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 Most people assume "pop" to be short for "popular" and, as a look at the chart placement of nearly every song on this collection will attest, most people are right. More interesting, though, is how with time the recordings have assumed that other sense of pop--the pop to which music writers of, say, the mid-to-late 1970s, once referred when writing about the Knack and, inevitably, the Beatles. At that time, progressive rock, disco and heavy metal were what was new; pop music, with its emphasis on hooks, melodies and short, radio-friendly songs, seemed quaint and inescapably retro.
But as this century closes, dig the irony: While pop music was supposedly whimpering in the corner in mandatory skinny tie and Beatle boots, the music that allegedly supplanted it--the disco beat of Heatwave and Wild Cherry, the unapologetic album rock of REO Speedwagon, Journey and Toto, the violins and cellos of the Electric Light Orchestra--sure sounds like pop music now.
Likewise, artists whose fan base might've been skewed somewhat from the era's yuppie/baby boomer norm--say Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond or even the New Kids On The Block--are distanced enough from their work for it to be appreciated now on musical merit alone. And if the hooks and melody of Diamond's "Heartlight" or Streisand & Barry Gibb's "Guilty" don't sound like pure-pop-for-now-people to your ears, you're still hung up on that image
thing, friend.
As the millennium rolls in, time becomes the great equalizer.
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