Brill Building (also known as Brill Building pop or the Brill Building sound) is a

subgenre Genre () is any style or form of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...

pop music Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom.S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street, eds, ''iarchive:cambridgecompani00frit, The Cambridge Companion to Pop ...

that took its name from the

Brill Building The Brill Building is an office building at 1619 Broadway on 49th Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, just north of Times Square and farther uptown from the historic musical Tin Pan Alley neighborhood. The Brill Building hous ...

in New York City, where numerous teams of professional songwriters penned material for

girl group A girl group is a music act featuring two or more women in music, female singers who generally vocal harmony, harmonize together. The term "girl group" is also used in a narrower sense in the United States to denote the wave of American female p ...

s and

teen idol A teen idol is a celebrity with a large teenage fan base. Teen idols are generally young but are not necessarily teenagers themselves. An idol's popularity may be limited to teens, or may extend to all age groups. By region Asia Ea ...

s during the early 1960s. The term has also become a

metonym Metonymy () is a figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something associated with that thing or concept. For example, the word "wikt:suit, suit" may refer to a person from groups commonly wearing business attire, such ...

for the period in which those songwriting teams flourished. In actuality, most hits of the mid-1950s and early 1960s were written elsewhere.

Overview

The music conceived at the Brill Building was more sophisticated than other pop styles of the time, combining contemporary sounds with classic

Tin Pan Alley Tin Pan Alley was a collection of History of music publishing, music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the American popular music, popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally ...

songwriting. Productions often featured orchestras and bands with large rhythm and guitar sections, while lyrics focused on idealized romance and adolescent anxieties, only rarely exploring more mature themes. The genre dominated the American charts in the period between

Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one of the most significant cultural figures of the ...

's Army enlistment in 1958 and the onset of the

British Invasion The British Invasion was a cultural phenomenon of the mid-1960s, when Rock music, rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom and other aspects of Culture of the United Kingdom, British culture became popular in the United States with sign ...

in 1964. It declined thereafter, but demonstrated a continued influence on British and American pop and rock music in subsequent years. The genre introduced the concept of professional songwriters to

traditional pop Traditional pop (also known as vocal pop or pre-rock and roll pop) is Western culture, Western pop music that generally pre-dates the advent of rock and roll in the mid-1950s. The most popular and enduring songs from this era of music are known ...

and early

rock and roll Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock-n-roll, and rock 'n' roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from African ...

, and helped to inspire the girl group craze of the era. Other reasons for the style's decline was a tendency among writers and producers to duplicate earlier successes, resulting in many records that sounded the same, as well as the changing nature of society and consumer markets. Many of the genre's composers went on to further success as part of the singer-songwriter movement later in the 1960s and 1970s.

List of artists

1960s artists/songwriters Later artists *

Roy Wood Roy Wood (born 8 November 1946) is an English musician, singer and songwriter. He was particularly successful in the 1960s and 1970s as member and co-founder of the Move, Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard. Wood formed the Move in 1965, and ...

* Cindy Lee * Jessica Pratt

References

Bibliography

* * * * * Pop music genres American styles of music Music of New York City 20th-century music genres 1960s in American music {{music-genre-stub