Talk:Art pop

Re-direct

Should this even re-direct? Nothing in the art-rock article even mentions this genre. Andrzejbanas (talk) 22:52, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Page move

User:Ilovetopaint how do we move the page then? The "move page" option was problematic due to there already being an "art-pop" redirect page in existence. Considering like 90% of the sources, and all the sources that include a substantive definition, use the hyphen, it seems problematic to leave the unhyphenated version as the page title. GentleCollapse16 (talk) 19:12, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Please do not move this page. "Art pop" is a compound noun and it has no hyphen; when used as a compound adjective, "art-pop" gets a hyphen. When The Times writes about "art-pop masterpieces such as 'Once in a Lifetime' and 'Psycho Killer'", it's using "art-pop" as a compound adjective, not as a noun. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 20:42, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Reposted from other talk page:

Several of the sources on the art pop page, including those which define it most clearly, utilize the term as a noun, not a compound adjective— while maintaining the hyphen: see the Holden source, or the various Fisher sources, or the piece on Brian Eno. In fact, the majority of the sources that use the term "art pop" without the hyphen use the term adjectively rather than as a noun: see "the archetypal art pop band". This isn't a call for one's grammar expertise. It's about the way the term is actually used in professional writing. Generalized grammar is irrelevant. The hyphenated term is used as a noun by a variety of professional publications. And moreover, I see no reason why "art-pop" as a compound adjective that describes a defined style can't be conceptualized as a noun referring to that style. But again, your interpretation is irrelevant when plenty of journalists are using it as a noun.

Dance-punk is a good example. The term isn't treated as a compound adjective, it's treated as a new noun consisting of two separate words joined by a hyphen. Neither "dance" nor "punk" are used in isolation as adjectives or nouns, and dance doesn't act simply as a modifier for "punk," as it would in your version—the hyphen ensures the terms are given equal weight. I think it helps to conceptualize it this way: the term in classic noun-form would be "dancepunk" or "artpop" but out of an attempt to make both words clearly distinct and highlight both parts without privileging either, it's hyphenated. Again, this isn't about grammar, it's about how the term is actually used in the professional lexicon. GentleCollapse16 (talk) 01:18, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

When I glanced at the sources, I saw that "art-pop" and "art pop" were used just about the same. When I search "'art pop' 'genre'" in Google under "web results", I see that references to "art-pop" are far and few between. However, under "news results", it's the opposite. On naming conventions: * Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English.

• Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles.

In "professional writing", Simon Frith and Mark Fisher's books (cited in the article) spell it as "art pop" while the Bowie book has the hyphen. I don't think it's wise to have "art-pop" and "art rock" co-exist without there being a proper explanation for why one is hyphenated and one isn't. It'll just confuse people. Both spellings are equally valid. --Ilovetopaint (talk) 01:43, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Aiight, I'm happy with that answer. Re: individual artists' inboxes: the majority I have seen are supported by sources which utilize the hyphen. I'm assuming I'm at least in the right to WP:STICKTOSOURCE and include the hyphen as to the particular sources in question on an individual's artist page, no? GentleCollapse16 (talk) 05:28, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

No, you're misreading that policy. It doesn't say to slavishly copy what the source says. (That would be WP:COPYVIO.) In fact, it says "[s]ource material should be carefully summarized or rephrased without changing its meaning or implication." As I pointed out elsewhere, the source you cited at the two Talking Heads songs clearly used "art-pop" (with a hyphen) as an adjective. That doesn't mean you should use the hyphen in the genre in the infobox, where the genre is a noun -- especially since the article name has no hyphen. We're back to basic English grammar. — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 12:29, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Some suggestions

Interesting subject, and it has the potential to be a fantastic article. I just wonder, since the message seems to be that art pop originated with English artists – "Art pop developed in the 1960s as pop musicians such as John Lennon, Syd Barrett, Pete Townshend, Brian Eno, and Bryan Ferry began to take inspiration from their previous art school studies" – shouldn't the article's style be BritEng? (It's noticeably AmEng right now, "characterized", use of serial commas, etc.) Also, it's a surprise to not see any mention of some of the artists that Stephen Holden highlights: "music that is loosely defined as art-pop – music as diverse as that of Talking Heads ... Laurie Anderson, Beck, Pavement and Duncan Sheik …" Even more so after seeing that quote that Malik added above, re Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime" and "Psycho Killer".

Another thing: perhaps some brief discussion should be given to the emergence of art rock from the art-pop aesthetic? Looking at Holden again (and he's not the only commentator with such a view), it seems to have been the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper that heralded the birth of art rock: "… A bombastic, classically inflected post-Beatles art-rock flourished, especially in England, whence came the Moody Blues; Pink Floyd; Emerson, Lake and Palmer; Yes; Genesis; Electric Light Orchestra; Procol Harum, and other bands." Just an idea for consideration … JG66 (talk) 06:04, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Zappa source etc

Hey User:Ilovetopaint, I'm wondering if that Zappa source goes a bit too far—the author says "pop context" but doesn't clarify it's pop music as a genre rather than 'popular music' as a broad swathe, and then seems to confirm the latter by explicitly naming R&B, blues, and rock and roll as the popular forms Zappa incorporated. A few other sources here seem to suggest that (the Fisher source, at least, but perhaps implied by more) that art pop was in large part a move away from rock conventions (rather than an incorporation of them) toward a commercial sensibility. It seems like trying to portray Zappa as making "pop" (as opposed to art rock) music in any way is a bit of a stretch.

