I've been racking my brains to think what they are and I've come up with two (there are probably many more.)
1. The pop song belongs to its copyright holder whereas the folk song belonged to no-one.
2. The pop song has been "fixed" by recorded performance.
These factors mean that in practice pop songs are handled much less freely than folk songs were. A traditional folk singer could do anything s/he liked with "The foggy, foggy dew", but if you rewrote the lyrics to "Yesterday" you'd be receiving letters from Paul MaCartney's lawyers.
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Date: 2004-05-24 03:09 pm (UTC)I've been racking my brains to think what they are and I've come up with two (there are probably many more.)
1. The pop song belongs to its copyright holder whereas the folk song belonged to no-one.
2. The pop song has been "fixed" by recorded performance.
These factors mean that in practice pop songs are handled much less freely than folk songs were. A traditional folk singer could do anything s/he liked with "The foggy, foggy dew", but if you rewrote the lyrics to "Yesterday" you'd be receiving letters from Paul MaCartney's lawyers.