Popular music relies heavily on electronic technology. If music was truly unplugged, there would be no electric guitar, no amps, no recording, certainly no radio, music video's or DJs. Music could be played live, to a small group of people in a small space, however would this still be called popular music? It wouldn't be able to reach large groups of people, and therefore would fall out of the 'popular music' category. Popular music needs to be accessible to large numbers of people, and without recording equipment, this would prove to be extremely difficult. In the case of MTV Unplugged, we may believe that we are hearing truly unplugged music, however it is shown on the television, and must be connected to amps which means that electronic technology has not truly been omitted in this case. Overall, I believe that popular music could never be truly unplugged.
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This is pretty good response to the question that addresses much of what Theberge has had to say about 21st Century popular music being inconceivable without electronic technology. Perhaps you could have discussed some of the individual technological breakthroughs.
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