More generally, I tried to keep mention of artists to actual use of the phrase "art pop"—the Frith bit added about pop's appropriation of art seemed like a general but helpful part of an introduction from a passage that nonetheless mentioned art pop in name. Surely, we can find writing on a massive number of artists who incorporated art styles or art music into pop contexts that wouldn't be called 'art pop' unless the term was made to be a vague as possible. It seems like the sources are also pretty explicit (with the exception of the Holden piece, which I find pretty flawed personally) that art pop has more to do with incorporating the influence of other art forms rather than 'art music' (IMO just a pretentious name for classical styles) which seems like it's in the domain of art rock.

I've also even avoided including bands who were tagged as art pop because of lack of explanation specific to the term—Talking Heads, Devo, Laurie Anderson—but surely plenty has been generally written about how these artists incorporated pop music forms with experimental art sources, and which would likely be far more relevant to the proceedings here (i.e. Talking Heads weren't combining elitist art music with ironic jazz-rock, they were combining danceable disco with art-school influences like Dada etc.), seem much more in the spirit of Warhol/Hamilton/pop-art influenced 'art pop' described by these sources than Zappa.

On another front, you're doing a lot to cover the usual 1960s rock suspects on various pages—any possibility you could help expand some of the other sections, especially the last two, in which Grace Jones, Bowie, the New Romantics, and Bjork are all given one sentence or less? Surely Grace Jones is far more exemplary of 'art pop' (and IMO, far more interesting) than Zappa and his 20-minute guitar solos. Just worried the emphasis on traditionalist Rolling Stone-verified 1960s conceptions of 'artful' here are turning the page toward art rock-lite, when 'art pop' should be clearly distinct. GentleCollapse16 (talk) 17:24, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

I understand Frith's interpretation but it is at odds with Holden's. The genre is acknowledged as "loosely defined" and that is why I felt it was appropriate to include background information about the relationship between art and pop/popular music. When the article becomes large enough, it could accommodate a section that elucidates the relationships between 'art pop', 'art music', 'popular music', 'pop art', 'art rock', and whatever else may be relevant. The history section would then serve the purpose of documenting the genre's significant developments and trends among artists where the term "art pop" is used explicitly. And the reason why I haven't added much beyond the 1960s is because I'm simply not familiar enough with the eras after it. On second thought, though, I do think that... maybe that kind of background info should go in Art rock for now.-Ilovetopaint (talk) 19:44, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

User:Ilovetopaint hey just added a bunch of stuff, but afterward noticed you moved some of the art school-relevant details to notes rather than places in the text, so didn't want to seem like I was contradicting you. However, on that topic, it seems like the influence or incorporation of art school or art practices (most obviously pop art) is an integral running theme in most of the sources, so I'd like to vote for including information that generally mentions the particular incorporation of art and related-studies into pop contexts as part of the article text (my issue with the Zappa info was mostly that it seemed to be moving away from that definition towards something more ambiguous). Do you agree? GentleCollapse16 (talk) 22:44, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Regarding the post-punk, Talking Heads/Devo, and Bowie information I added, considering other sources on the page have already labeled them explicitly as art pop (or within "art pop" traditions), I figured those things were therefore fair game to elucidate in regards to the specifics, hence the discussion of art influences more generally. Again, I'm pretty much predicating everything on whether it's categorized within the loose concept of "art pop" to begin with, and once we can verify it is, I figure we can have some room with elaboration on the particulars. What do you think? GentleCollapse16 (talk) 22:49, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

I think you understand the subject better than I. Mostly everything that had to do with "artiness" and rock groups has been moved to Art rock. I'm not sure where the article can really go from here, since there is little writing devoted to the subject--Ilovetopaint (talk) 22:55, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Well it's not about expertise, I'm just wondering about how we should best go about this. Like, do you think it's appropriate to return the bits about Ferry and Bowie having attended art school, perhaps in shortened version? GentleCollapse16 (talk) 22:57, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

I think that background information on specific artists (like that Talking Heads and Roxy Music attended art school) should be relegated to footnotes. They should serve only to elaborate on the broad statements made explicitly related to art pop in their sources ("In the 1960s, pop musicians such as John Lennon, Syd Barrett, Pete Townshend, Brian Eno, and Bryan Ferry began to take inspiration from their previous art school studies.") Also try not to break WP:SYNTHESIS.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 23:02, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Velvet Underground

One glaring omission in the article is the Velvet Underground. There's a lot written in Matthew Bannister's White Boys, White Noise about "art-rock" and "rock-and-roll art", some of which I've started adding to Art rock. Nothing explicitly about "art pop" but it essentially deals with the same subject, so at least one sentence or two is warranted for only that source (it's highly likely that others have called them art pop).--Ilovetopaint (talk) 23:02, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Actually, it's right here: "The Velvets emulated Warhol’s art/pop synthesis. The repetitive minimalism of their music echoed Warhol’s emphasis on simplicity – and like him, they ignored the conventional hierarchies of artistic representation (Frith and Horne, 1987, p. 117). They integrated an aesthetic of chance and non-intentionality into their music making, and a presentational ‘blankness’ into their performance personae." --Ilovetopaint (talk) 23:09, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

