Pop
Pop or POP may refer to:Arts and entertainment
Music
Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom, characterized by catchy melodies, short songs, and broad commercial appeal.[1] It emerged from the rock and roll era, blending elements of rhythm and blues, country, and teen-oriented dance music to create accessible, radio-friendly tracks aimed at mass audiences.[2] Early pioneers like Elvis Presley helped define the genre through hits such as "Heartbreak Hotel" (1956), which combined energetic performances with simple, relatable lyrics about love and youth culture.[3] By the 1980s, pop music achieved global dominance, fueled by advancements in music videos, synthesizers, and MTV's influence, with Michael Jackson emerging as its central figure. Jackson's album Thriller (1982) sold over 70 million copies worldwide, becoming the best-selling album of all time and setting standards for production, choreography, and crossover appeal that shaped subsequent pop eras.[4] The decade saw pop evolve into a multimedia phenomenon, incorporating electronic sounds and diverse influences while maintaining its focus on hooks and emotional storytelling. Notable pop artists and bands have continually redefined the genre, from Elvis Presley's rock-infused origins to modern icons like Madonna, whose provocative style and albums such as Like a Virgin (1984) challenged norms and boosted female empowerment in pop.[5] Britney Spears rose in the late 1990s with teen pop anthems like "...Baby One More Time" (1998), selling over 150 million records and embodying Y2K-era sensuality and performance.[5] Contemporary artist Taylor Swift transitioned fully to pop with her 2014 album 1989, which won Album of the Year at the Grammys and featured hits like "Shake It Off"; by 2025, she had released The Life of a Showgirl, her 15th No. 1 album on the Billboard 200, and was named IFPI's Global Recording Artist of the Year for the fifth time, underscoring her enduring impact with over 200 million records sold.[6][7] Specific albums titled Pop include U2's ninth studio release (1997), produced by Flood, Howie B, and Steve Osborne, which experimented with electronica and alternative rock elements on tracks like "Discothèque," debuting at No. 1 in multiple countries despite mixed reviews.[8] Songs titled "Pop" have also marked the genre, such as *NSYNC's 2001 single from their album Celebrity, co-written by Justin Timberlake and Wade Robson, which peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 and celebrated pop's vitality amid shifting musical trends.[9] Another example is M's "Pop Muzik" (1979) by Robin Scott, a synth-pop track from the album New York • London • Paris • Munich that topped the Billboard Hot 100 for one week and pioneered electronic dance influences in mainstream pop.[10] Periodicals dedicated to pop music include Classic Pop magazine, launched in 2012, which focuses on retrospectives of 1970s–1990s pop icons through interviews, features, and album analyses.[11] Similarly, Retro Pop provides coverage of classic and contemporary pop releases, exclusives, and news on artists from the past four decades.[12]Film, television, and literature
In television, "Pop" refers to several channels and series centered on entertainment and pop culture. The British and Irish free-to-air channel Pop, originally launched as Toons&Tunes on October 1, 2002, by Chart Show Channels Media Group and rebranded to Pop on May 29, 2003, targets children aged 4 to 10 with a mix of animated series, live-action shows, and music videos.[13] Owned by Sony Pictures Television since 2014, the channel emphasizes family-friendly content, including premieres of programs like Horrid Henry and The ZhuZhus, and has expanded into digital platforms such as the Pop Player app for on-demand viewing.[14] In the United States, Pop TV, launched on January 14, 2015, by CBS Corporation (now Paramount Global), is a cable network dedicated to pop culture, airing scripted comedies and dramas such as Schitt's Creek and One Day at a Time, alongside acquired series like Law & Order.[15] Films titled or featuring "Pop" often explore personal relationships, cultural icons, or niche genres. Pop and Me (1999), a documentary directed by Chris Roe, chronicles the director's global journey with his father, Richard Roe, to celebrate the latter's 50th birthday, featuring interviews with fathers and sons worldwide to examine familial bonds amid divorce and reconciliation; the film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and received acclaim for its intimate storytelling.[16] Similarly, American Pop (1981), an adult animated drama directed by Ralph Bakshi, spans four generations of a Russian Jewish immigrant family in America, intertwining their lives with the evolution of popular music from vaudeville to rock; produced with a budget of $5 million, it features original songs and voice work by Ron Thompson, marking a significant entry in Bakshi's oeuvre of blending animation with social commentary. More recent shorts like Pop (2020), directed by David M. Wulf, depict a young boy's exploration of identity through his relationship with an ex-convict grandfather, highlighting themes of redemption and generational connection. In literature, "Pop" titles encompass biographies, novels, and illustrated works that delve into art, family, and youth experiences. Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol (2009), co-authored by Tony Scherman and David Dalton and published by HarperCollins, offers a reassessment of the artist's life and work, drawing on new interviews to demystify Warhol's persona and his pivotal role in the Pop Art movement, with over 500 pages examining his rise from commercial illustrator to cultural icon. Gordon Korman's young adult novel Pop (2009), released by Scholastic's Balzer + Bray imprint, follows high school freshman Marcus Jordan as he navigates football, friendship, and the consequences of concussions in a story inspired by real concerns over sports injuries, blending humor and drama to appeal to teen readers.