ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with some thoughts about the ways in which genre analysis has been applied as a general theoretical framework and how such a methodology might be employed in relation to popular music. At the heart of the British discourse on genre in popular music lies a key debate about the distinctions between the terms 'pop' and 'rock' and, within that debate, rest a number of contentious issues linked to notions of aesthetics and ideology, authenticity and manufacture, production and consumption. The chapter explians these issues but with the principal focus on British understandings of these two terms, their relationship to each other and wider notions of popular music as an over-riding category. It attempt a concise overview of the larger descriptor - popular music itself - in order to better understand where pop and rock may fit into the hierarchy of generic and sub-generic forms that exists.
