# Your Top 20 Pop Artists



## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Not including artists that may belong in greater genres like Jazz, Classical, Soundtrack or Big Band, in other words, just music of Dance/Easy Listening. Rock, Pop, Hip-hop, Country etc.

Throughout a good decade I've amassed a list of my Top 100 pop artists, but for sample confidence today I'll list just the Top 30:

1. Marvin Gaye [and Tammi]
2. Jimi Hendrix
3. Led Zeppelin
4. Elton John
5. The Beatles
6. Electric Light Orchestra
7. No Doubt
8. Vanity Fair
9. Yes
10. Eagles
11. Crosby Stills Nash & Young
12. Steve Miller Band
13. Stevie Ray Vaughan
14. The Doobie Brothers
15. Fleetwood Mac
16. Lynyrd Skynyrd
17. Aerosmith
18. Billy Joel
19. Neil Young
20. Queen
21. The Jackson 5
22. The Rolling Stones
23. George Strait
24. Hall & Oates
25. Journey
26. James Taylor
27. Third Eye Blind
28. Brooks & Dunn
29. The Temptations
30. Kansas

Honorable mentions: _Pink Floyd, Three Dog Night, The Four Seasons, The Righteous Brothers, Supertramp, Doris Troy, Simon & Garfunkel, Todd Rundgren_


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I like a whole bunch of pop artists and see you regard everything as pop...I'll give you five that are as pop as can be:
1. Donna Summer
2. Dua Lipa
3. Post Malone
4. the Faint
5. Cyndi Lauper
...they are some I listen to in between classical and metal ++


----------



## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

The Beach Boys
The Beatles
Burt Bacharach
The Kinks
Donny Hathaway
Isaac Hayes
Aretha Franklin
Bob Dylan
Van Morrison
Randy Newman
Harry Nillson
Imogen Heap
Inara George
Guy Clark
Steve Earle
John Prine
Lucinda Williams
Townes Van Zandt
Anna Tivel
James McMurtry
Gillian Welch
Betse Ellis
Kieran Kane & Rayna Gellert
The Milk Carton Kids
Watchhouse (formerly Mandolin Orange)
Pharis & Jason Romero
Ordinary Elephant
Malcolm Holcombe
Erynn Marshall
Sarah Jarosz
Norman BLake
Tony Rice
Stephen Bishop
Jackson Browne
James Taylor
Joni Mitchell

That's more than 20, but I could have listed bunches more.


----------



## 1846 (Sep 1, 2021)

To be honest, I'm pretty sure I couldn't even name 20 pop artists, let alone like all of them ...


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Something like this (alphabetical):

10CC
David Bowie
David Sylvian
Dire Straits
Eagles
Genesis
Japan
Jim Croce
Kate Bush
Kayak
Paul Simon
Pink Floyd
Porcupine Tree
Queen
Radiohead
Roxy Music
Simon and Garfunkel
Talk Talk
Talking Heads
Tori Amos


----------



## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

OK, I'll play.

Beatles
Yes
Jethro Tull
Paul McCartney
George Harrison

Pink Floyd
Klaatu
Jimi Hendrix
Led Zeppelin
Elton John

Kansas
Crosby Stills & Nash
Pentatonix
Todd Rundgren
Bruno Mars

Chicago
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
The Moody Blues 
Rob Rio
Roger Hodgson

_Honorable Mentions_: Steely Dan, Steppenwolf, Uriah Heep, Janet Robin, Genesis/Peter Gabriel/Phil Collins, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby


----------



## KevinJS (Sep 24, 2021)

Off the top of my head:

Rush
Yes
Dream Theater
Marillion
Electric Light Orchestra

Transatlantic 
Dire Straits
Tangerine Dream
Emerson Lake & Palmer
Pink Floyd

Queen
Genesis
Metallica 
Liquid Tension Experiment 
Rick Wakeman

Eivør
Fleetwood Mac
Loreena McKennitt 
Red Priest
Deep Purple

In no particular order, apart from the first three.


