This movement has produced and is represented by many Brazilian artists, such as Jorge Ben Jor, Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, Djavan, Novos Baianos, Tom Jobim, Chico Buarque, Belchior and Elis Regina, whose individual styles generated their own trends within the genre.

[1] MPB songs are in part characterized by their harmonic complexity and their elaborate lyrics, which call back to a connection between Brazil's popular music and poetry that has been culturally relevant since the 1920s.

[4] MPB, loosely understood as a "style", debuted in the mid-1960s, with the acronym being applied to types of non-electric music that emerged following the beginning, rise and evolution of bossa nova.

Thanks to an economic boom in Brazil through the 1960s and '70s, an expanding working and middle class had greater access to television, which became a substantial vehicle for the consumption and spread of MPB.

In particular, the shows O Fino da Bossa and Jovem Guarda achieved a great deal of media attention and praise, with the former being attributed to taking part in the creation of MPB.

[2][3] Brazilian telenovelas in the early 1970s featured MPB hits by big-name artists of the time such as Elis Regina, Gilberto Gil, and Caetano Veloso among others in the soundtracks of the shows.

Despite concerns at the time about the telenovelas having too large of a role in shaping the Brazilian pop music that became mainstream, they have become one of the only public outlets that still continuously broadcast MPB up to the present day.

Critics of this argued that the best of the current creative pool had already been exhausted by the music festivals and that the continuous output of MPB served more as a detriment to the industry than a benefit.