Rock/Pop

Just as a Supreme Court justice famously declared that he couldn't define pornography but he knew it when he saw it, there's something silly about trying to describe rock. A basic beat, a little electricity, a hint of sexual abandon, and generous helpings of youth and rebellion have always been the essential ingredients, though fashion and circumstance tend to emphasize different parts of the recipe (and the youthful rebellion is getting harder to spot as wrinkled pioneers the Rolling Stones and the Who plod on). In rock's nascent days, "pop artist" was shorthand for commercially successful, mop-topped musicians. As rock became more ambitious, pop came to denote anything short and sugarcoated with bright melodies and infectious hooks.