Dream pop is a musical subgenre of pop rock and alternative rock. Though influences on the genre can be traced as far back as the 1940s, modern dream pop originated in the United Kingdom in the mid-1980s—the term, however, was used almost exclusively in the United States. Bands such The Passions, Dif Juz, Lowlife, and A.R. Kane (to whom the term has been attributed) began fusing post-punk and ethereal wave elements with bittersweet pop melodies into dreamy "soundscapes".
Dream pop tends to focus on textures and moods rather than propulsive rock riffs. Vocals are generally breathy or sung in a near-whisper, and lyrics are often introspective or existential in nature. Album art tends to consist of blurry pastel imagery or stark minimalist designs, or a combination of these two styles. The 4AD record label is the one most associated with dream pop, though others such as Creation, Projekt, Fontana, Bedazzled, Vernon Yard and Slumberland also released significant records in the genre.
Read more about Dream Pop: History and Artists
Famous quotes containing the words dream and/or pop:
“They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)