Here's a little about myself. I'm 19, but I'm not the typical teenager. I don't like a lot of music from the 2000s. I keep my radio tuned to the smooth R&B station most of the time. I hate the entire Young Money clan and hope they all die. I find 106 and Park unwatchable. As a young black male, you would think I would be in love with Lil' Wayne, I find him very annoying. I listen to the kind of rap that doesn't come on the radio. I hate Beyonce probably just as much as vainandy hates Whitney lol. Mississippi Mass Choir is the best gospel act of all time. You can't tell me anything different. Whitney Houston is the greatest female vocalist of all time. It's a toss up between Stevie Wonder and Luther Vandross for the guys. I get into musical debates with my roommate frequently because we basically have opposite musical taste. He acknowledges older music, but doesn't really listen to it often; I acknowledge new music, but I find it pretty crappy and don't really like it. I wouldn't consider myself a prince fan, but he sings a few of my all-time favorite songs. Ok, on to the subject of the thread.

So, I got into a debate with my roommate the other day. He claims that this day and age we consider acts such as Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, and Madonna "pop" acts, because they make "pop" music, but back in the late 70s/early 80s that MJ was considered an R&B artist and so was Janet. And that Madonna was considered "Rock and Roll" when she first hit the scene in the early to mid 80s. He says that NOW we call them pop, but initially they were called something else. Is there any merit to this? I personally think it's bullshit and that he has no idea what he's talking about but all I have to go buy is youtube vids and old articles. I'm pretty sure I'm right.

Am I?

No.

The part about comparing yourself to vainandy with Beyonce cracked me up

I don't entirely agree with your friend, however, I agree that the songs MJ and Janet did in the 80's were contemporary r&b, look at the categories they won in, but they also transcended boundaries, thus leading to crossover. But if someone were to create music today that was very similar sounding to those songs, the NEW songs would be considered pop, not the older ones, because the older ones through crossover were introduced to the public consciousness and familiarized them with the sound that by the time someone else did it, it was something already made popular, thus pop music. Some good examples I can think of are:

I Wanna Be Your Lover-Prince (r&b)

California Girls-Katy Perry. I don't like this song, but someone compared something about it to Prince, and I hear it a little bit, though the song sounds like nothing he would record (pop)

Get It Together-Jackson 5 (r&b)

All Nite (Don't Stop)-Janet Jackson (people have called this one pop, but parts of the percussion remind me of the song above, not to mention the Herbie Hancock sample)

Another one that amuses me

Glow of Love-Change(r&b)

All For You-Janet (pop???!!!) ....I remember people saying this song sounded too much like a boyband song. But how could it if she was sampling an r&b song that came out 20 years earlier? That makes no sense, and if anything, the boyband producers were inspired by older r&b when writing and Janet fit right into the charts at the time by taking it back to the basics, continuing to do what she already was.

[Edited 11/6/11 5:54am]

Hmm...from what I remember, MJ kinda helped in the r&b/dance post-disco era w/Off The Wall and then him, Madonna, and Prince all helped to shape what all know today as dance-pop. Dance-pop is still going strong almost 20+ years since its inception. (Which is what your friend is probably referring to when he calls them 'pop.') Normally, Prince's and MJ's music combine so much that they are, mostly, considered to have too much going on to simply say that they are in any one particular genre. I think that the both of them have been able to cross genre boundaries many a time which has helped to inspire to the kind of music that we mostly have today. Using their music to appeal to many people is most likely why they have been relegated to the pop tag even though they also create music that is r&b/dance as well as touching upon other genres.

That being said, pop & r&b were interchangeable at one point and became one on Billboard. This had happened since pop and r&b artists kept crossing over on each other's charts. Then they seperated again around 1964/5 which kind happened when the British invasion came to town. The British invasion as well as what was going on at the time (the Vietnam war) all of sudden there were institutions (such as Rolling Stone magazine) deciding what was considered 'real' art and what was just mindless music. (That didn't exist before.) Needless to say was that unless you were creating music that fit into their definition you were not considered a 'real' artist. It acted as a schism as consumer tastes were changing.

As for rock...well, it comes from rock and roll which originated from r&b in the first place. The inception of rock was a really long time ago and there's been a bunch of new subgenres since then. Pop rock has been around for quite a while though (since the 60s)... Though, I don't even think that Madonna was considered rock at any point in time. She was doing post-disco music and then went into dance pop where she's been for quite a while.

In the early 1980s, if you were a black artist, you were considered R&B and played on R&B stations simply because you were a black artist unless you were somebody just totally in the opposite direction like Charlie Pride or something. The charts weren't even called the "R&B Chart" back then. They were called the "Black Chart". There was the "Black Singles" chart and the "Black Album" chart.

In the mid to late 1970s, disco, which was a predominately black genre, dominated the Pop charts during those days. It was all over both pop and R&B radio back then. Everyone wanted to do disco but when dorky folks like Ethel Mermon started making disco records, it helped to make it become "uncool". Rather than laughing it off like it was a joke like we would do today if someone like Barbara Steisand were to make a shit hop record, they used it as an excuse to hate disco and create a backlash against it. The real reason was racism and homophobia. White kids were listening to this predominately black music that started in gay clubs and a lot of other white folks just couldn't stand that. After disco's "death" in 1979, a black artist couldn't get onto pop radio unless he was a nice "safe" act. Prince's "I Wanna Be Your Lover" was all over pop radio in 1979. Just a few months later after disco "died", "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad" was not played on pop radio but was played all over R&B radio. Now, if pop listeners at that time hated disco so much and wanted to hear rock, then why wasn't "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad" played on the pop stations when "I Wanna Be Your Lover" had been played numerous times just a few months earlier before disco "died". It's because even though "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad" was a rock song, Prince was a black artist and that was their real reason for not playing it. The same goes with R&B radio. They played "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad" on R&B radio even though it was a rock song simply because Prince was a black artist. But then again, if R&B radio didn't play it, then who would?

It went on like this all through the early 1980s. There were two ways that black artists made it onto pop radio during those years. They could either add rock elements to their music like Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, and Prince did, or they could water it way down and weaken it like Lionel Richie did when he went solo. R&B radio was playing everything by black artists at the time regardless of genre simply because the artist was black unless they were just in a totally different direction altogether such as The Bus Boys or Charlie Pride. All black artists were considered R&B artists back then even though they were making soul, funk, and also rock. It was all cool until Shitney Houston hit the scene. If R&B stations had been truly sticking to their R&B format, someone like her would never have been played on the R&B stations at the time. However, she was played simply because she was a black artist (although, personally, I think Charlie Pride's music sounds "blacker" than hers ) and she was such a watered down tired ass that she was huge on pop radio and then the majority of the new up and coming artists of that day started using her adult contemporary formula of weakening the music down not only to appeal to both black and white, but also senior citizens. Everybody continued with that formula until eventually there was no R&B genre, everything became pop.

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[Edited 11/6/11 7:50am]

And then came the kang of r&b

I want to read a Beyonce essay now on what "she did to music"

I never heard anyone refer to Madonna as a rock performer. She has been called R&B (mostly the 1st album), dance music, or pop back then. Rock was like Journey, Styx, Bruce Springsteen, REO Speedwagon, Van Halen, etc.

"Rock star" is just an umbrella term that has no real meaning, and I could see Madonna being branded as one in shallow terms then.