29/01/10 Lecture: Can popular music ever really be unplugged?

"Unplugged" is a word tossed around with relative frequency in this day and age of heavily produced, enhanced and distorted popular music. Normally used to describe more stripped down, intimate performances, "unplugged" is actually a highly inaccurate term. From microphones, to amplifiers, to PA systems; each and every one of these devices requires power of some kind, and certainly a connection which involves some form of "plugging". The only truly "unplugged" music nowadays takes place in bedrooms, and around campfires, and occasionally in hippy tents. But if that music is ever recorded, or distributed to increase its popularity, then it will subsequently be stripped of its "unplugged" status. So, if you switch the initial question around, and ask if truly "unplugged" music can ever be considered popular, then we're faced with another debate entirely. And one that definitely requires more than one-hundred and fifty words to answer.

22/01/10 Lecture: What is "Popular Music"?

So, I must admit, I'm one of those people who's of the elitist view that "popular music" almost exclusively covers over-produced, fully commercialised artists such as Britney Spears, and the Vengaboys, and other such travesties to the latter portion of the phrase people bestow upon it, ("Music," that is.) However, upon being exposed to various quotes from multiple sources - and after a brief delve into the etymological history of the world "popular" - I have come to realise that it actually serves as a blanket term for almost any and all music. One definition considers "popular music" to be anything created "by the people", while another speculates that it's any piece of music ever played with an instrument, which is a shame for a'capella groups, but I don't think they really needed anybody to tell them that they're not popular... All in all, there's no true definition; it's everything.