[18] Robert Gipe's Pop: An Illustrated Novel (2021), published by Ohio University Press as the final installment in the Canard County trilogy, uses drawings and narrative to portray a Kentucky community's struggles with trauma, politics, and resilience in the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. election.[19] Periodicals like POP magazine, a British fashion and culture publication launched in 2000 by the House of Edge, occasionally nods to 1980s pop aesthetics in its coverage of contemporary design and music influences, though it postdates the decade's heyday of teen pop zines.[20]Games, toys, and periodicals
In the realm of video games, one notable title is Toy Pop, a multidirectional shooter arcade game developed and released by Namco in 1986.[21] Players control two characters, Pino and Acha, who emerge from a toy box to navigate maze-like levels, battling enemies with yo-yos and collecting food items while opening jars and boxes to progress; the objective culminates in rescuing a trapped friend on the final stage.[22] The game supports two-player cooperative play and was later re-released in compilations such as Namco Museum Vol. 3. A prominent example of "Pop"-branded toys and games is the board game Trouble, first introduced in 1965 by Kohner Brothers Inc. as a simple roll-and-move race for 2-4 players, where competitors advance plastic pegs around a circular track using the innovative Pop-O-Matic die roller—a clear plastic dome enclosing a die that players press to agitate and reveal the roll, adding a satisfying popping sound and preventing cheating.[23] The game's mechanics emphasize bumping opponents' pieces back to start upon landing on the same space, fostering competitive family play.[24] Acquired by Hasbro in the 1970s, Trouble has endured with modern variants as of 2025, including themed editions featuring characters from Sonic the Hedgehog and SpongeBob SquarePants, a "Power Die" version with bonus symbols for strategic boosts, portable mini sets, and refreshed classic packaging to appeal to new generations.[25][26] Among collectible toys, Funko Pop! figures represent a major cultural phenomenon, launched in 2010 at San Diego Comic-Con with initial vinyl bobble-head style designs of DC Comics characters like Batman and Green Lantern.[27] Characterized by oversized heads, small bodies, and minimalist black eyes on a 3.75-inch scale, these affordable mass-produced figures span thousands of licenses from movies, TV, video games, and celebrities, turning collecting into a mainstream hobby with exclusive convention variants driving resale markets.[28] By the mid-2020s, Funko had achieved peak annual revenue exceeding $1 billion in the late 2010s, embedding itself in pop culture through displays in homes, influencer endorsements, and as symbols of fandom devotion, though recent market saturation has prompted company diversification.[29] Periodicals dedicated to pop culture under the "Pop" banner include Pop Culture Press, a music-focused magazine founded in 1986 in Memphis, Tennessee, which chronicled the local underground scene alongside coverage of touring bands and broader music trends until its discontinuation. Another enduring example is The Journal of Popular Culture, an academic periodical established in 1967 by the Popular Culture Association, publishing scholarly analyses of diverse pop culture elements such as media, fashion, and entertainment across disciplines.[30] These publications have contributed to the documentation and critical discourse of pop culture, bridging enthusiast and intellectual audiences.Other arts and entertainment uses
The Pop art movement emerged in the mid-1950s in Britain, pioneered by artists associated with the Independent Group, who drew inspiration from popular culture, advertising, and mass media to challenge traditional fine art boundaries.[31] Richard Hamilton is widely regarded as a founding figure, with his 1956 collage Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? often cited as the first Pop art work, satirizing post-war consumer culture through assembled images of domestic life, technology, and celebrity.[32] In 1957, Hamilton articulated the movement's ethos in a letter, describing Pop art as "popular (designed for a mass audience), transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and big business."[33] The movement gained prominence in the United States during the early 1960s, where artists like Andy Warhol elevated everyday consumer items to high art, critiquing consumerism while embracing its aesthetics. Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans series, consisting of 32 paintings exhibited in 1962 at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, exemplified this approach by replicating the iconic soup label in a repetitive grid format, blurring lines between art and commerce.[34][35] This exhibition marked a pivotal moment, sparking debate and establishing Pop art's influence on visual culture.[36] Beyond visual arts, "Pop" has appeared in performative media, such as the 2011 theater production Pop at Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., a whodunit musical set in Andy Warhol's Factory in 1968, featuring drag queen Candy Darling as host amid the era's iconic figures.[37] In radio entertainment, the "Pop" format refers to Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR), which originated in the 1950s as Top 40 programming and evolved in the 1980s to focus on current popular hits across pop, rock, and dance genres, targeting younger audiences with high-energy playlists.[38] As of 2025, Pop art continues to inspire revivals, exemplified by the "Pop Forever, Tom Wesselmann &…" exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, running from October 2024 to February 2025, which highlights the movement's enduring dialogue with contemporary consumerism through works by Wesselmann and peers.[39]People
