Miranda Raffo

The Development of Pop Music in the 60s

Although it’s difficult to decipher when the “reign” of pop music truly began, most will agree pop music was
in plenary development throughout the 1960s. Several genres and styles of both music and artists that were
before unheard of were starting to feed into the growing “pop” category: skiffle, beat music, British Invasion,
British blues boom and psychedelia in the UK; and all sorts of variations of rock, R&B and Motown, and
country music in the US.

Starting in the UK, skiffle music was one of the early inspirations of The Beatles. The term “skiffle”
originated in the US in the first half of the 20th century but became popular in the UK in the 1950s. It was a
type of folk music with a jazz and blues influence which often consisted of instruments made out of
household objects, such as the washboard, washtub bass, cigar-box fiddle and comb-and-paper kazoos, as
well as more conventional instruments such as the acoustic guitar and banjo. The revival of this genre in the
UK was propelled mainly by Scottish skiffle singer and songwriter Lonnie Donegan, as well as other bands
such as The Quarrymen and The Gin Mill Skiffle Group. Although this style of music became popular in the
1950s, it falls into the topic of 60s music because The Quarrymen was formed by John Lennon, and in 1957,
Paul McCartney went to see one of their shows; this is how Lennon and McCartney met and joined forces to
form The Beatles by 1960. But skiffle music was also one of the reasons why beat music came to be.

Beat music is a fusion of rock and roll, doo-wop, skiffle and R&B. It was a genre that provided the model for
many important developments in pop and rock music, including the format of the rock group around lead,
rhythm and bass guitars with drums. Most groups that started to play beat music began to emerge out of the
declining skiffle scene, in major UK urban centres such as Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London.
Examples of these groups include Gerry & The Pacemakers, the Searches, and The Beatles. However, beat
music started to die out by 1967, as most of the groups that had not already disbanded moved into different
forms of rock and pop music, like The Beatles.

The rebellious tone and image of US rock and roll and blues musicians became popular with British youth in
the late 1950s, and emerging from the skiffle craze came the start of British singles and the new British
rock/pop genre. By the end of 1962, the British rock scene had started with beat groups like The Beatles,
drawing on a wide range of American influences including soul music, rhythm and blues and surf music.
Many of these British bands started to become increasingly popular in the US and this became a cultural
phenomenon known as the “British Invasion”. Pop and rock groups such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones
and The Kinks were at the forefront of this invasion, and they often dominated the charts at home in the UK
as well.

The Beatles themselves were a cultural phenomenon, most commonly known as “Beatlemania”. British rock
broke through to mainstream popularity in the US in January 1964 with the success of The Beatles: “I Want
To Hold Your Hand” was the band’s first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, starting the British
Invasion of the American music charts. Their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9th
1964 is seen as a milestone in American pop culture; the broadcast drew an estimated 73 million viewers,
which was a record at the time for an American TV programme. The Beatles went on to become the biggest
selling rock band of all time: rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock and roll, and later experimenting with
genres that ranged from rock to pop ballads to psychedelia as well as many more. They were innovative in
that they included strings in pop music and used unconventional recording techniques such as sampling,
artificial double tracking and multitrack recording.

Other genres in the UK included the British blues boom and psychedelia: in parallel with beat music (late
1950s—early 1960s), a British blues scene was developing by recreating the sounds of American R&B. It
developed a distinctive style dominated by electric guitar. A lot of influential and popular bands — The
Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin — moved through blues rock to different forms
of rock music and as a result British blues helped to form many sub-genres including psychedelic rock.
British psychedelia on the other hand emerged during the mid-60s and attempted to replicate and enhance the
experiences of hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD; the genre included non-Western features such as Indian
music’s sitars, for example. British artists such as the afore-mentioned Beatles, The Who and Pink Floyd
produced many psychedelic tracks during the 60s.
 Miranda Raffo
Meanwhile in America, the Civil Rights Movement was starting to take place: Martin Luther King and
Stokely Carmichael started peaceful protests to promote white-black equality, followed by other not so
peaceful protesters; out of this came a mainstream black music explosion. The Detroit-based Motown label,
for example, was developing as a pop-influenced version of soul music. The label begins a long run of No. 1
US hit singles in 1961 with “Please Mr. Postman” by the Marvelettes. Notable Motown acts included The
Supremes, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye and the Jackson Five. Aretha Franklin left Columbia Records in
1966 to join Atlantic records and her 1967 recordings such as "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)”
and “Respect” were among the soul genre’s most commercially successful productions.

The Monkees were an interesting phenomenon: they were a made for TV band inspired by The Beatles and
British Invasion, who ironically — despite being branded as “wannabe Beatles” — became one of the most
successful bands of the 1960s, with hits such as “I’m a Believer”.

There were also several new branches of rock that were developed. In the early 60s, Elvis continued to score
hits, but soon other types of popular rock emerged such as folk rock: propelled by singer-songwriters such as
Bob Dylan, folk rock utilised traditional music (folk) as well as electric instruments (rock), and like most
folk songs in the 60s American folk revival, has lyrics pertaining to the civil rights movement.

Psychedelic rock also began in the folk scene, as groups such as the Byrds moved from folk to folk rock,
from 1965 onwards. Surf rock was popular in the early 60s: nearly entirely instrumental music with heavy
use of reverb on electric guitars, with the Beach Boys primarily popularising the genre in the mid-60s.
Garage rock was a raw form of rock music that was popular in the mid-60s, with the lyrics revolving around
high school trauma.

Prog rock originated in the late 60s: rock songs with more poetic lyrics, new sounds made from
technological advancements, generally more artistic features and that were made to be listened to, not danced
to. The traditional “song” structure — which was likely an evolution of folk and blues origins and has been
used by countless artists to this day — wasn’t really utilised by prog rock artists. Bands such as Queen, Pink
Floyd and The Who are good examples of this.