The recent International Association for the Study of Popular Music conference gave me a lot to think about. I will discuss some specific issues that were addressed at the conference in the next few days. The overarching feeling I had leaving the conference was that our field really does need to make more connections with scholars in the various fields of music.Right now it seems that the majority of information available to music educators about popular music comes from the music industry and the various magazines, websites and lesson plans it provides our field with. There is some really interesting work being done by popular music specialists and as music educators we can connect with these specialists and figure out what information to include in our classrooms and how to work it into our programs. Topics discussed at the conference ranging from “hybridity” to “liveness” may now seem foreign to us as music educators but once understood in a way that we understand other concepts we have been working with throughout our careers can lead to some very interesting results in our classrooms. We can rely on popular music specialists to help us understand these concepts while we as music educators can focus on the pedagogy and context to provide our students with new ways to think about and experience music.