Popular music

The term popular music belongs to a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music. Art music was historically disseminated through the performances of written music, although since the beginning of the recording industry, it is also disseminated through recordings. Traditional music forms such as early blues songs or hymns were passed orally, or to smaller, local audiences. The original application of the term is to music of the 1880s Tin Pan Alley period in the United States. Although popular music sometimes is known as "pop music", the two terms are not interchangeable. Popular music is a generic term for music of all ages that appeals to popular tastes, whereas pop music usually refers to a specific musical genre within popular music. The song structure of popular music commonly involves the verse, chorus or refrain, and bridge as the different sections within a piece. With digital access to music, some popular music forms have become global, while others are have wide appeal within the culture of origin. Through hybridity, or mixture across musical genres, new popular music forms are able to be manufactured to reflect the ideals of a global culture. The examples of the African continent, Indonesia, and the Middle East explain how hybridity can develop into new forms of popular music.

Popular Songs (Yo La Tengo album)

Popular Songs is the twelfth full-length album by Hoboken-based rock band Yo La Tengo, released digitally, on CD, and double LP on September 8, 2009. It is their 7th album released on Matador and the eighth album to be given Matador's Buy Early Get Now treatment, in which it came along with a vinyl LP featuring Yo La Tengo’s Original Score from the film, Adventureland, as well as three bonus tracks as download in MP3 and FLAC. The first two of these downloads were demo versions of two album tracks and became available shortly before the release of the CD. The third download became available on December 15, 2009. The same track is also available in the iTunes Store and on the Japanese CD issue of the album.

Four videos were made by director John McSwain to accompany one song from the album each. In the weeks leading up to the release of the album, a new video was posted on Matador's various "partner sites" and collected on Matador's own website. The first video, for "Here to Fall," was posted on Matador's own "Matablog" on July 28, 2009.