Art pop
[13][nb 2] Sociomusicologist Simon Frith has distinguished the appropriation of art into pop music as having a particular concern with style, gesture, and the ironic use of historical eras and genres.
[24] In the 1960s, pop musicians such as John Lennon, Syd Barrett, Pete Townshend, Brian Eno, and Bryan Ferry began to take inspiration from their previous art school studies.
[3] Frith states that in Britain, art school represented "a traditional escape route for the bright working class kids, and a breeding ground for young bands like the Beatles and beyond".
Progressive rock was the bohemians' last bet [...] In this context the key Pop art theorist was not [Richard] Hamilton or any of the other British artists who, for all their interest in the mass market, remained its academic admirers only, but Andy Warhol.
[37][nb 6] In his 2004 book Sonic Alchemy: Visionary Music Producers and Their Maverick Recordings, David Howard credits the Beach Boys' 1966 single "Good Vibrations" with launching the "brief, shining moment [when] pop and art came together as unlikely commercial bedfellows.
Pepper's was preceded by several albums that had begun to bridge the line between "disposable" pop and "serious" rock, it successfully gave an established "commercial" voice to an alternative youth culture.
Iggy was inspired to transform his personality into an art object, which would in turn influence singer David Bowie, and led to the Stooges' role as the group linking 1960s hard rock to 1970s punk.
The school encouraged the continuation of the kinds of collaboration between high and low art once exemplified by the Factory, as drummer Jerry Harrison (later of Talking Heads) explained: "it started with the Velvet Underground and all of the things that were identified with Andy Warhol.
[57] Cultural theorist Mark Fisher characterized a variety of musical developments in the late 1970s, including post-punk, synthpop, and particularly the work of German electronic band Kraftwerk,[60] as situated within art pop traditions.
[8] The Quietus characterized Japan's 1979 album Quiet Life as defining "a very European form of detached, sexually-ambiguous and thoughtful art-pop" similar to that explored by Bowie on 1977's Low.
"[61] Critic Simon Reynolds dubbed English singer Kate Bush "the queen of art-pop", citing her merging of glamour, conceptualism, and innovation without forsaking commercial pop success during the late 1970s and 1980s.
Dawn developed a style of "kaleidoscopic art-pop" that was initially dismissed by hip hop fans as "too soft, ruminative and far-ranging" but would eventually pave the way for the work of artists like Drake and Kanye West.
[74] In 2013, Spin noted a "new art-pop era" in contemporary music, led by West, in which musicians draw on visual art as a signifier of wealth and extravagance as well as creative exploration.
[75] Fact labels West's 2008 album 808s & Heartbreak as an "art-pop masterpiece" which would have a substantive influence on subsequent hip hop music, broadening the style beyond its contemporary emphasis on self-aggrandizement and bravado.
[76] The New York Times' Jon Caramanica described West's "thought-provoking and grand-scaled" works as having "widened [hip hop]'s gates, whether for middle-class values or high-fashion and high-art dreams.
"[77] Contemporary female artists who "merge glamour, conceptualism, innovation and autonomy," such as Grimes, Julia Holter, Lana Del Rey and FKA twigs, are frequently described as working in the tradition of Kate Bush.
[68] Grimes is described by the Montreal Gazette as "an art-pop phenomenon" and part of "a long tradition of fascination with the pop star as artwork in progress", with particular attention drawn to role of the Internet and digital platforms in her success.
[6] He mentions the Internet-based genre vaporwave as consisting of underground art-pop musicians like James Ferraro and Daniel Lopatin "exploring the technological and commercial frontiers of 21st century hyper-capitalism's grimmest artistic sensibilities".
