For the first time the term “pop music” in English language has sounded in 1926, but the roots of pop music history goes more deeply. The immediate precursor of pop music was folk music and street songs and ballads.
Modern pop music evolved in parallel with other genres such as rock music, and not always been separated from them. In the 1950's and 1960's its most typical form of a so-called pop music played by one singer-soloist under the background accompaniment. In the U.S. pop music has been closely associated with jazz (Frank Sinatra), in France - with chanson. Much of the pop music scene in the U.S. are black performers in the genre of soul music.
The real breakthrough in pop music has been the emergence in the 1970's style "disco" and groups such as ABBA, Boney M, Bee Gees. Pop music now replaces rock 'n' roll as a major dance music in discos, and since that time dance music is one of the main trends in pop music.

The emergence of music television (in particular, channel MTV), in 1980 formed the culture videos. At this time in the U.S. there are stars such as Madonna, Prince, Whitney Houston and the French singer Mylene Farmer. On the pop music of this period influenced hip-hop, soul and rhythm-and-blues. During the 1990's and 2000's the electronic dance music (rave) added to it.
In different regions of the world has its own peculiarities connected with the combination of the rhythms of pop music and national songs. Thus, it is worth noting Latin American pop music (latina) with its many dance genres - samba, rumba, cha-cha-cha, lambada, makarena. Latina has achieved popularity in the North, thanks to performers like Kaoma, Gloria Estefan, Ricky Martin. Middle East pop music is unusual melodies.
Every year in the world held hundreds of festivals and contests bring out the best of the best. The most prestigious contest of American pop music, is a premium Grammy Awards. Pop music is also represented at the annual Eurovision Song Contest. To measure the popularity of other songs are compiled lists, the image and likeness of the largest national music list in the world - Billboard Hot 100 (U.S.). For example, in the UK is UK Singles Chart and UK Albums Chart at the same time.
In drawing up the Billboard Hot 100 recorded sales of music CDs, the popularity of songs on radio stations and sales over the Internet.
Pop music has created such a thing as a pop star - the personality, whose life attracted media attention out of touch with their musical activities. In the pop-music popularity depends not only on the ability of the musician and composer, but also factors such as appearance, sexual attractiveness, reputation, press coverage. To attract the attention of the press and the public, many pop artists and their producers are not averse provocation scandals, Engendering shock and revulsion. Thus, the producer of pop group “Tatu” Ivan Shapovalov consciously created a reputation for his wards lesbians to cause a scandal and to attract attention. The press often appear scandalous stories about musicians such as Madonna, Britney Spears and others. During that pop music is often criticized in the press advocates of other musical directions.