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Is Metal really Pop music?


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I was looking on Bandmix, Joinmyband & Gumtree for a keys player. I never found any, but just about everyone on there is playing Metal/Hard Rock of some sort, the majority are guitarists, a couple of drummers & vocalists.

So it got me thinking, as "Pop music" is short for "Popular" music, is Metal the definitive Pop music?

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If you classify Jovi/Leppard as metal,(as MTV /tour promoters did in the 8os) then yes metal is pop. Metal has been more fashionable and diverse from the late'80s onwards.Back in the '70s Zep was (wrongly) classified as metal and never got any daytime radio .Same as Sabbath. More bands are rappynmetal,such as chillis/FNM and their influences were metal. I find that if you look for rock covers bands , it seems to be people who love Free/Jovi/Foo Fighters and slash.

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Depends on your definition. Iron Maiden would be considered a "rock" band by hardcore metal guys. There are so many sub genres. Bottom line, no melody or hooks, no mass appeal. I can;t believe people are still listening to that stupid growling that they do in some metal bands. It's like listening to music while mowing the lawn.

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I'd probably define Metal in the general sense as any music in the vein of Hard Rock, Grunge, Glam, NuMetal, Metalcore etc. So bands from Nirvana & Pearl Jam through to Slipknot & Wolfmother. Anything that has 2 or more guitars with a decent amount of dirt on them all.

BTW, I do like most metal. It just seems like a very popular genre that's more popular than "Pop" (sub genres aside).

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One aspect of the popularity of metal is that it tends to attract people who are generally more interested in music and who'll use more of their disposable income on music than the likes of Brittney Spears fans.

In my time of running a CD-shop, I had to note with sadness that these "fanatic" customers were so few that they could not keep the shop alive. The people that kept the shop alive were those very many that bought very few CDs every year, and they all bought the same.

Based on that lack-of-science, my guess would be that these band-members-to-be could belong to a similar group of more-than-averagely-interested-in-music people.

Demm! Ran out of hyphens!
Will be back after restarting my pc.

Edited by BassTractor
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Straight answer is 'yes'. It is popular music that tries to appear separate, different, aloof etc but, when you break it down, it functions in exactly the same was as the rest of pop but to a different demographic in a slightly different way. It is almost all affectation.

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[quote name='Lord Sausage' timestamp='1377542839' post='2188682']
Metal has been pop for many years now. it has a defined image that isn'y just scruff and black anymore. tattoos and hair do's are obligatory. All the bands have the same sheen production. It's all bollocks basically. the last metal band was probably Pantera!
[/quote]

Says it all really. Metallica, slayer and anthrax never needed that back In the day.

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Interesting thread! I'd say yes, strictly speaking metal is pop music in that it's 'popular'. Very popular in fact.

But it's not pop music in the way we tend to use the term pop - as in, meaning 'accessible' to a mass market / or 'daytime radio friendly'.

Off topic: here's a great website listing the various genres of metal in the form of a map...

http://mapofmetal.com/

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[quote name='BassTractor' timestamp='1377544557' post='2188718']
So much this, under the assumptions that one ranges jazz under that same view, and that real music is only made by Penderecki, Stockhausen and Xenakis.

In other words: sweeping statement nonsense that you of all people should know to stay well away from.
[/quote]Bit harsh! He was only saying it's pop music, not it's not real music. What's wrong with pop music!

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[quote name='Lord Sausage' timestamp='1377551244' post='2188825']
Bit harsh! He was only saying it's pop music, not it's not real music. What's wrong with pop music!
[/quote]

Yeah, and I thought of not posting it, and later of retracting it for that very reason. However, this is only the formal side of it, and the underlying tendencies are still there and congruent with what Bilbo has been writing in other posts.


Edit:
I've decided to retract it. The assumed underlying tendencies may not have been present, and he does have a point about some formal capacities of music not having style boundaries. Good point even.

Edited by BassTractor
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Metal has always changed and absorbed other styles of music (as well as creating a few), quite often these go down some cul-de-sacs that in themselves can soon become clogged with 'also rans.'

There are always those fans that follow a certain style or scene and then drop away. To be honest most dyed in the wool metal fans can spot a 'bandwagon riding scenester band 'a mile off, and they are probably quite obvious these days as they tend to have largely crap songs, lots of neck tattoos and shouty vocals ( I quite like the odd shout for effect, but all the time just makes me think that actually they've got nothing to say.)

So pop as in popular yes, but not 'pop' in delivery, subject matter or sound. Pop exists primarily to shift units, and I'd argue that metal bands exist primarily because the musicians and fans love it.

Biggest difference is in the festival arena, where frankly pop/rap/urban is just a bit lame in comparison (imho of course!)

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[quote name='Skol303' timestamp='1377550900' post='2188819']
Interesting thread! I'd say yes, strictly speaking metal is pop music in that it's 'popular'. Very popular in fact.

But it's not pop music in the way we tend to use the term pop - as in, meaning 'accessible' to a mass market / or 'daytime radio friendly'.

Off topic: here's a great website listing the various genres of metal in the form of a map...

[url="http://mapofmetal.com/"]http://mapofmetal.com/[/url]
[/quote]

Cool map. :)

R1 & R2 do play a lot of stuff that's on that map. Last week I was rocking to some Motorhead on Radio 2! :sun_bespectacled:
But I get what you mean as in what is classed as "pop". I think a song has to have a certain amount of "Cheesiness" to fall in todays "pop" category (& cheese isn't always a bad thing).

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Guest bassman7755

I first got into metal/rock in my early teens. Thinking back, what set it apart from other genres (that had a large teenage audience) was that everyone took an interest in all the musicians, everyone had their/favourite/guitarist/bassist/drummer despite most being non-musicians. Also it seemed like there was a sense of community among the bands with people moving around between bands, breaking off to form new ones etc.

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