Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum What exactly is “pop” music?

The world needs pop & classical pianists, both are valuable pursuits. And pop has a better chance of landing a paying gig.

So if money is a consideration, go pop.

Just a quick note: Bohemian Rhapsody is NOT a pop song. And Firth of Fifth is heck NO a pop song


Prince is the best, he was just amazing. Of course scoring a world wide hit is also a matter of luck and conjuncture, Sinead's version would probably not even be charting today... Imagine looking at a bald woman's head for 5 minutes in 2020.

MIls, from reading your earlier posts I estimate you have been learning piano for approx 5.5 months. I have often written how I found the first year to be full of despondent lows, and although there were some really nice highs, overall I found it tough and I will never pine for those good old days Perhaps we never hear from you when you are feeling good? The point is the first year can be really tough, the following years are tough but I think the first is the toughest.

When you were using Alfred's you wrote how you really hated it, (and I can understand that up to a point), but now it sounds like you have ditched the Alfred book and have crossed into classical pieces. However with so little experience you have to understand, it really doesn't matter what genre you are using, it just comes down to time on the bench. Yes, you have told us before you are practicing hard but feel like a failure, well that is the other problem of the first year, practicing hard and getting nowhere is just normal.

Looking back at my first year, I learned a lot of pieces but I only considered about three in the whole year as success's. I know that isn't a great count for the effort, but I feel you might get something out of piano if you really stick with a level appropriate piece, and get it to recording level. Even better post it on this forum and be proud of what you have achieved.

All the best.

Although Bohemian Rhapsody might not be a pop song to some, I think nine weeks at No 1 in the UK charts shows it was certainly popular.

My forum name suggests I might know a thing or two about Genesis. Selling England by the Pound (the album where you will find Firth of Fifth) tops some polls as the best progressive rock album ever (at least top ten in others), so yeah definitely not a pop song. However they did have a minor hit from this album with a song called I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe), which was the very first time I heard the band.

Disagree. Both are Pop and both have been played to death on radio which proves it.

Never thought I'd see the day when U2 would be considered Pop, but even that has occurred. That is the whole point of this thread I think is that we see the category as different things.

This is reassuring. I was thinking it was my lack of knowledge that made it difficult to put non-classical music into subgenre categories. For example, I went to a recital this weekend and in some cases, I had trouble classifying some pieces in the subgenres of ambient music (e.g., Satie), contemporary minimalism (e.g., Einaudi), jazz (e.g., 9th chords), or Renaissance era (e.g., Dorian mode!), or even some blend of these and other subgenres. It's good to know that even much more experienced ears than mine also struggle to put music into different subgenres. 😀

Eh the polls are wrong. Nursery Cryme is the best Genesis album.

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Pop music can IMHO mean two distinct things (akin to the concept of 'classical music'). It can mean either all western music that is not 'classical' or 'jazz', or it can refer to a specific genre of 'pop music'. Justin Bieber would be pop in either case, U2 is pop in general sense but not the specific one. This is similar to how Chopin can be both classical in a broader sense and non-classical in a more specific sense. Some examples of 'pop piano music':