Art pop (also typeset as art-pop or artpop) is a loosely defined style of pop music influenced by pop art's integration of high and low culture, and which emphasizes the manipulation of signs, style, and gesture over personal expression. Art pop artists may be inspired by postmodern approaches or art theories as well as other forms of art, such as fashion, fine art, cinema, and avant-garde literature. They may deviate from traditional pop audiences and rock music conventions, instead exploring ideas such as pop's status as commercial art, notions of artifice and the self, and questions of historical authenticity.
Starting in the mid 1960s, British and American pop musicians such as Brian Wilson, Phil Spector, and the Beatles began incorporating the ideas of the pop art movement into their recordings. English art pop musicians drew from their art school studies, while in America the style drew on the influence of pop artist Andy Warhol and affiliated band the Velvet Underground, and also intersected with folk music's singer-songwriter movement. The style would experience its "golden age" in the 1970s among glam rock artists such as David Bowie and Roxy Music, who embraced theatricality and throwaway pop culture.
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