Stylistic origins Pop rock
guitar pop | Derivative forms Indie pop
indie rock | |
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Cultural origins Late 1950s–mid 1960s, United States and United Kingdom Typical instruments Twelve-string electric guitar | ||
Jangle pop is a subgenre of pop rock that emphasizes trebly, ringing guitars (usually twelve-string electrics) and pop melodies reminiscent of those from the 1960s. While the Everly Brothers and the Searchers laid the foundations for the style, the Beatles and the Byrds are commonly credited with launching the popularity of the "jangly" sound that defined the genre. Particularly, the Byrds' recording of "Mr. Tambourine Man" (1965), which coined the genre name from the lyric "jingle-jangle morning" accompanied by the sounds of chiming guitars. Even though many subsequent bands drew hugely from the Byrds, they did not fit into the folk rock continuum as the Byrds did.
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In the early to mid 1980s, the term "jangle pop" emerged as a label for an American post-punk movement that recalled the sounds of "jangly" acts from the 1960s. Between 1983 and 1987, the description "jangle pop" was, in the US, used to describe bands like R.E.M., Let's Active and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers as well as the Paisley Underground subgenre, which incorporated psychedelic influences. In the UK, the term was applied to the new wave of raw and immediate sounding melodic guitar-bands collected on the NME's C86 compilations.
1960s–70s: Origins
The Everly Brothers and the Searchers laid the foundations for jangle pop in the late 1950s to mid 1960s; examples include "All I Have to Do Is Dream" (1958) and "Needles and Pins" (1964). The Beatles' use of the jangle sound in the songs "A Hard Day's Night", "What You're Doing", "Words of Love" (1964), and "Ticket to Ride" (1965) encouraged many artists to use the jangle sound or purchase a Rickenbacker twelve-string guitar. The Byrds began using similar guitars after seeing them played in the film A Hard Day's Night. The Byrds modeled their sound on The Beatles and prominently featured Roger McGuinn's Rickenbacker electric twelve-string guitar in many of their recordings. Rickenbacker guitars were expensive and rare, but could create a clear, ringing sound that could not be reproduced with the more "twangy" Telecaster or the "fatter, less sharp" sound of the Les Paul. Other groups such as The Who (in their early "Mod" years), The Beach Boys, The Hollies and Paul Revere & the Raiders continued the use of twelve-string Rickenbackers. Folk rock artists Simon and Garfunkel crossed over into jangle pop by adding twelve-string guitars to their music, which helped launch their commercial success.
Jangle pop saw a crossover with other subgenres of the 60s and 70s, including power pop artists like Raspberries and Big Star who blurred the line between the two styles, and folk rock artists such as Simon and Garfunkel.
1980s: Post-punk developments
The term "jangle pop" itself was not used during the original movement of the 1960s, but was later popularized during the 1980s to refer to the genre's 60s origins. The term "jangle pop" may be derived from the lyric "In the jingle jangle morning, I'll come following you" from The Byrds' cover of Bob Dylan's song "Mr. Tambourine Man", and the chiming sound of the twelve-string Rickenbacker's upper-register strings. The artists that pioneered jangle pop in the 60s and 70s would later become an influence on 1980s post-punk and new wave artists.
The resurgence of jangle pop in the 1980s began as an American post-punk movement that marked a return to the chiming guitars and pop melodies of the 1960s. In 1979, the Athens, Georgia group Pylon debuted with an "angular, propulsive jangle pop sound" that would influence fellow members of the Athens, Georgia music scene, including R.E.M.
In New York City during this period, "jangle pop" could reasonably be used to describe the more conventionally folk-rock Willie Nile, The Smithereens, and popular but unsigned four-piece band The Floor Models, all of whom had origins in Greenwich Village clubs such as The Bitter End, Folk City and Kenny's Castaways, as did many significant East Coast 1960s folk-rock acts. The Smithereens and Floor Models in particular made extensive use of various models of the Rickenbacker twelve-string electric guitar as well as the much rarer Hagström twelve-string electric guitar.
The sound of jangle pop was "essentially a pop-based format" with "some folk-rock overtones." AllMusic claims that it was non-mainstream music with "deliberately cryptic" lyrics and "raw and amateurish" DIY production. Between 1983 and 1987, "Southern-pop bands like R.E.M. and Let's Active" and a subgenre called "Paisley Underground" incorporated psychedelic influences. An article in Blogcritics magazine claims that besides R.E.M., the "... only other jangle-pop band to enjoy large sales in America were the Bangles, from Los Angeles. While better known for their glossy hits like 'Manic Monday', their first album and EP were organic, real jangle-pop efforts in a Byrds/Big Star vein, spiced with a dash of psychedelia on their debut."
Jangle pop influenced college rock during the early 1980s. In Austin, Texas, the term "New Sincerity" was loosely used for a similar group of bands, led by The Reivers, Wild Seeds and True Believers. In the UK, The Smiths, Felt, and Aztec Camera can be considered part of jangle pop, as can the raw and immediate sounding melodic guitar-bands of the C86 scene.
1990s–present
In Canada, jangle pop continued into the 1990s with bands like The Tragically Hip and Barenaked Ladies, which had elements of jangle in their earlier material. Barenaked Ladies' early work, from their 1992 debut album Gordon to their 1998 multi-platinum record Stunt, featured distinctly jangle pop songs and influences. Jangle pop also continued to influence American artists into the 1990s. In particular, Arizona artists from Gin Blossoms' 1992 breakthrough album New Miserable Experience to The Refreshments' 1996 debut album Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy embraced the genre, a movement that was dubbed "Southwestern jangle pop." Jangle-pop influenced American rock artists such as Gainesville, Florida's Sister Hazel, Berkeley, California's Counting Crows and Boston, Massachusetts artists Guster, continued to see mainstream success in the 1990s and 2000s.
In 2015, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man" and the first wave of jangle pop, Jakob Dylan headlined an all-star concert including artists Beck and Fiona Apple at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. The concert will be followed by a compilation album featuring covers of songs by jangle pop artists such as The Byrds and The Beach Boys.