As a child of the late 60's and 70's, I have the art of the pop song in my blood. Well, let me amend that: I have an appreciation of a well-crafted pop song coursing through me. It's not that I can write or perform one, but I like to think I know (and like) one when I hear it. And I understand the term "pop" in a pretty broad sense--as in the "popular arts." So looking at today's musical landscape, "pop" doesn't refer only to whatever it is that is played on Top 40 radio, but rather to anything that doesn't strive to be a part of the classical arts in contemporary music. So "pop" as I mean it covers everything from rock to hip-hop to bubblegum to country to dance to jazz to anything else you might hear on non-classical music stations. For my money (and my money might well be colored significantly by my status as an old fogey), what matters primarily to a great pop song is the melody, the lyric, the vocal, and the performance. And if these are reasonably good standards, then there is no doubt that the newly released old Neil Young performance Live at Massey Hall 1971 counts as a great piece of popular music. These songs range from folk to rock to (kinda) theatrical even though Neil limits himself to voice/guitar and voice/piano in every case. In virtually every case, the melody haunts, the lyrics arrest, and the vocal pierces. It is a remarkable performance by an artist who has given us 40 years of quality work.
This is an album I can recommend to old coggers like myself and to my university students. If you like popular music (in the sense defined above), you'll find a lot to like here.
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