Pop
Pop is the music that had to sell. It begins with a machine, Edison's phonograph in 1877, and everything after is downstream of the fact that a performance could suddenly be a product. The disc, the 45, the transistor radio, the cassette, MTV, Napster, the iPod, Spotify and TikTok each rearranged what a song was allowed to be: how long, how loud, how quickly it had to get to the chorus. Around that machinery grew an industry very good at manufacturing feeling on schedule, Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building, Motown, the Swedish songwriting camps, the Korean training system, and a century-long argument about whether music made that way can be any good, which mostly ended when the critics lost. The centre of gravity has moved too. The story is not only Elvis and the Beatles and Taylor Swift; it is Teresa Teng and Umm Kulthum, Lata Mangeshkar and Hikaru Utada, Seo Taiji, Daddy Yankee, Burna Boy and Bad Bunny, who won Album of the Year in 2026 with a record in Spanish. This archive is the whole apparatus: the records, the stars, the technology, the machine, the sound, the argument, the show, and where it all stands now.
A chronological documentary of 796 moments spanning 1840–2026 on Loreline.
Curated by Olivier · last updated 2026-09-20
Eras
- Songs, The record itself. Three minutes, a hook, a chorus you knew by the second time, from the Brill Building through Motown, disco, the eighties, Britpop and whatever is on the radio this year, heard as the thing people actually played.
- Records, The physical object and the formats that carried it. Shellac, vinyl, the 45, the LP sleeve, cassettes and the mixtape, CDs, the pressing plant, the record shop, and the vinyl revival that nobody in 2005 predicted.
- Singers, The voice at the front. Sinatra, Aretha, Whitney, Freddie, Prince, Madonna, Beyoncé, the technique, the range, the persona, the career arc, and the performers whose names carried a decade.
- Rock & Roll, The 1950s collision that made everything after it. Rhythm and blues meeting country, Sun Studio, Little Richard and Chuck Berry, Elvis, the payola hearings, the moral panic, and the moment pop became a teenage market.
- Motown, Hitsville USA on West Grand Boulevard. Berry Gordy's assembly line, the Funk Brothers in the Snakepit, Holland-Dozier-Holland, the Supremes and the Temptations and Marvin Gaye, the charm school, and the sound that crossed over.
- Concerts, The show. Stadium tours and their economics, festival headline sets, the residency, the tour rider and the trucks, arena staging and lighting design, television performances from Ed Sullivan to Top of the Pops, and the audience as part of the act.
- Studios, Where records get made. Abbey Road, Muscle Shoals, Electric Lady, the desk and the live room, multitrack and overdubbing, the engineer, home recording, and the studios that closed when a laptop could do it.
- Songwriting, How a song is built. Chords, form, the middle eight, the hook, topline writing, the writing camp, the Swedish producers behind an improbable share of the charts, credit disputes, and the interviews where someone explains what a song is actually about.
- Instruments, The gear that made the sounds. The electric guitar and its amp, the Rhodes and the Hammond, the Minimoog, the DX7, the LinnDrum and the 808, samplers, Auto-Tune, and the software that replaced most of it.
- Charts, Measurement as spectacle. The Billboard Hot 100 and the UK singles chart, chart week and midweeks, gold and platinum certification, the Grammys and the Brits, streaming-era chart rule changes, and the games labels play to win the week.
- Music Business, The money. Labels and A&R, contracts and recoupment, publishing and mechanicals, managers, catalogue sales, ticketing and the Live Nation question, and the artists who found out how their deal actually worked.
- Streaming, Since 2008. Spotify and the playlist as gatekeeper, per-stream rates and the payout arguments, TikTok breaking songs, YouTube as the world's biggest music service, algorithmic recommendation, and the way release strategy bent to fit it.
- Controversy, The fights. Lip-syncing scandals, the PMRC and parental advisory stickers, plagiarism suits, feuds and diss records, MeToo in the industry, censored videos and banned singles, and the reputations that went in one news cycle.
- K-pop, The Korean system. SM, YG, JYP and HYBE, the trainee years, choreography and the dance practice video, BTS and Blackpink and the generations before them, the fandom machinery, and the export policy that helped build it.
