ticks for Papa Don't Preach. Now intrepid poll-tickers, cast your minds back.... It's 1958 and rock'n'roll is in full swing! OR IS IT?

[Poll #782959]

Comments

Re: Is this Pop?

[koganbot]

I don't understand the question or many of the answers (for which I blame the question, not myself). The popular culture era begins in the 1910s with the great popularity of movies; music joins this in the Roaring Twenties when record sales explode. But pop music becomes its own territory/force somewhat in opposition to the rest of popular culture in the late '40s early '50s with the advent of rock 'n' roll, sort of a mass teen netherworld, though not uncomplicatedly so, given that the word "pop" was used for the Como stuff that rock 'n' roll was supposedly displacing, but rock 'n' roll drew heavily on this pop anyway, and Elvis is such a complex figure in that he strove for pop legitimacy and antipop legitimacy simultaneously. (And Elvis may have dominated the teen landscape emotionally, but that doesn't mean he was the most popular: I read a poll of teens from an Illinois high school in 1958 where Pat Boone beat Elvis decisively, especially among the girls.) And rock 'n' roll was generally considered by its nonfans as the worst manifestation of pop rather than as something other than pop.

So the word "pop" already had multiple usages, e.g. anything that was popular (including rock 'n' roll and r&b when it crossed to the pop charts), but also only the "old" Como stuff that rock 'n' roll was sort of challenging/displacing (as opposed to rock 'n' roll and r&b).

In the novel Blackboard Jungle the kids want to hear Perry Como and they smash that teachers' snooty jazz records; in the movie version a couple years later it's rock 'n' roll they want to hear.

The number ones on this chart pull from both pre-rock 'n' roll pop and rock 'n' roll. I don't see what's particularly strange about that, though I'm sure the charts undercounted rock 'n' roll and r&b.

The rise of TV helped the rise of rock 'n' roll/pop as its own territory, in that TV displaced radio as the form for serial narratives, leaving the radio open to be seized by music aimed at teens.

Anyway, that pop music era probably dies in the mid '80s when rock and pop are basically embraced by TV, and the teen movie thing gets way bigger than it had been previously (though obv. it had existed since the '50s).

I'm not answering your question, am I? You mean when did the current pop music era begin, right? But I don't think we're in a pop music era right now in the way that the Sixties and Seventies were a pop music era, i.e., pop music had an impact different from the culture as a whole. Pop music is all over everywhere, both mainstream and in myriad different subcultures, squirting in and out of the mass attention. I guess one could claim that hip-hop and r&b are in the old rock 'n' roll position, but it's hard to really match up the old landscape and the new.

Re: Is this Pop?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Good answer!

Re: Is this Pop?

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

And rock 'n' roll was generally considered by its nonfans as the worst manifestation of pop rather than as something other than pop.

Yeah, on a Tom Lehrer album from (I think) about this time he between-song-banters about "rock & roll ... and other children's music".