Analysis of Music Genres

Pop Music

Pop is an abbreviation of the word 'popular', the reason for this is that it has popular appeal to a wide range audience.

Pop music has many tropes such as:

• Alot of dancing
• Songs about romance
• Bright
• Fashionable
• Smiling

These are tropes which have become so popular and common they are now considered conventions of the pop genre. Pop music is very popular amoungst teenagers, which is good for the industry as teens have part time jobs or get given pocket money and so therefore they are responsible for a large amunt of the pop music income.The memes of pop is the fashion side of at for example the dramatic outfits and music vieos that fit the lyrics of the song itself.

As you can see this image follows the convention as it is colourful and the flowers represent love and romance.

Rock Music

Rock music developed during the 1960's in the United Kingdom and United States. The roots of Rock music is mostly rhythm and blues an country music.
This genre has a very wide range of categories that fall under this genre such as british rock and punk-rock.

The tropes of Rock:

• Playing guitar
• Usually male artists
• Black and white clothes
• Casual clothes
• Fast paced
• Leather Jackets
• Rebellion

The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are some of the bands that can pose a conventions for the Rock genre. Rock is classed as a very theatrical and artistic genre which can express through the heavy use of guitars and drums.

This Album cover is a good example of Rock music, cold and 'dull' colours have been used to give a casual look to it, the image has a lot of instruments such as guitars and a drum kit. The clothes of the band members also support the conventions of rock ad roll as they are very casual and the man at the front of the image is wearing a leather jacket which is heavily associated with 'Rock',

Heavy Metal Music

Heavy metal developed in the late 1960's mostly in the midlands of the U.K and America. Heavy metal music is mostly associated with masculinity and machismo,


The tropes of Heavy Metal:

• Loud
• Guitars
• Drums
• Vigorous vocals
• Dressed in black (with chains, studs, skulls, leather, crosses)
• Long hair
• Makeup
• Anger

These tropes are now considered the conventions of heavy metal music and what we expect to see when it comes to this genre. This genre is also associated with some stereotypes such as Gothic or emo. The outfits for this genre is very dramatic but does not usually use bright colours, this fashion trope has also inspired the parts of stereotypes mostly Gothic.

The Band Kiss is a very good example of heavy metal as you can see through the appearance that they are expressing masculinity through the costumes as it looks quite scary and strong. Apart from one of the band members which has makeup to look like a cat, however he is still dressed in the leather so masculinity is still shown. The hand gestures are also relevant as the person at the front is making the classic signal associated with heavy metal, he is very iconic for the genre heavy metal as his make-up is a symbol for Satan, and suits very well with the tropes of heavy metal.