1. Concept
The terms “popular music” and “popular song,” abbreviated today to “pop,” were already current in the early modern period as derivations from the Latin populus (People) – in English as in many other European languages, but not in German, where the cognate Pöbel always bore the derogatory connotation “mob.” Johann Gottfried Herder instead coined the term Volkslied as a translation of the English “popular song,” drawin…