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Privileging of the 60s/Brian Wilson/Beach Boys

As I've already complained, the article's current emphasis on the saintly innovations of his highness Brian Wilson, while certainly reflecting User:ilovetopaint's admittedly narrow interest in Wilson/60s rock and the dearth of books by old white male rock critics on the subject, doesn't in any way seem to proportionately reflect the contexts in which "art pop" has been used in music writing, both in past decades and in contemporary writing. The fact, acknowledged above on this talk page, that there's not very much in the way of actual definitions for art pop as a genre or style to bear out my concern in an explicit way only makes this privileging of one particular period/figure who happens to have some more informative writing on it/him related to the term all the more pernicious, especially given the extent to which the term (in my reading) is so often used in contexts that owe nothing to Wilson & co but don't contain enough descriptive substance to flesh out a mitigating definition—if you're not well-read in music outside that given 60s period, this may be beyond one's purview, but I would then expect the editor to recognize that it's more important to balance the page in a way that does justice to the topic rather than zealous googlebooks searches.

For example: the inclusion of quotes like "we all had that in common, that we loved the Beach Boys" does nothing to explain why this was significant to the development of "art pop"—what it does do is implicitly position the Beach Boys as some defining lights of the style while doing nothing to elucidate the actual nature of glam or Bowie's work, so as to render the BB synonymous with "art pop" while leaving the definition vague and making subsequent "art pop" artists into their descendants This seems ridiculous especially given a variety of other contradictions made by other sources on the topic (such as the assertion by several authors of the importance of irony and artifice in art pop, two ideas utterly absent from the earnest innocence of boy child Wilson, save maybe Smile. I can also tell you none of the industrial bands or early post-punk groups wanted anything to do with the lush 60s, and somehow they're considered art pop).

Basically, my concern is that throwing all the sources which mention the term, many of them connected to a particular artist, is in fact creating an incredibly skewed image of the subject. The sources/kinds of scholarship available to us is not magically objective and balanced, and the kind of old 60's obsessed rock books you're quoting from were always gonna be more interested in elucidating terminology than contemporary music writing, which is obviously much less interested in that sort of academic style but nonetheless uses the term in a different way. I'd prefer we acknowledge a broader, less particular view of it that remains cognizant of its wide use.

P.S. Regarding the significance of Brian Eno's "cybernetic studies"—his professor in the subject was the pop artist Ascott, and it was an integral part of his art school studies. As many of the sources here suggest, the term "art pop" has much more to do with the employment of abstraction, irony, and the unsettling of the "natural" human qualities in music—again, ideas antithetical to Wilson's work—than throwing orchestras on things.

P.P.S. "you seem to be forgetting that art pop is first and foremost *a genre of pop music*" that's another issue—says who? Which source calls it a genre? It seems to be described more accurately as a kind of sensibility or methodology that spans any number of pop music genres, rather than some unified style that can be understood through music alone. That's exactly why I'm trying to trouble your attempts to normalize it as any other old musical genre. Music was the last thing many of these artists were thinking about. GentleCollapse16 (talk) 07:21, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

WP:BALASPS: An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to the weight of that aspect in the body of reliable sources on the subject.

Basically, what you're saying is, we should skew the article so that it's more consistent to one interpretation, instead of having the article accurately reflect what you'd find in most valid sources. I completely empathize. Unfortunately, this is Wikipedia, and even more unfortunately, the sort of material that you and I both want in the article isn't there (yet). Nobody except Simon Frith and Mark Fisher really agree on what art pop is. Your reliance on their materials is just as bad as if I were to rely on Stephen Holden alone for the sole Wilson connection. But other people beside Holden relate Wilson/Spector/Beatles to art pop. We can't ignore their comments.

You stress the importance of only including material that is at the very least tangentially related to pop artists like Warhol and Ascott, rationalizing "No! Brian Wilson had nothing to do with them! Don't add things that don't comment about musical context on the historical context section of an article about music!" Yet, when I add comments from an author that directly compares Wilson and Spector with Warhol, the new excuse is that "No, that author is some old rockist from three hundred years ago, he doesn't know what he's talking about". Come on, man. Brian Eno studied cybernetics – a subject that has nothing to do with the arts – but is somehow worth noting because his teacher happened to be a pop artist. That's not grasping?

If Bowie, TVU, Wilson, and Spector are said to be some of the few notable progenitors of art pop, it's not WP:COATRACK to acknowledge that they were conscious of each other (Reed idolized the Beach Boys and Spector, and Cale even wrote a tribute song to Wilson). This is the same reason it makes (a little) sense to include trivia like what Eno and Bowie studied in art school even though nobody ever explains why those particular details are especially important to art pop. You can't have it one way and not the other.