- J-pop, Japan's own pop world. City pop rediscovered forty years late, the idol system and its economics, Utada and Hikaru's ten million, anime theme songs as a chart force, Johnny's and the 2023 reckoning, and a market that ran on CDs long after everyone else stopped.
- Latin Pop, Spanish and Portuguese-language pop as a global force. Salsa and merengue, the Miami machine, the 1999 crossover, reggaetón from Panama and Puerto Rico to everywhere, Brazilian pop and funk, and the years when the biggest song on earth was not in English.
- Afrobeats, West African pop and its export. Lagos and Accra studios, Burna Boy, Wizkid, Davido and Tems, amapiano coming up from South Africa, the diaspora clubs in London, and the point at which the charts stopped treating it as a novelty.
- - Aileen Mavourneen, ballad. The words by Mrs. S.C. hall, the music by A.D. Roche -…. Title: Aileen Mavourneen, ballad. The words by Mrs. S.C. hall, the music by A.D. Roche / on stone by A. Newsam; P. S. Duval lith. Abstract/medium: 1 print: lithograph; sheet… Photograph/scan dated 1840.
- - Musical instrument, music, band, violin, cello, double bass, flute, dulcimer, tabl…. Tags: musical instrument, music, band, violin, cello, double bass, flute, dulcimer, tableau Photographed/dated 1900.
- - 20109-Bad Elster-1916-Konzert auf dem Badeplatz-Brück & Sohn Kunstverlag. Bad Elster; Konzert auf dem Badeplatz Photograph/scan dated 1916.
- - 20152-Bad Elster-1916-Konzert auf dem Badeplatz-Brück & Sohn Kunstverlag. Bad Elster; Konzert auf dem Badeplatz Photograph/scan dated 1916.
- - 20637-Bad Elster-1917-Auf dem Badeplatz während des Konzertes-Brück & Sohn Kunstve…. Bad Elster; Auf dem Badeplatz während des Konzertes Photograph/scan dated 1917.
- - Bring me a letter from my old home town cover. sheet music cover of "bring me a letter from my old home town" Photograph/scan dated 1918.
- - Cheer up, mother. sheet music cover Photograph/scan dated 1918.
- - Eddie ó Neil Record Sleeve APR 7 1945. Record Sleeve / Mailing envelope of message sent home to mum in Ireland APR 7 1945 Photograph/scan dated 1943.
- - Elvis Presley - Heartbreak Hotel. Elvis's first RCA single and first US number one, cut at RCA's Nashville studio with Scotty Moore and Bill Black.
- - Elvis Presley on the Milton Berle Show, June 1956. The 5 June 1956 broadcast whose hip movements triggered national press condemnation and led networks to shoot Presley from the waist up.
- - Elvis Presley - Hound Dog. Elvis's rewrite of the Big Mama Thornton blues, recorded July 1956 and issued as a double-A side with Don't Be Cruel.
- - Elvis Presley performs Don't Be Cruel on The Ed Sullivan Show. Elvis's first Sullivan appearance, watched by roughly 60 million Americans.
- - Elvis Presley Performs 'Hound Dog' on Ed Sullivan. The 28 October 1956 Ed Sullivan Show performance, at the centre of the era's moral panic over Presley's stage movement and its television censorship.
- - Chuck Berry performs Sweet Little Sixteen on the Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show. Berry performs his newly released Chess single on ABC's Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show hosted by Dick Clark.
- - Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode. The guitar figure and the story of a country boy who could play, the template for rock songwriting.
- - Little Richard - Good Golly Miss Molly. One of the defining rock and roll records, cut at J&M Studio in New Orleans and released on Specialty.
- - Domenico Modugno sings Volare on The Ed Sullivan Show. The Sanremo-winning Nel blu, dipinto di blu performed for American television at the height of its US chart run.
- - Paul Anka sings Put Your Head On My Shoulder on The Ed Sullivan Show. Teen-idol pop at its peak: Anka performs his ABC-Paramount hit for Sullivan's audience.
- - Johnny Hallyday sings Retiens la nuit on French television. France's rock and roll import performs the Charles Aznavour-penned ballad on ORTF at the start of the yé-yé years.
- - The Beatles - I Want To Hold Your Hand, live on The Ed Sullivan Show. The 9 February 1964 broadcast watched by an estimated 73 million Americans, the moment the British Invasion began.
