That would be a canonical matter

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

No canon today as my list is at work and I am not - instead, a question:

Is there an artist or group that suddenly springs to mind when you think of 'pop'? What about 'indie'? Or 'emo'? Do you think there can be 'defining songs' for a genre?

In other words - are there canonical artists/songs in pop? How changeable are they over time?

Comments

[damnspynovels.livejournal.com]

The term was already coined way back when for such a purpose, but I always felt it was unfair. It was like the DBs couldn't ever be just pop, so they had to be indiepop. And yet it's more pop than many other things legitimately called as such.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well for their target market being indiepop was better than being pop! (And indeed indiepop was "more pop" than pop)

I'm happy for almost everything to be pop, though - I don't see "indiepop" as any harsher a qualifier than "teenpop", it's just a useful connotative label for a particular flavour of the whole.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Have we had the "pop is an attribute not a genre" war on poptimists yet?