Just to be clear, I believe Eno, Bowie, and definitely TVU deserve more coverage than Wilson. I don't understand why you simply don't give them it instead of removing perfectly valid sourced material. This is not a particularly big article. When it gets to about 70,000–100,000+ bytes is when anyone should be really concerned about leaving in more unimportant coatracky information. Like that huge footnote on post-punk, for starters.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 13:39, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

"I don't understand why you simply don't give them it instead of removing perfectly valid sourced material"—My point is precisely that there simply doesn't seem to be the same kind of descriptive writing on those figures in relation to the genre tag that you are finding on Wilson etc, despite the fact that they are nonetheless associated with it just as much in critical writing. What I'm suggesting is some basic discretion to account for that fact—there are plenty of sources calling plenty of these other artists "art pop," but the simple use of the tag doesn't exactly give us much ripe information for inclusion in the article of an encyclopedia, whereas the tomes you're getting Wilson quotes from are naturally more geared toward that kind of informative explication of labels etc. But I don't see why that necessitates the perpetual addition of those sources elucidating particularities of Wilson/BB and watching that section bulk up disproportionately in relation to others—it just seems like a fundamentally flawed approach. Some basic discretion is all I'm advocating. GentleCollapse16 (talk) 21:44, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

I get that. But it misses the point of this site: Wikipedia's articles are intended as intelligent summaries and reflections of current published debate within the relevant fields, an overview of the relevant literature.. What you're saying is "this particular area, no matter how pertinent and valuable, should be removed because it makes other, potentially more substantial areas appear less significant". That's a solution that has no regard for the long-term. It's highly likely that, in the not-too-distant future, enough material will be made available to expand the post-1960s sections. This is only a temporary issue. It'll resolve itself when the right sources are found. In the meantime, you could tag the article with {{missing information}}, but I don't think that's really necessary.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 23:25, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Reversions

User:Ilovetopaint all in good faith, some issues with your last reversions:

I'm a bit confused as to how a section discussing the Warhol/pop art-derived tendencies of glam—the visual stylization, the brandishing of low trash culture, the garish costumes/fashion, its emergence as "the most deliberately visual phenomena to emerge in rock music"—is somehow irrelevant in an essay about a pop music genre defined by its integration of non-musical art sensibilities (especially pop art and its integration of high/low culture). Several sources in the #characteristics section explicitly reference tendencies reflected in the section you confined to a note—the "irreverent plunder[ing]" of old styles directly reflects Frith's "ironic use of historical eras and genres," the fundamental bit about the "manipulation of signs" as well as Fisher's emphasis on fashion seems to be all over the reverted section. Plus, Wilson's engagement with "common or hackneyed material" and the section about Sgt. Pepper being "no mere pop album but a cultural icon, embracing ... pop art, garish fashion, drugs, instant mysticism and freedom from parental control" all reflect the same art-popist tendency to engage with the "low" elements of culture in a considered way. All this seems incredibly pertinent to me...

...especially if we're considering a vague section like this, which doesn't say anything about art pop at all, to be germane:

As the dominant format of pop music transitioned from singles to albums, many rock bands created works that aspired to make grand artistic statements, where art rock would flourish. [...] Before progressive rock (or art rock) became the most commercially successful British sound of the early 1970s, the psychedelic movement (in its attempt to bring the worlds of art and pop together) focused on the question of what it meant to be an "artist" in a mass medium, and some endeavored to use mass media forms without being used by them. For composer Frank Zappa, he targeted the issue of pop commercialism with the cover of the Mothers of Invention's 1968 album We're Only in It for the Money, which parodied the cover of Sgt. Pepper's.

^This section just discusses very vague and rhetorical issues of art culture vs popular culture, rather than elucidating how specifically art pop artists dealt with those issues. Zappa certainly isn't the only smart aleck to "target the issue of pop commercialization" (and no source says anything about "targeting commercialization" being an art pop tendency, on the contrary in fact) and I'm still not sure why he's included besides that—certainly there's no source calling him an art pop artist. Side note, I'm also quite confused by your willingness to lump in art rock (and its irrelevant synonym) in places it doesn't at all seem necessary, especially when several sources explicitly distinguish art pop from rock in this article (you seem to presume the reader will be conflating the two things, which obviously isn't necessarily the case .

Re: the Grimes bit you sidelined: I have no clue how (especially considering the #characteristics section's "central to particular purveyors of the style were notions of the self as a work of construction and artifice") placing her work in "a long tradition of fascination with the pop star as artwork in progress" isn't relevant but somehow the infinitely more vague "focused on the question of what it meant to be an "artist" in a mass medium" and "some endeavored to use mass media forms without being used by them" are. I don't know how to be more direct about this—the part you reverted seems completely relevant to a quality described the #characteristics section. Can you clarify your angle here?

Re: the Róisín Murphy bit—again, there seemed to be overt emphasis on both the avant-fashion element and the usage of varying styles and genres. You'd think a publication calling someone a "queen" of art-pop would warrant paying some attention to the actual characteristics of her work, no?

Again, you seem a bit unfairly stingy on elements that don't reflect what you seem to be interested in (and based on your editing on other articles, you obviously seem to be interested in prog/art rock) but there's plenty you've included that doesn't seem particularly specific or relevant to the page topic. I think the sidelined info has far more relevance to the issue than you're allowing. GentleCollapse16 (talk) 16:20, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

PS This page's history seems a bit dominated by you and me, I'm wondering if now would be a good time to call on some other editors to help hash out some of these issues and weigh in? GentleCollapse16 (talk) 16:31, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Namedrops

• Artists who are namedropped in this article should be namedropped ONLY if they were historically significant in engendering "art pop". Murphy and Grimes do not succeed at this, based on those sources.