Musicians and performers
Iggy Pop, born James Newell Osterberg Jr. on April 21, 1947, in Muskegon, Michigan, emerged as a transformative figure in rock music as the lead singer and frontman of the proto-punk band the Stooges, which he formed in Ann Arbor in 1967 with brothers Ron and Scott Asheton on guitar and drums, respectively, and bassist Dave Alexander.[40][41] The group's raw, aggressive sound on albums like their self-titled debut (1969) and Fun House (1970) revolutionized rock performance through Pop's visceral stage presence, including self-mutilation and crowd dives, establishing foundational elements of punk rock.[41][42] Following the Stooges' initial disbandment in 1974, Pop launched a prolific solo career, collaborating closely with David Bowie on the Berlin Trilogy albums The Idiot (1977) and Lust for Life (1977), the latter featuring the iconic title track co-written with Bowie, which blended art rock with pop sensibilities and became a enduring hit.[43] His influence extended across punk, post-punk, and alternative rock, inspiring artists from the Sex Pistols to Nirvana with his snarling vocals and unfiltered persona.[42] Pop reunited the Stooges in the early 2000s for acclaimed tours and albums like The Weirdness (2007), and continued solo releases into the 2020s, including Every Loser (2023), produced by Andrew Watt, which reflected on his enduring legacy, and the live album Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 2023 (2025).[44][45] Pop Smoke, born Bashar Barakah Jackson on July 20, 1999, in Canarsie, Brooklyn, rose rapidly as a key innovator in Brooklyn drill rap, a subgenre fusing New York hip-hop with UK drill's ominous beats and street narratives, characterized by his booming baritone delivery and themes of ambition and neighborhood loyalty.[46][47] His breakout mixtape Meet the Woo (2019) and singles like "Welcome to the Party" gained viral traction, earning collaborations with artists such as Nicki Minaj and Travis Scott, and positioning him as a bridge between East Coast rap and international sounds.[48] Tragically killed at age 20 during a home invasion in Los Angeles on February 19, 2020, Pop Smoke's career was cut short, but his posthumous debut album Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon (2020), featuring guests like Lil Baby and Roddy Ricch, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and achieved multi-platinum status, solidifying his impact on modern hip-hop.[49][50] A follow-up, Faith (2021), continued his legacy with tracks produced by 808Melo and Kanye West, maintaining chart presence through 2025 via streaming and tributes.[51]Other notable individuals
Glenn Scobey "Pop" Warner (1871–1954) was an influential American football coach who pioneered numerous innovations in the sport during his 44-year career.[52] He introduced key techniques such as the spiral punt, naked bootleg, double reverse, three-point stance, and body blocking, which fundamentally shaped modern offensive and defensive strategies.[52] Warner coached at institutions including Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Cornell University, and Stanford University, compiling a record of 313 wins, and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as part of its inaugural class in 1951.[53][54] John Henry "Pop" Lloyd (1884–1964) was a legendary shortstop in the Negro leagues, widely regarded as one of the greatest defensive players in baseball history and often called "The Black Babe Ruth" for his hitting prowess.[55] Born in Palatka, Florida, Lloyd played professionally from 1905 to 1932 across teams like the Philadelphia Giants and Hilldale Daisies, maintaining a career batting average over .300 while excelling at fielding with exceptional range and sure hands.[56] He also managed teams and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977, recognizing his 25-year impact on segregated baseball.[55][56] In contemporary sports, "Pop" serves as a nickname for several athletes, reflecting personal or familial ties. DeMario "Pop" Douglas, a wide receiver for the New England Patriots born in 2000, earned the moniker in honor of his late grandfather, whom he never met, and has emerged as a key NFL punt returner since his 2023 draft.[57] Similarly, Kansas City Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco, born in 1999, is nicknamed "Pop" and has become a vital offensive player, contributing to the team's Super Bowl victories in 2023 and 2024 with his versatile rushing style. College basketball standout Pop Isaacs, whose full name is Richard Corey Isaacs (born 2003), adopted the nickname early in his career and transferred to Creighton University for the 2024–25 season, where a hip injury limited him to 8 games, before transferring to Texas A&M for the 2025–26 season after averaging 15.8 points per game at Texas Tech.[58][59][60] Beyond specific individuals, "Pop" is a longstanding affectionate nickname for fathers or grandfathers in American culture, particularly in informal family settings and regional dialects like those in the South.[61] Derived from "papa," it conveys warmth and familiarity, appearing in literature, media, and everyday speech as a term of endearment without formal connotations.[62] This usage underscores its role in familial bonds, distinct from professional nicknames.[61]Places
Populated places
