Dance Pop

Dance pop is a style of electronic dance music and a subgenre of pop music that evolved from disco, circa 1981, that combines dance beats with a pop or R&B song structure. Because there is such an emphasis on fully-formed songs in dance-pop, it is often viewed as a separate classification unto itself apart from pure dance music. Dance pop is also closely related to the teen pop and Eurodance movements in the mid 1980s and late 1990s, the rise of boy bands and girl groups, and the reintroduction of the vocoder and similar such innovations.

Like its disco forebear, dance pop is often viewed by musical historians as a producer's medium, as a great many musicians and song-writing teams arose from the genre. Musicians like André Cymone, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (all of whom had been musically connected with Prince), Patrick Leonard (who have been a member of the band Trillion), as well as DJs like Jellybean Benitez and Shep Pettibone, became stars in their own rights due to the sleek productions they lavished on artists like Madonna, Jody Watley and Janet Jackson.

Another dance pop production team of note is Stock Aitken and Waterman, who sculpted polished production for the likes of Kylie Minogue, Rick Astley and Bananarama. Indeed, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, both of whom had been stars in the disco era as part of the group Chic, were able to flourish as producers of material for newer artists in dance pop's rise.

This description is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses materials from the Wikipedia article "Dance-pop ".