This is so incredibly arbitrary, and mired in your POV opinion of who can be considered "historically significant". It also blatantly privileges older artists over newer ones simply because they have historical precedence—contemporary artists by definition could never be considered "historically significant in engendering art pop" based on your standards, as you've already located it as a narrow sensibility that had its origins in the 60s Wilson/Spector/Warhol axis. That certainly doesn't mean contemporary "art pop" artists aren't just as worthy of discussion on a page about art pop, especially considering there's absolutely nothing that restricts the genre to a particular time period.GentleCollapse16 (talk) 22:14, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

If you don't agree with this "arbitrary" restriction, then the article will inevitably become just a bloated list of somebody's personal recommendations rather than an encyclopedic summary of a popular genre's characteristics and development across time.

"It also blatantly privileges older artists over newer ones simply because they have historical precedence—contemporary artists by definition could never be considered "historically significant in engendering art pop" based on your standards"

Thing is: they're not my standards. Significance depends on timelessness. Look at WP:RECENTISM:

Recentism in one sense—established articles that are bloated with event-specific facts at the expense of longstanding content—is considered a Wikipedia fault.

What's "arbitrary" is listing a bunch of indie female singer-songwriters who have absolutely no notability beyond them being some journalist's preferred "art pop queen" of last year. If Murphy died tomorrow, what legacy would she have left 10 years from now? Was she very successful in art pop? Was she very acclaimed in art pop? Was she very influential to art pop? If none of this applies to her, why bother noting? She must be inconsequential to the subject, mattering only to her fans. If she had, for instance, a claim that she "had one of the largest art pop-devoted fanbases of the 2010s", that would at least be something to note in the article. But she doesn't even have that.

Wilson/Spector/Warhol are privileged in the article, because uh, they're part of the core foundation of the genre. They weren't just random guys who recorded one or two art pop songs 50 years ago, they developed it, and there is a ton of content devoted to how, why, and when. Diminishing their contributions just to make a passing mention of a singer-songwriter from 2012 seem more significant is the definition of WP:UNDUE.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 02:55, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Art rock / prog rock

• Art rock and art pop are terms that are closely related in history and etymology. This is a fact that is noted in several sources. Thus, readers should expect that "art rock/prog rock" is acknowledged in some capacity in this article.

The way you've borne this out in he article is simply POV. Find me some consensus of sources that suggests any discussion of "art pop" absolutely requires constant reference back to rock and we can talk, but there's obviously no need to link the two beyond the incredibly obvious fact of "art mixed with pop contexts in the 60s, and rock was one of those popular contexts." I thought we had agreed the standard for whether something was relevant info for this article wasn't just gonna be some vague "does it tak about how art and popular music mixes?" All the sources in the #characteristics section obviously define art pop as a distinct set of sensibilities that require no reference to whatever "art rock" may be. You seem to be operating on the assumption that this topic isn't valid enough to stand on its own. GentleCollapse16 (talk) 22:14, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

This is all "incredibly obvious" to you and I, but not to somebody who is totally unfamiliar with the subject.

Holden

Generally speaking, the term art-pop refers to any pop style that consciously aspires to the formal values of classical music and poetry. ... Many people would date the birth of art-pop to the mid-1960's when the Beatles first recorded with a string quartet and producers like Phil Spector and the Beach Boys' leader, Brian Wilson, brought a quasi-symphonic (or Wagnerian, as rock critics were fond of calling Mr. Spector's Wall of Sound productions) textures to pop recording.

After the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band established the so-called concept album as pop music's dominant format in 1967, rock bands of every stripe churned out albums (and even operas like the Who's Tommy) that linked songs into suites and aspired to make grand artistic statements. A bombastic, classically inflected post-Beatles art-rock flourished, especially in England, whence came the Moody Blues; Pink Floyd; Emerson, Lake and Palmer; Yes; Genesis; Electric Light Orchestra; Procol Harum, and other bands.

Buckley

Art-pop (inspired more or less directly by pop art) meant not individual expression (like art-rock) but the manipulation of signs.

Willis

From the early sixties … there was a counter-tradition in rock and roll that had much more in common with high art—in particular avant-garde art—than the ballyhooed art-rock synthesis [progressive rock]; it involved more or less consciously using the basic formal canons of rock and roll as material (much as pop artists used mass art in general) and refining, elaborating, playing off that material to produce … rock-and-roll art.

As you can plainly see, there is a connection to be noted. Art pop and art rock are compared to each other on more than one occasion (but just one would have been enough to merit acknowledgement).--Ilovetopaint (talk) 02:55, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Glam

• The information about glam does not have anything to do with art pop explicitly; the source never names art pop. There is nothing that says glam's preoccupation with style and gesture was unique in the realm of art pop. In contrast, post-punk does have a source that relates it to art pop, which enables its elaboration in the sentence that follows.

