The Power of Pop

      

When they first appeared onto the Beat music scene in 1962 with their hit single 'Love Me Do'', the public had no idea of what was to come nor how much was to change throughout the rest of the decade. Contrary to their previous misadventures in Hamburg, not to mention the sweatty leathers, fixes of drugs to keep them rocking through long sets, long days and even longer weeks of live performances at venues like The Top Ten Club, Reeperbahn and Kaiserkeller, the four lads from Liverpool had now been streamlined, smartened and deemed to be made more appropriate for the eyes and ears of the British public, both in live performance and, for the first time, on live television. In the words of The Beatles themselves, they were made fun of as they had been buttoned up into matching suits reminiscent of the Edwardian fashion, but that was a necessary decision made my their manager Brian Epstein if they were to succeed in the highly competitive pop music scene at the time.

Our first issue is to define exactly what pop music is and when it first emerged. Popular music in 1560s Italy would have widely been folk dances and liturgical music performed in churches for most commoners, whereas in 1760s Prussia, it would have been found in the operas and ballets, as well as courts but only if you were wealthy enough to attend them, of course. Later, the genres of Ragtime, Jazz, Swing, Country and Western, Rock and Roll and eventually Pop had evolved into a highly inclusive means of reaching the general public and on a massive scale, with more than just live performances as the only means of appreciating the music, such as LP sales, regular radio programmes, TV apperances, musicals, films, and now memorabilia of The Beatles themselves in various forms. This was to continue throughout the career of The Beatles as a band and into the 1970s and until the present day, and merchandising of music, artists, cultural image and societal change has remained a key part of pop music for many decades since.

Pop music, therefore, is more than just 'popular', but so widespread in terms of who it belongs to and who appreciates it, that it becomes increasingly harder to define it as one particular 'sound', so to speak. The advent of the internet and social media has been a revelation in how all pop music hits the charts in the first place, and also acts as a fantastic and instant platform for fans to connect all over the world and retain conversations, opinions, ratings, critiques and biographical texts of the artists presumably forever on the vast unknown which is the internet.

Although The Beatles as a band moved so fast in the short few years in which they gained fame in Britain, then the US and eventually the entire world up until 1970, it's difficult to see how they could even begin to even imagine such an inter-connected world where their music is streamed, enjoyed and shared on such a scale over 50 years on. Even with their wild imaginations and creative brains which created some of humankind's greatest masterpieces, I doubt they would have realised that their work will be remembered just as Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Dickens and Picasso.