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Art Rock said:


> Something like this (alphabetical):
> 
> 10CC
> David Bowie
> ...


I must have been half asleep when I posted this, as I forgot two of my top faves, Peter Gabriel and Steven Wilson. They come in, Radiohead and Talking Heads sadly move out.


----------



## alvaro (Sep 21, 2021)

let's see...

The Beatles
The Supremes
Beach Boys
ABBA
Michael Jackson

Queen
Commodores
Olivia Newton-John
Super Junior
Gfriend

Debbie Gibson
Doris Day
The Blue Nile
Celine Dion
The Platters

Enya
George Michael
Elvis Presley
Tony Bennett
Boyz II Men


I'd also happily had added: Tammi Terrell, Martha Reeves, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Level 42, Supertramp, Hall & Oates, Air Supply, The Velvelettes, Julie London, Diana Krall, Christina Aguilera, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, etc., etc.


----------



## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

The Beatles
The Beach Boys
Kero Kero Bonito
Sufjan Stevens
Kate Bush

Regina Spektor
Fiona Apple
The Avalanches
Charli XCX
Rina Sawayama

Bruce Springsteen
St. Vincent
The Zombies
100 gecs
Fleetwood Mac

fun.
Elton John
The Killers
Ella Fitzgerald
Francoise Hardy


----------



## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

Using the definition of Pop music of the OP and sorting my list by order of _preference_ today:

1. Pink Floyd
2. King Crimson
3. Queen
4. Yes
5. The Beatles
6. Deep Purple
7. Genesis
8. Vangelis
9. The Doors
10. Led Zeppelin
11. Black Sabbath
12. Rush
13. Elvis Presley
14. Guns 'n Roses
15. Red Hot Chili Peppers
16. Scorpions
17. ELP
18. Pantera
19. The Beach Boys
20. Jimi Hendrix

...as I supposed, my list ended being very Rock-based. Rock is the non-classical genre I listen to the most, and enjoy more (but I still know very little of Metal, unfortunately).


----------



## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

Arcade Fire
Beatles
Brian Eno
Depeche Mode
Elbow
Fleet Foxes
Peter Gabriel
Genesis
Hatfield and the North
Joy Division
Kraftwerk
Magazine
Mothers of Invention (Zappa and the)
Muse
Stina Nordenstam
OMD
Radiohead
Robert Wyatt
Sufjan Stevens
Sigur Ros

That'll do for now. It covers many of the artists whose CDs are in my collection and which I return to every so often (and have returned to over the last 40-odd years)


----------



## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

Are Atahualpa Yupanqui, Paco de Lucia and Frank Zappa considered pop?


----------



## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

Red Terror said:


> Are Atahualpa Yupanqui, Paco de Lucia and Frank Zappa considered pop?


Is Hendrix considered "pop"? The OP gave an (incomplete) guide to what they meant by "pop". I took it that anyone not covered by Classical, Jazz and Big Band would include more or less everyone else.

So, yes. Frank Zappa is "pop"!


----------



## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Yeah I guess I just wasn't really interested in a jazz thread here. You can debate endlessly what 'non-classical music' means, or what 'pop' means, do they have to be popular or typical sounding? I think it's a fruitless debate.


----------



## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

If I included Yupanqui, de Lucia and Camaron de la Isla-they would be numbers one, two and three respectively. Since they were never exactly popular in NA, I'll leave them out.


Frank Zappa
Doug Sahm
Chuck Berry
Elvis Presley
Bob Dylan
Willie Nelson
Captain Beefheart
James Brown
Little Richard
Grateful Dead
Rolling Stones
Robert Wyatt
Leonard Cohen
Big Star
Soft Machine
Chicago
Gentle Giant
13th Floor Elevators
Velvet Underground
Joy division


----------



## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

> Doug Sahm


Great addition. Have you seen the recent documentary? I'm not sure, it may have been on Netflix.