Well this is quite some ridiculous stretching, but in response, I'll use your own words against you: "Frith thought that it was pertinent for a book whose primary topic is "art pop", so it must be valid here too". If Frith clearly situates glam as an "art pop" style, doesn't that mean any source that elucidates it is basically providing us with pertinent information? The Art and Rock & Roll source is simply fleshing out something that's already set forth in Frith's work. GentleCollapse16 (talk) 22:14, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Does Frith actually suggest that glam is situated within art pop? Because I missed that.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 02:55, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Zappa

• The reason for the "vague art culture vs popular culture" paragraph is because it is noted in Frith's book, titled Art into Pop. Frith thought that it was pertinent for a book whose primary topic is "art pop", so it must be valid here too. It expounds upon the scene and era in which this music came into form. Zappa is given a namedrop because he's who Frith namedrops.

So again, by your logic, everything in Frith's book is relevant because the topic is vaguely "art and pop mixing" hmmmmmm. I think you have a lot of names to go back and insert, because Zappa is certainly not the most mentioned name in that book.GentleCollapse16 (talk) 22:14, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

I don't have the book. If you know what names those are, you're free to insert any that were especially notable.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 02:55, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

• Using your tangential inclusion logic, you could supplement Zappa's namedrop with the source that calls Freak Out! the first album acknowledged to have incorporated art into a pop context. Zappa can also be named an important figure in art pop for plundering Brill Building, Stravinsky, and doo-wop. His concerts were also very theatrical. I would NOT put that information in, however, unless it was noted as something unique among "art pop" artists of the time.

The glam artists have elsewhere been identified as art pop artists. So a discussion of their art-derived methods seems completely pertinent. No one is calling Zappa a art pop artist, so I don't see any reason to go any further with him besides your preferential version of history.GentleCollapse16 (talk) 22:14, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

You're right about that. Zappa doesn't really need to be mentioned. You can put him in a footnote if you really wanted to. Or you could remove him totally from the article — but then the reader would be robbed of a specific example of an artist who challenged mass media.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 02:55, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

"doesn't say anything about art pop at all"

• The cited source does. That is what establishes its relevance.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 19:25, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Again, according to this logic, if the source mentions anything, it's germane. Not only does Frith mention glam as an art-sensibility drenched style, but the Art and Rock & Roll source is also ostensibly about the inclusion of art into pop cultural contexts, and elucidates that point. Why is the glam stuff not relevant, honestly? GentleCollapse16 (talk) 22:14, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

It's germane according to... you. That is the problem. I don't think the glam stuff is completely irrelevant. It's just that nobody discusses it in reference to art pop, so it seems more like you're inflating its importance (WP:UNDUE). I don't have any reason to believe that glam rock was tied to so-called art pop any more than prog rock was. But for some reason, you are really against mentioning prog, because its supposedly "too obvious" to merit an acknowledgement. I don't get it..--Ilovetopaint (talk) 02:55, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

My inclusion logic

Everything in this article that does not have anything explicitly to do with "art pop" should only exist in the body if there is some important link between the subject and art pop established elsewhere (either in the body or the source itself). Failing that, if the association is only vague and tangential but still slightly relevant, then it would be better under a footnote. I'll visualize examples for you.

Every space before a point denotes a claim that does not contribute to the overall history and development of "art pop". It is only notable with regards to the preceding statement, building upon what it establishes

• The Beatles originated art pop.
  • The Beatles recorded "Strawberry Fields", an art pop song. (the significance is not apparent) (WP:UNDUE)

Here's how we make this work.

• The Beatles originated art pop.
• The Beatles recorded several songs in 1967 that advanced the development of art pop.
  • "Strawberry Fields" was an acclaimed art pop single that had high chart success. Its music excludes the mass audience, a feature of the style.
    • (Footnote) An author has noted that other Beatles songs, such as "A Day in the Life", also exclude the mass audience.
• Art pop was directly inspired by pop art.
• Sgt. Pepper was the most commercially successful art pop album of its time.
  • Sgt. Pepper was massively iconic as it embraced pop art.

Here is the same logic applied to the "glam" content:

• Art pop is concerned with style and gesture.
  • Glam is concerned with style and contains many visual aspects. (and? so do countless other genres like visual-kei) (WP:COATRACK)
    • Roxy Music and Bowie were glam artists. (so what?) (WP:UNDUE)

These claims don't really build on each other.

You're missing the part where Frith explicitly names glam as an primary example of pop's inclusion of the "arts". Fisher's article also makes a direct link between the two—he uses the terms just about interchangeably, actually. Glam has already been acknowledged as existing within the "Art pop" tradition, if for no other reason because of your own argument: Frith mentions it explicitly and prominently in his book about art pop.GentleCollapse16 (talk) 22:52, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

They're just coatrack observations derived from nowhere. You could write this and it would be just as valid to the article:

• Art pop is the elevation of pop into high art (per Holden).
  • Progressive rock elevates its music to high art.
    • King Crimson and Pink Floyd were progressive artists.

HOWEVER, this would be OK:

• Art pop is the elevation of pop into high art.
  • Progressive rock elevates its music to high art, similar to art pop.
    • ing Crimson and Pink Floyd were progressive artists who followed in the wake of art pop.