- - The Beatles return home to England from their first US tour. British Pathe newsreel of the Beatles facing reporters and fans at London Airport after conquering America.
- - The Beatles receive the Variety Club show business award. Newsreel of the Variety Club Showbiz Dinner at the Dorchester Hotel, where Harold Wilson presented the Beatles their award.
- - The Beatles arrive in Holland. British Pathe newsreel of the Beatles landing at Schiphol to play I Saw Her Standing There in Amsterdam.
- - The Beatles - Eight Days A Week. A Beatles For Sale track issued as an American single and the group's seventh US number one.
- - The Supremes - Come See About Me. The Supremes' third consecutive American number one for Motown.
- - The Supremes - Where Did Our Love Go. The Supremes' breakthrough number one, the first of five consecutive US chart-toppers.
- - The Supremes - Baby Love. Holland-Dozier-Holland's second number one for the Supremes and the record that made Motown a global pop machine.
- - The Beach Boys perform I Get Around on The Ed Sullivan Show. Brian Wilson's group play their first US number one on Sullivan's stage.
- - The Animals perform House Of The Rising Sun on The Ed Sullivan Show. The Newcastle band bring their transatlantic number one to American television during the British Invasion.
- - The Supremes perform Come See About Me on The Ed Sullivan Show. A colourised print of the Supremes' Sullivan appearance as Come See About Me topped the American chart.
- - The Beatles - Ticket To Ride. The Help! single McCartney later called one of the first heavy-metal records.
- - The Supremes - Stop! In The Name Of Love. Holland-Dozier-Holland's fourth number one for the group, from More Hits by The Supremes.
- - The Beatles - We Can Work It Out. A Lennon-McCartney double-A side with Day Tripper, promoted with one of the earliest pop promo films.
- - Mina sings Se telefonando on Studio Uno. Mina gives the first television performance of Ennio Morricone's Se telefonando on RAI's Studio Uno.
- - The Beatles - Paperback Writer. The single whose bass sound the group pushed the EMI engineers to make far louder than usual.
- - The Beach Boys - God Only Knows. Brian Wilson and Tony Asher's Pet Sounds ballad, sung by Carl Wilson.
- - The Beach Boys - God Only Knows, live in 1966. Official live audio of the Pet Sounds centrepiece from the year of its release.
- - The Supremes perform You Can't Hurry Love on The Ed Sullivan Show. Diana Ross and the Supremes deliver the Holland-Dozier-Holland hit on American prime time.
- - Umm Kulthum sings Fat El Maad at Cairo University. A filmed concert by the Arab world's most important singer, with Baligh Hamdi's composition and Morsi Gamil Aziz's lyric.
- - Christophe: I keep singing so I can buy cars. The French ye-ye singer interviewed on ORTF's Bouton rouge about his obsession with fast cars.
- - Aretha Franklin - Respect. Aretha's rewrite of Otis Redding's song, cut at Atlantic and turned into an anthem of self-assertion.
- - Mina and Celentano sing La coppia piu bella del mondo on Sabato Sera. Italy's two biggest pop stars perform together on RAI's Saturday-night variety show.
- - Miriam Makeba performs Pata Pata on The Ed Sullivan Show. The exiled South African singer performs the Xhosa-language song that became a worldwide hit.
- - The Mamas and the Papas perform California Dreamin' on The Ed Sullivan Show. The Los Angeles harmony group play their signature song for Sullivan.
- - Paul Mauriat plays Love Is Blue on The Ed Sullivan Show. The French orchestra leader performs the instrumental that spent five weeks at number one in America.
- - The Beatles - Lady Madonna. McCartney's Fats Domino-styled piano single, the group's last for Parlophone before Apple.
- - Caetano Veloso - Tropicalia. The song that named the Brazilian movement, released the year before Veloso's exile by the military regime.
- - Zum Zum Zum, the opening titles of Canzonissima 1968. The title sequence of Italy's flagship song contest television series, with Maestro Canfora's theme.
- - Mina - Che vale per me. A recording from the peak of Mina's imperial run as Italy's dominant pop voice.
- - Umm Kulthum sings Hazihi Laylati in Omdurman, Sudan. The Georges Jurdak lyric set by Mohammed Abdel Wahab, performed at Umm Kulthum's Sudan concert.
…and 746 more moments.
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