Progressive pop

Progressive pop
Etymology	A "progression" from mid-20th century pop music formulas.
Stylistic origins	Pop rock progressive
Cultural origins	Mid 1960s, United States and United Kingdom
Derivative forms	New Pop
Other topics
Art pop Art rock Experimental pop Progressive rock

Progressive pop is a form of pop music that was first used as an early name for progressive rock, with the term "progressive" referring to the wide range of attempts to break with standard pop music formulas through extended instrumentation, personalized lyrics, and individual. Its premise opposed the influence of managers, agents, or record companies, and was mainly produced by the performing artists themselves. Some stylistic features of progressive pop include changes in key and rhythm or experiments with larger forms.

Definition

See also: Progressive music

File:Elo 27041978 04 800.jpg

The Electric Light Orchestra performing in 1978

The term "progressive" refers to the wide range of attempts to break with standard pop music formulas through extended instrumentation, personalized lyrics, and individual improvisation. The premise involved popular music that was created for the intention of listening, not dancing, and opposed the influence of managers, agents, or record companies.. Progressive music was also mainly produced by the performing artists themselves. A journalist at UK publication Melody Maker described progressive pop as music that is "meant for a wide audience but which is intended to have more permanent value than the six weeks in the charts and the 'forget it' music of older pop forms." Some stylistic features of progressive pop include changes in key and rhythm or experiments with larger forms.

History

1960s: Origins

See also: Progressive rock

Up until the mid 1960s, individual idiolects always operated within particular styles. What was so revolutionary about this post-hippie music that came to be called 'progressive' ... was that musicians acquired the facility to move between styles—the umbilical link between idiolect and style had been broken.

—Allan Moore

Progressive pop emerged in the mid 1960s as an earlier term for progressive rock, a genre influenced by the "progressive" pop groups from the 1960s who combined rock and roll with various other music styles such as Indian ragas, oriental melodies, and Gregorian chants, like the Beatles and the Yardbirds. The Beatles' Paul McCartney intimated in 1967: "we [the band] got a bit bored with 12 bars all the time, so we tried to get into something else. Then came [Bob] Dylan, the Who, and the Beach Boys. ... We're all trying to do vaguely the same kind of thing."

The Beach Boys, 1964

Author Bill Martin credits the Beatles and the Beach Boys as the most significant contributors to the development of progressive rock, transforming rock from dance music into music that was made for listening to. Upon release, their 1966 album Pet Sounds was hailed by British newspapers as "the most progressive pop album ever". Cleveland's Troy Smith believes that the album "established the group as forefathers of progressive pop, right from the beginning chords of 'Wouldn't It Be Nice', a Wall of Sound style single". Melody Maker ran a survey which interviewed many pop musicians on whether they believed that the album was truly revolutionary or progressive. The author concluded that "the record's impact on artists and the men behind the artists has been considerable."

The Beatles working in the studio with their producer George Martin, circa 1965

In the opinion of author Simon Grilo, the Beatles' progressive pop would be exemplified in the double A-sided single "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" (1967). Influenced by Pet Sounds, the Beatles demonstrated "paradoxical lyrical content matched by music that was at once 'young' and 'old', rock and Tin Pan Alley, LSD and cocoa, progressive and nostalgic" — all features that were shared on their following 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Musicologist Allan Moore writes: "At that time, Sgt. Pepper seemed to mark rock music's coming of age ... Now, of course, with jaded memories, we think of it as ushering in an era of pomposity, with varying degrees of seriousness ... The question after 1967 was whether 'progressive' pop/rock was to be trusted, because it was dealing with issues 'deeper' than simply interpersonal relationships. In the long run, the answer turned out to be 'no' (at least, that is, until a later generation of bands discovered the delight of pastiching the Beatles)."

1960s–70s

See also: Art rock

Towards the end of the 1960s, progressive pop music was received with doubt and disinterest. The Who's Pete Townshend reflected in 1974 that many people were doing ambitious works that were "instantly getting labelled as pretentious, and at the same time garbage was being pushed into the charts ... Anybody that was any good ... was more or less becoming insignificant again. ... There was a lot of psychedelic bullshit going on." Writer Nik Cohn in his 1969 piece Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock believed that the pop music industry had been split "roughly eighty percent ugly and twenty percent idealist", with the eighty percent being "mainline pop" and the twenty percent being "progressive pop [developed to] an esoteric feel". He predicted: "In ten years, its practitioners will probably be called by another name entirely, electric music or something, and they'll relate to pop the way that art movies relate to Hollywood." In its 1970 revision, Cohn amended: "I had guessed that progressive pop would shrink to a minority cult and it hasn't. Well, in England, I wasn't entirely wrong ... But, in America, I fluffed completely — the Woodstock nation has kept growing and, for all his seriousness and pretensions to poetry, someone like James Taylor has achieved the same mass appeal as earlier stars."

Progressive rock (also known as art rock) was ushered in the 1970s, directly following the combination of classical grandiosity and pop experimentalism from the 1960s. Authors Don and Jeff Breithaupt wrote that bands like Queen and Electric Light Orchestra "found their place in prog-rock firmament with a sort of progressive pop that allowed them full access to the charts". The authors elaborated: "From 1976 onward, orthodox progressive rock waned; that is, the sprawling moody electronic suites that had fueled FM rock radio during the early seventies disappeared, or sold poorly ... Into the void created by prog rock's misfortunes sailed a host of new, milder 'serious' bands, whose humor (Queen), pop smarts (Supertramp), and style (Roxy Music, mach two) would ensure their survival into the eighties. Stylistic descendants of the Beatles, they met the melodic requirements of AM radio while still producing thoughtful, original work. This new, leaner breed of pomp rock deserves a name–let's call it progressive pop." They proceed to name the following artists with regard to their definition:

• 10cc
• Alan Parsons
• Al Stewart
• Be-Bop Deluxe
• Brian Eno
• City Boy
• Crack the Sky
• Gary Wright of Spooky Tooth
• Genesis (sans Steve Hackett)
• Electric Light Orchestra
• Hawkwind
• Kansas
• Pink Floyd (The Wall)
• Renaissance
• Roxy Music
• Saga
• Starcastle
• Supertramp
• Synergy
• Queen
• U.K.

1970s–2000s

See also: New Pop

By 1977, "progressive pop" was roughly interchangeable with rock music, referring to popular music created for the intention of listening, not dancing. In 1985, Simon Reynolds noted that that the New Pop movement "involved a conscious and brave attempt to bridge the separation between 'progressive' pop and mass/chart pop – a divide which has existed since 1967, and is also, broadly, one between boys and girls, middle-class and working-class." In a review of erstwhile Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson's debut solo album (1988), Deborah Wilker called its closing eight-part piece "Rio Grande" "the kind of immensely fulfilling progressive pop with which art-rock bands such as Yes and Genesis formerly toyed, but rarely brought to satisfying completion."

In 2008, The New York Times' John Wray discussed "the return of the one-man band", observing, "the past few years in progressive pop ... have given rise to a series of popular and acclaimed collectives — uncommonly large bands with a disdain for clearly defined hierarchies", noting examples such as Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, and Animal Collective.