Read on, suggest those we might have overlooked, and of course, click on your chosen streaming service to access our specially-curated playlist below. Our selection spans a whopping 50 years of the genre, too, so there's no danger of 1980s synth-and-jangle overkill. We've picked out 25 of the best we can think of and explained why they're a match for even the most gifted drivers. Good music is good music whatever genre is comes from.'Īnd now that the classification debate is all sorted (is it ever sorted?), which songs from pop's extensive and varied oeuvre should you be playing to test your stereo speakers? Thought you'd never ask. Perhaps our favourite such quote comes from Nina Persson, lead singer of The Cardigans, who said, 'Pop music is a difficult term to define. Peter Tork has argued, 'Pop music is aspirin and the blues are vitamins.' Prince once uttered, 'What's missing from pop music is danger' and Bono's thoughts on the matter include: 'Pop music often tells you everything is OK, where rock music tells you it's not OK, but you can change it.' We certainly agree with Johnny Rotten when he said, 'Pop music I have always loved best.'īut what of the nagging notion that pop music is lesser, diluted, lacking in substance and ultimately, manufactured? An understanding of contemporaneous societal pressures (and momentary pain relief from these) is surely a positive aspect of pop music, though. I am an advocate for diversity of all kinds, and acquired many novels and series from authors of color, about characters of color, leading to Crimson Romance being named the number one publisher of diverse romance in The Ripped Bodice's 2017 Diversity Study (by a rather large margin!), an accomplishment I am incredibly proud of.Of course, it is worth remembering that to be good encourages popularity, but to be popular is not always to be good.

I was also integral in the ground-floor development process of SNOW FALLING, the Jane the Virgin tie-in novel. In my years at Crimson Romance, I was the developmental editor on over 200 manuscripts, including some USA Today bestsellers. As Senior Editor of a romance imprint that required all hands on deck in order to run smoothly, I was involved in every aspect of the publishing process, including but not limited to acquisitions, developmental editing of contracted manuscripts, spearheading the LGBTQ+ category, IP project development, conference representation, copyediting and proofreading, working closely with the sales and publicity teams, and much more.

The Forgotten Debutante by Becky Lower