Parallelly the evolution of the listening equipment was also in full force . Music was becoming portable , and people could choose what they wanted to listen to , and could carry it with themselves everywhere they went to . Carrying vinyl around wasn ’ t the most practical thing to do , and one wasn ’ t limited to listening to what was being played on the radio . People have diverse personalities , which inevitably lead to diversifying and redefining what popular could mean .
In India , like most terms , the word ‘ pop ’ has evolved in its own way . Up until the 90s ’, Bollywood music was what was deemed to be popular . Apart from Bollywood , it was perhaps only regional , classical , and other categorized music that existed at that time . As soon as India had stronger ground for the success of independent music , it saw a deluge of rock , rap , electronic music stream into their most listened to songs over the years . All as pop songs
In the 90s ’, artists like Euphoria , Jal , Lucky Ali , etc . And the artist in early 2000s ’ like VIVA , Abhijeet Sawant , DJ Aqeel etc . proved that the independent music in India had a strong potential to have a huge audience of its own .
Unlike USA which had the pop music go through different phases of pop through the past decades , India saw the direct jump to the fusion of various genres to be called as a ‘ pop ’ song . Being a country as diverse as USA , if not more , the audience of pop music was already more than happy to have introduction of different music .
Independent music too is decoding what could make their music most popular . Contemporary artists like Prateek Kuhad , Easy Wanderlings , Taba Chake , Bloodywood etc . have found ways to make their songs most relatable , and popular on a groundbreaking level . What ’ s popular in India has no bounds , and classification of genres has never been part of Indian pop culture . Songs like ‘ Rangisari ’ and ‘ Pasoori ’ are great examples of mixing of genres to create Pop bangers . India ’ s diversity has accepted collaborations of various artists and genres , which is a point that perhaps the west took some time to reach to .
Like machine learning , Pop music has been the natural learner of music over the years . It engulfed swing , rock n ’ roll , rock , rap , Bollywood , Latin music , Blues and many other genres to make a sanctuary like space for all . Pop can be awarded as the most inclusive and non-judgemental genre of music .
Many people will straight-up call any music that is up-beat as ‘ pop ’, and to be honest we have no strong stance to go against this opinion . But it ’ s evolution from being a category , to an adjective , to a genre itself makes it difficult to define it as any one thing . It could be dependent on the song structure , selection of scales , composing a memorable melody , the star quality of the singer , having an upbeat music , or having relatable lyrics . There can be no supreme definition of what pop music is or could be , for it is an everevolving genre .
Bollywood has always known how to make popular music since its inception . In fact , when Disco genre was making rounds in the west , our music directors immediately began their experiment with it in Bollywood music .
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