----------



## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Amazing how the world outside of the Anglo-American-Irish scene has been eliminated ...

Recently, in a very serious newspaper here in Denmark, it was presented as a sensational report, when a team of cultural journalists tried to avoid imported, American popular culture for a whole month.


----------



## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

joen_cph said:


> Amazing how the world outside of the Anglo-American-Irish scene has been eliminated ...
> 
> Recently, in a very serious newspaper here in Denmark, it was presented as a sensational report, when a team of cultural journalists tried to avoid imported, American popular culture for a whole month.


It's quite possible and doable if one avoids TV. And there's plenty of good music that isn't Anglo-American.


----------



## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

SanAntone said:


> Great addition. Have you seen the recent documentary? I'm not sure, it may have been on Netflix.


I haven't but may eventually see it.


----------



## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Red Terror said:


> If I included Yupanqui, de Lucia and Camaron de la Isla-they would be numbers one, two and three respectively. Since they were never exactly popular in NA, I'll leave them out.


Better include Haydn then? I don't personally understand all these complex definitions of pop that I feel we should disregard the term entirely.


----------



## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

joen_cph said:


> Amazing how the world outside of the Anglo-American-Irish scene has been eliminated ...
> 
> Recently, in a very serious newspaper here in Denmark, it was presented as a sensational report, when a team of cultural journalists tried to avoid imported, American popular culture for a whole month.


It's true that the Anglo-American hegemony reigns...

(But I had three non-Anglo-Americans in my list)



Ethereality said:


> I feel we should disregard the term entirely.


That would make this thread a challenge then!

I find Wiki helpful in describing the more obscure variations on pop ("shoegaze" for example) and in showing some of the links across genres.

"Pure" pop tends to be short (3 min) songs written expressly for a mainstream audience, mainstream radio, top 40 success. The evolution of such music and the technology for distribution means that "airplay" is no longer the critical factor it once was.

Those of us who have followed the evolution of popular musiic for, say, the last 50 years, could bore you to death with the variations. Some of us are quite keen to make the distinction between pure pop and the more elaborate music aimed at niche audiences (especially rock and its children and cousins). Oh, and whilst "Anglo-American" rules, the evolution of popular music in the USA and the UK were not the same, though they overlap. There's no such thing as 'Country' in the UK, for example (afaik).


----------



## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Red Terror said:


> It's quite possible and doable if one avoids TV. And there's plenty of good music that isn't Anglo-American.


Here the TV channel menu makes it quite easy to avoid, if one is being selective and doesn't spend much time watching. But on the main, local channels, there's almost only Scandinavian and Anglo-American programmes available, with an occasional, rare, other West-European entry, or movies from elsewhere in niche channels. Yet I've never seen say a Dutch, Belgian, Swiss, Portuguese, Austrian, Irish, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Czech, Slovak, Spanish, Canadian, Greek, Australian, NZ, Indian etc. etc. documentary being programmed.


----------



## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

joen_cph said:


> Here the TV channel menu makes it quite easy to avoid, if one is being selective and doesn't spend much time watching. But on the main, local channels, there's almost only Scandinavian and Anglo-American programmes available, with an occasional, rare, other West-European entry, or movies from elsewhere in niche channels. Yet I've never seen say a Dutch, Belgian, Swiss, Portuguese, Austrian, Irish, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Czech, Slovak, Spanish, Canadian, Greek, Australian, NZ, Indian etc. etc. documentary being programmed.


Not buying a TV is one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Scandinavians aside, I imagine the Germans produce a lot of TV content, don't they?


----------



## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Red Terror said:


> Not buying a TV is one of the best decisions I've ever made.
> 
> Scandinavians aside, I imagine the Germans produce a lot of TV content, don't they?


They do, and we have access to some German channels and the occasional/rare TV series on our own channels.


----------

