This is a list of the commercially relevant genres in modern popular music. Styles that are not contemporary or commercially marketed in substantial numbers have been excluded, in accordance with the following criteria:
- Art music: classical music and opera. However Art Music, with the exception of opera, is not usually classified as popular music but as Western Art Music instead.
- Music written for the score of a play, musicals, operetta, zarzuela, film or similar: Filmi, incidental music, video game music, music hall songs and showtunes.
- Ballroom music: tango, pasodoble, cha cha cha and others.
- Religious music: gospel, Gregorian chant, spirituals, hymns and the like.
- Military music, marches, national anthems and related compositions.
- Regional and national musics with no significant commercial impact abroad, except when a version of an international genre: Traditional music, folk, oral traditions, sea shanties, work songs, nursery rhymes, Arabesque, Chalga, Flamenco and indigenous music.
Applicable styles are classified in this list using Allmusic genre categorisation.
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, popular and/or music:
“I made a list of things I have
to remember and a list
of things I want to forget,
but I see they are the same list.”
—Linda Pastan (b. 1932)
“I made a list of things I have
to remember and a list
of things I want to forget,
but I see they are the same list.”
—Linda Pastan (b. 1932)
“Much of the ill-tempered railing against women that has characterized the popular writing of the last two years is a half-hearted attempt to find a way back to a more balanced relationship between our biological selves and the world we have built. So women are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for not wanting to eat their cake and have it too.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)
“Good music is very close to primitive language.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)