ABSTRACT
This chapter provides existing models of texture in popular music, identifies the rhythmic characteristics of the different layers, and offers sample analyses drawn from Anglophone popular music from the mid- to late twentieth century that demonstrate various rhythmic functions. It describes typical textural and rhythmic characteristics of formal sections, again illustrated with sample analyses. Between song sections, rhythmic and metric shifts mark the formal boundaries of phrases, sections, and section groupings, and help to articulate larger trajectories of increasing and decreasing intensity throughout the song. The chapter demonstrates a variety of rhythmic functions within different textural layers, and within and between formal sections of some pop-rock songs. The difference in pop-rock music is that phrases and song sections do not end with cadences, so the goal of the increased momentum is not the end of the formal unit, but the beginning of the next one.