Pop is a city in the Namangan Region of Uzbekistan, serving as the administrative center of Pop District. Located near the Syr Darya River in the Fergana Valley, it has a population of approximately 30,000 as of 2023. The city is connected by the Angren–Pop railway line, facilitating regional transportation and economic activity primarily based on agriculture in the fertile valley. No historical name changes or mergers are recorded for this settlement in available sources. Smaller places named Pop exist in other countries, such as in Mexico's Yucatán state and Bulgaria's Vratsa region, but they are minor hamlets with limited documented history, often tied to local rural economies without notable cultural significance.[63]Geographical features
The Pop Creek is a small stream located on Revillagigedo Island in southeastern Alaska, within the Ketchikan B-4 quadrangle.[64] It serves as an important habitat for anadromous fish species, including Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), and pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha), supporting spawning, rearing, and migration activities, with historical data indicating a declining escapement trend possibly due to habitat disruption from logging between 1955 and 1981, though overall data quality is rated as poor.[65] The creek's ecology contributes to the broader salmon ecosystem in the region, with no major tributaries documented, and it flows into marine waters near Ketchikan, aiding nutrient cycling between freshwater and coastal environments.[65] In the contiguous United States, Pop Mountain is a modest summit in Fairfield County, Connecticut, rising to an elevation of approximately 384 feet (117 meters) above sea level.[66] Situated in the town of Weston within the Aspetuck River Valley, it forms part of the local trail network, including a popular 5-mile loop hike that combines the Blue and White Trail, Pop Mountain ascent, and Red Trail, offering moderate elevation gain of about 636 feet through wooded terrain suitable for birdwatching and fall foliage viewing.[67] Further north, another Pop Mountain exists in the Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area of Alaska, with an elevation of 1,886 feet (575 meters), contributing to the island's rugged topography but lacking extensive hiking infrastructure due to its remote, forested setting.[68] Pop Lake is a small water body in northeastern British Columbia, Canada, situated within the Muskwa-Kechika region and noted in historical surveys from 2000.[69] It has been referenced in studies of regional water bodies, though specific records are limited and no surface area measurements are publicly detailed in available records as of 2025. Environmental monitoring in the area emphasizes conservation of such lakes amid ongoing assessments of watershed health, with no major reported changes or updates to its ecological status in recent years.[69]Science and technology
Computing and telecommunications
In computing and telecommunications, "PoP" commonly refers to a point of presence, which is a physical location where a network provider, such as an Internet Service Provider (ISP), maintains equipment like routers, switches, and servers to interconnect with other networks and provide access to end users.[70] This demarcation point enables efficient data exchange, reduces latency, and allows ISPs to aggregate traffic from local subscribers before routing it to broader internet backbones.[71] As of 2025, major internet exchange PoPs, such as those operated by DE-CIX in Frankfurt and AMS-IX in Amsterdam, facilitate peering among hundreds of networks, handling peak traffic volumes exceeding 10 terabits per second to support global connectivity.[72] Another significant use of "PoP" is in the Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3), an application-layer protocol standardized in RFC 1939 in 1996 for retrieving email messages from a remote server to a local client over TCP/IP.[73] Unlike IMAP, which maintains emails on the server for multi-device synchronization and folder management, POP3 typically downloads messages to the client and deletes them from the server by default, making it suitable for single-device access but less ideal for shared or mobile environments.[74] To address security concerns in POP3's original plaintext transmission, the POP3S extension incorporates Transport Layer Security (TLS) as defined in RFC 2595, encrypting sessions on port 995 to protect against eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks.[75] In programming and data structures, "pop" denotes the operation of removing and returning the topmost element from a stack, adhering to the last-in, first-out (LIFO) principle.[76] This fundamental algorithm is implemented efficiently in constant time, O(1), by decrementing the top index after accessing the element, with underflow checks to prevent errors on empty stacks. The pseudocode for a basic array-based pop operation is as follows:[77] In telecommunications, particularly fiber optic networks, a PoP serves as a demarcation and aggregation point for high-capacity optical links, where signals from multiple fiber strands are multiplexed using technologies like dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM).[78] By 2025, these PoPs support bandwidth capacities up to approximately 64 terabits per second per fiber strand through advanced C+L band amplification and coherent optics, with system capacities 25% higher than traditional C-band solutions, enabling scalable backbone interconnects for 5G, cloud services, and data centers while minimizing signal loss over long distances.[79]function pop(stack, top): if top == -1: return error "Stack underflow" item = stack[top] top = top - 1 return itemfunction pop(stack, top): if top == -1: return error "Stack underflow" item = stack[top] top = top - 1 return item