Pop music is a generic term meaning popular music. In the past it was used to describe the most popular music of the day. However, because of the diverse nature of the music industry today, it is usually used to describe chart music. Chart music could therefore be seen as the modern pop music as it indicates which songs from the many diverse styles of music available, are the most popular in terms of record sales. In the traditional sense pop music is listener friendly with a 3-minute verse-bridge-happy-chorus format. Lyrically pop songs are usually easy to understand, catchy and relating to issues common to the majority of people. Band images are clean, pretty and attractive to a younger audience. Pop music usually uses a clean sound with no distortion on the guitars, lots of keyboards, and danceable drum beats. To sum up pop music we could say that it is commercial mainstream music intended for consumption by a wide audience.

• The Music: catchy, melodic, song orientated, light, mainstream.
• The Lyrics: light, catchy, easy to relate to, easy to remember, love, lost love, aspirations.
• The Guitar: usually non-intrusive acting as a melodic accompaniment to the vocals.
• The Equipment: very wide range of gear, the most popular being Fender/Gibson guitars and Fender/Marshal/Vox amps.
• The Image: clean, pretty, sexy, trendy, keeping up with and inspiring new fashions and trends.
• The Bands: The Beatles, The Bee Gees, The Animals, Donovan, Cliff Richard, Lulu, Neil Diamond, Elton John, Bros, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Madonna, Prince.