This logic makes no sense to me—the second and third points literally tell us nothing new about art pop, don't expand it, don't give us any necessary or informational context to understand the style. So what if it has characteristics that happen to be shared by another style? Why do we need to suddenly be educated on not only that other style, but also artists from this other style? Especially considering the only point of similarly is something we already know (art pop attempts to xyz), mentioning prog doesn't give us any relevant context, just some trivia. It's like inserting a see also tab in the middle of the article, just because you think its relation is significant. That's POV. It's like writing an article about cars, and suddenly interrupting the article to say "also, another thing people use to travel is airplanes. One example of an airplane is a Boeing 747, which was first made in the year..." So what—I don't care, I'm reading about cars. Maybe you're an airplane aficionado, and there are basic similarities, but why is that remotely relevant? GentleCollapse16 (talk) 22:47, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

This wasn't the best example, but my main point was that, if prog rock is repeatedly and explicitly related to art pop within sources, then it does deserve mention in the article.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 02:55, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Check out how the article handles "post-punk"

• Art pop developed from artists like Roxy Music and Bowie, who drew from their art school studies.
• Many post-punk artists are situated in art pop traditions.
  • Post-punk drew from Roxy Music, Bowie, and art school studies.
    • (Footnote) Post-punk was specifically influenced by such-and-such artists.

This is how we potentially resolve the glam issue:

• Art pop is concerned with style and gesture.
• Many glam artists, such as Roxy Music and Bowie, are situated in art pop traditions.
  • Glam is concerned with style and gesture.

again, glam is prominently discussed in Frith's book about art pop, its art elements are discussed in the Art and Rock in ways that explicitly (I mean, PAINFULLY so) dovetail the claims of various other sources in the article regarding the characteristics of art pop, and it's used interchangeably with art pop by Fisher, which is more than your Zappa inclusion has going for it.

• • Some glam artists were heavily influenced by Spector, an originator of art pop.

Is this easier to understand?--Ilovetopaint (talk) 19:25, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Listen, I know you're trying to spin this to justify putting in the stuff you like, and you know that I know that, so let's stop pretending this is about 'editing logic.' I'm willing to let you add your preferences so long as they're not only obscurely relevant and you don't in turn revert every pertinent addition I make, additions which you KNOW are relevant and interesting pieces of clarification on the style and its sensibilities but which you can also crop out because they don't necessarily use the exact word "art pop" forty times.. Balance this out, or we are gonna need some outside feedback in here (we do anyway, but). GentleCollapse16 (talk) 22:14, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Haha. They need to use the word art pop or else this article will become an incoherent mess of WP:SYNTH, WP:COATRACK, and WP:FORUM. People who come to this article expect to read about Art pop (genre), not Appropriation of mass culture in music. If you want that article, go ahead and make it. Or better yet, why not publish your own paper about it?

I don't see where glam was said to be situated in art pop tradition. If Frith did write that, then it absolutely was my mistake to put that info in a footnote. I took quite a lot of time in demonstrating how a genre article should be edited in accordance with how Wikipedia works, and for you to keep saying that I'm doing damage control on my preferences is... lol.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 02:55, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

To borrow your own argument:

So what if it has characteristics that happen to be shared by another style? Why do we need to suddenly be educated on not only that other style, but also artists from this other style? Especially considering the only point of similarly is something we already know (art pop attempts to xyz), mentioning [glam] doesn't give us any relevant context, just some trivia.

The difference between glam and art rock, as I've already established, is that art pop has been compared to art rock. Nobody has related art pop to glam. In fact, when I tried looking at the Frith source, it seems like the real "art pop" sectors of glam were limited to the genre's outliers (the Bowie/Eno circle of folks).--Ilovetopaint (talk) 04:16, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

For what it's worth, you've worn me down and I've gotten incredibly bored arguing this, which i suppose was the intent. GentleCollapse16 (talk) 23:02, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

I concede with the statement about "the most deliberately visual phenomena" after looking into how much glam is discussed in Art Into Pop.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 12:08, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Hey, good work on the page of late, think it's been rounded out quite a lot better.GentleCollapse16 (talk) 17:13, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

I got ahold of an epub of Frith's book; you can probably extract more from it than I could.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 19:23, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

cool thanks, cheersGentleCollapse16 (talk) 22:12, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

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Art Into Pop

There are a few pages of Art Into Pop that should be included in the article, but I'm having a difficult time picturing how. Here are the relevant passages (most interesting details are bolded):

pp. 113–114

The Velvet Underground’s first impact was in the USA itself. They gave shape to a recognizable art school music scene (and to list American art school rockers is to describe a narrower and more distinctive pop sensibility than in Britain’s colleges). ... But the most significant art/pop community came together in the Mercer Arts Center in New York, where experimental artists (like Laurie Anderson) met a new generation of pop-oriented art school graduates (like Chris Stein of Blondie and Alan Vega of Suicide). The importance of the Mercer lay in the way it accounted for rock ’n’ rollers’ and avant-gardists’ mutual interests. The Center was, in David Johansen’s words, ‘ten rooms in a hotel on Broadway and Mercer. There was an experimental video room, a cabaret room, a theatrical room. The experimental place, the Kitchen, started there. We (The New York Dolls) started on Tuesdays in the Oscar Wilde Room.

