Though, as with most things, it is the matter of some debate, many popular music critics acknowledge that The Beatles seminal 1967 record "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" marks the point at which rock music began to be taken seriously — as art. That said, precisely how highly we regard the album is of less consequence than the influence it has had, or, at least, been seen to have had on how we think about this particular brand of entertainment.
Prior to this, despite - or perhaps because of - remarkable sales of all types (especially in comparison to today's numbers), pop music was purely diversionary and ephemeral. But thereafter, a rich field of criticism has grown up to separate the wheat from the chaff in this corner of mass culture.
The battle probably has not been universally won, there continues to exist a certain attitude towards popular music that doesn't take it as seriously as, say, jazz or classical, but criticism stands in very different stead today than it did in the early sixties.
Indeed, the most interesting debates these days about musical criticism come from within the community rather than from the outside. There is very little noise to be heard from classical aficionados seeking to disparage popular musical generally and, if anything, the cacophony of undeveloped criticism blows in the other direction. However, there is plenty of dissent to be heard among popular music critics when it comes to the issue of genre.
Terminologically speaking, popular music has seen a dizzying diversification and multiplication of genres and sub-genres in recent years, but there remains perhaps one big debate: rock versus hip-hop.
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" also, more loosely, marks the end of The Beatles' career as a live act. Moreover, it stands as an early testament to the powers of studio recording to produce arrangements of sounds which simply could not be reproduced on stage. Though the chasm that opened between studio and stage with the release of this record has decreased significantly, there is still a particular attachment to seeing music performed live that most, if not all, music fans share.
This summer, we are in the midst of festival season where tens of thousands of devotees make pilgrimage to remote locations to see their artists of choice in person.
Britain's most famous of these, the Glastonbury Festival held in the south-west of England, has just taken place and was the scene of the most recent flare-up in the rock/hip-hop conversation. Glastonbury holds a special place in the hearts of many rock music fans because it represents, in a certain sense, and certainly coincides with the rebirth of rock music in nineties Britain after the long winter of the eighties.
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