POPULAR MUSIC

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does popular music mean? 

• POPULAR MUSIC (noun)
  The noun POPULAR MUSIC has 1 sense:

1. any genre of music having wide appeal (but usually only for a short time)

  Familiarity information: POPULAR MUSIC used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• POPULAR MUSIC (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Any genre of music having wide appeal (but usually only for a short time)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

popular music; popular music genre

Hypernyms ("popular music" is a kind of...):

genre; music genre; musical genre; musical style (an expressive style of music)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "popular music"):

disco; disco music (popular dance music (especially in the late 1970s); melodic with a regular bass beat; intended mainly for dancing at discotheques)

macumba (popular dance music of Brazil; derived from the practices of the macumba religious cult)

pop; pop music (music of general appeal to teenagers; a bland watered-down version of rock'n'roll with more rhythm and harmony and an emphasis on romantic love)

ethnic music; folk; folk music (the traditional and typically anonymous music that is an expression of the life of people in a community)

ballroom music; dance music; danceroom music (a genre of popular music composed for ballroom dancing)

jazz (a genre of popular music that originated in New Orleans around 1900 and developed through increasingly complex styles)

hip-hop; rap; rap music (genre of African-American music of the 1980s and 1990s in which rhyming lyrics are chanted to a musical accompaniment; several forms of rap have emerged)

R and B; rhythm and blues (a combination of blues and jazz that was developed in the United States by Black musicians; an important precursor of rock 'n' roll)

rockabilly (a fusion of black music and country music that was popular in the 1950s; sometimes described as blues with a country beat)

rock; rock'n'roll; rock-and-roll; rock 'n' roll; rock and roll; rock music (a genre of popular music originating in the 1950s; a blend of black rhythm-and-blues with white country-and-western)

reggae (popular music originating in the West Indies; repetitive bass riffs and regular chords played on the off beat by a guitar)

skiffle (a style of popular music in the 1950s; based on American folk music and played on guitars and improvised percussion instruments)