Traditional pop

Traditional pop or Classic pop music denotes, in general, Western (and particularly American) popular music that either wholly predates the eruption of rock and roll in the mid-1950s, or to any popular

Traditional pop or Classic pop music denotes, in general, Western (and particularly American) popular music that either wholly predates the eruption of rock and roll in the mid-1950s, or to any popular music which exists concurrently to rock and roll but originated in a time before the appearance of rock and roll, and its offshoots, as the dominant commercial music of the United States and Western culture. The terms pop standards or (where relevant) American standards are used to denote the most popular and enduring songs from this style of music.

Classic pop embraces the song output of the Broadway and Hollywood show tune writers from approximately World War I to the 1950s, such as Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rogers, Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Johnny Mercer, Dorothy Fields, Hoagy Carmichael, Cole Porter and a host of others. These songwriters and composers are usually considered part of the canon known as the "Great American Songbook". The big band era further developed the genre of "pop standards". Bandleaders like Tommy Dorsey, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, and Count Basie continued to innovate. Big band singers, who had previously been considered instrumentalists and were rarely singled out, now became huge stars, like Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dinah Shore.