From the start, in terms of both its combination of activities and its emphasis on a particular sort of artificial ‘outrage’ (the New York Dolls’ semi-drag glam costume was a crucial part of their act), the Mercer encouraged continuation of the kinds of collaboration between high and low art staged in the 1960s in the Factory. As Jerry Harrison (now of the Talking Heads) puts it, ‘it started with the Velvet Underground and all of the things that were identified with Andy Warhol.’ ... Even Iggy Pop, mid-Western, uncultivated trailer-camp boy, became an ‘arty’ rock musician, thanks to his friendship with Anne Wehrer, the dynamo at the heart of the Ann Arbor experimental theatre/music/film/Factory scene. In Andy Warhol’s own words,

Anne Wehrer introduced me to Iggy Pop at a party at her house. It was after a performance of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 1966. He was just a kid in a bands, still in high school. He was Jim Osterberg then. I thought he was cute. That’s when he first met Nico and John Cale. It was the beginning of all that… his affair with Nico, a record produced by John Cale, a movie by François deMenile.

The effect of the Velvet Undergound on a rock ’n’ roll musician like Iggy was to give him a self-consciousness about what he was doing. His own personality became an art object, his every performance an art work (hence his impact on David Bowie, the role of the Stooges as the group linking 1960s hard rock bands to 1970s punk), and the musicians who drifted into the Mercer Arts Center in the early 1970s were all, in one way or another, similarly self-conscious. Even the Ramones were, in this setting, a wonderfully clever signification of stupidity, the most artificial sign yet of rock and roll truth.

Extending the lead

Here is every broad claim made in the "History" section. It can be used for the purpose of summarizing.

* ... art pop's origins [is in] the mid 1960s, when producers ... and musicians began incorporating pseudo-symphonic textures to their pop recordings.

• The boundaries between art and pop music ... increasingly blurred throughout the second half of the 20th century.
• In the 1960s, pop musicians ... began to take inspiration from their previous art school studies.
• In North America, art pop was influenced by Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation, and became more literary through folk music's singer-songwriter movement
• Another chief influence on the development of art pop was the Pop art movement.
• ... art pop music would continue to exist subsequent to the Beatles, but without ever achieving their popular success.
• The effect of the Velvet Underground gave rock musicians ... a self-consciousness about their work.
• In the 1970s, a similarly self-conscious art/pop community ... began to coalesce in the Mercer Arts Center in New York. The school encouraged the continuation of the kinds of collaboration between high and low art once exemplified by the Factory
• "the golden age of adroit, intelligent art-pop, to the days when [bands] were mixing and matching from different genres and eras, well before the term 'postmodern' existed in the pop realm."
• subsequent artists ... involved the rejection of conventional rock instrumentation and structure in favor of dance styles and the synthesizer.
• "The last 30 years in art history are in large part a story of collaborative enterprises, of collapsed boundaries between high art and low, and of the end of divisions between media"
• Spin noted a "new art-pop era" in contemporary music ... in which musicians draw on visual art as a signifier of wealth and extravagance as well as creative exploration

--Ilovetopaint (talk) 09:49, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

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GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Art pop/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Retrohead (talk · contribs) 09:38, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for the wait, I'm beginning the review in the next couple of days.--Retrohead (talk) 09:38, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Lead and characteristics

• There's a practice to avoid using references in the lead per MOS:LEAD because the lead shouldn't contain exclusive information not present in the article's body. Same for the infobox.
• The prose in the lead reads fine, and for the refs, you might delink number 39 (Arizona Central).
• Is "manipulation of signs" the right term here? Is it written literally or as a metaphor for excessive use of signs?

It is literal.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 11:39, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

• Pop art should be in small letters at the end of the first paragraph.

History

• Can you describe Simon Frith as "music critic/scholar Simon Frith" in the prose from the 'Backround'?
• The term Pop art movement shouldn't be with capital "P" unless it is in the beginning of a sentence.
• Holden traces art pop's origins to the mid 1960s
• In a move that was indicated by the Beatles. Is there a more proper word like originated or something else?
• This section is written really well and was an interesting read, nothing else to correct here.

Images and audio

• All images are properly licensed.
• Audio files are according to WP:SAMPLE, which means adjusted audio quality and length.

 Done I did not bother removing refs from lead or infobox because the main purpose of those cites is to discourage SYNTH and OR, lest the infobox be constantly inundated with unsourced genres. --Ilovetopaint (talk) 11:39, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Not a problem, I see you have refs in other good articles you've written so far, so it's not something big. It was a pleasure to read the article plus I've learned to appreciate more artists such as Bowie and Lou Reed. It's a pass.--Retrohead (talk) 17:30, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Remaining audio samples

I question using samples of "Good Vibrations" and "Strawberry Fields Forever". Are they necessary to exemplify what the music/genre was in the 1960s? Art pop has been subjective at best, especially the 1960s one. --George Ho (talk) 05:18, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Art Pop - Progressive Pop

I noticed on the progressive rock page that under “other names” is listed the sub genre of art rock.

I believe if this parallel is going to be made then it would only make sense on the art pop / progressive pop wiki pages to also add a section for “other names” and include both hyperlinks.

How do the wiki moderators of these pages feel about this?

Thank you for your time. Jarrett Gardner (talk) 11:36, 26 September 2023 (UTC)