Popular Music 

About: Popular Music is an academic journal published by Cambridge University Press. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Popular music & Musical. It has an ISSN identifier of 0261-1430. Over the lifetime, 1468 publications have been published receiving 18103 citations.

Authenticity as authentication

Abstract: This article argues for the prematurity of any dismissal of the notion of authenticity as meaningful within popular music discourse. It synthesises a range of views as to how authenticity is constructed, and offers a tri-partite typology dependent on asking who, rather than what, is being authenticated. It focuses on rock and folk genres, but also argues that the generic nature of the typology makes it applicable to any other genre wherein listeners are concerned to ask whether a musical utterance can be construed as sincere. Preamble ‘Authentic’. ‘Real’. ‘Honest’. ‘Truthful’. ‘With integrity’. ‘Actual’. ‘Genuine’. ‘Essential’. ‘Sincere’. Of all the value terms employed in music discourse, these are perhaps the most loaded. They are familiar from the writings of academic scholars, as will be made plain below. They have been present, in their various ways, in fan and journalistic writing (most notably in the pages of Rolling Stone). In almost all cases, it is music to which these qualifiers can be attached that such writing, and presumably thinking, has prized. Of the terms, it is the first which is most familiar from academic discourse and is, therefore, the one to which I shall reduce the others for the purposes of this article. On occasions, attachment of this term can be justified with close reference to details of sonic design, even if such a process is extremely long-winded: in a previous article, I have demonstrated the viability of just such an approach. 2 Elsewhere, such an attachment is more arbitrary. In the long run, the resultant experiences in these latter cases may be even more analytically interesting in that the influence of the musical text on these occasions may be said to be nil. 3 There are, however, various authenticities, sharing a base assumption about ‘essential(ized), real, actual, essence’ (Taylor 1997, p. 21): they are concisely described in Gilbert and Pearson’s identification of the requirements of a 1980s ‘authentic’ rock, wherein artists must speak the truth of their (and others’) situations. Authenticity was guaranteed by the presence of a specific type of instrumentation . . . [the singer’s] fundamental role was to represent the culture from which he comes. (Gilbert and Pearson 1999, pp. 164–5) The purpose of this article is to explore just some of the ramifications of the term and to offer a globalising perspective analysing the three senses conflated in the above quotation: that artists speak the truth of their own situation; that they speak the truth of the situation of (absent) others; and that they speak the truth of their own culture, thereby representing (present) others. It will do this with primary reference to rock music and to contemporary folk music, although I believe my analysis to be applicable to other genres. Only two other writers appear to have

Analysing popular music: theory, method and practice

Abstract: Popular music analysis-why? One of the initial problems for any new field of study is the attitude of incredulity it meets. The serious study of popular music is no exception to this rule. It is often confronted with an attitude of bemused suspicion implying that there is something weird about taking ‘fun’ seriously or finding ‘fun’ in ‘serious things’. Such attitudes are of considerable interest when discussing the aims and methods of popular music analysis and serve as an excellent introduction to this article.

Why 1955? Explaining the advent of rock music

Abstract: At the time, 1929, 1939, 1945 and 1968 all seemed important turning points in the track of our civilisation. By contrast, as anyone alive at the time will attest, 1955 seemed like an unexceptional year in the United States at least. Right in the middle of the ‘middle-of-the-road’ years of the Eisenhower presidency, 1955 hardly seemed like the year for a major aesthetic revolution. Yet it was in the brief span between 1954 and 1956 that the rock aesthetic displaced the jazz-based aesthetic in American popular music. Frank Sinatra, Tommy Dorsey, Patty Page, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Kay Starr, Les Paul, Eddie Fisher, Jo Stafford, Frankie Lane, Johnnie Ray and Doris Day gave way on the popular music charts to Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, The Platters, Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Carl Perkins and the growing legion of rockers.

Ethnography and popular music studies

Abstract: Simon Frith (1982) once bemoaned the fact that students would rather sit in the library and study popular music (mainly punk) in terms of the appropriate cultural theory, than conduct ethnographic research which would treat popular music as social practice and process. Ten years later the literature on popular music is still lacking in ethnography.

Rethinking the music industry

Abstract: This article examines a very basic question for popular music studies: what is ‘the music industry?’ It surveys the usage of the term in various arenas and argues that it is often used in ways which state or imply that the industry is a homogenous unit with shared objectives and interests. However, the reality is that this picture is, at best, outdated and an inaccurate portrayal of the organisational structure of the global music economy in the mid-2000s. In addition, to think of a single ‘music industry’ rather than music industries, plural, is simplistic and does little to aid understanding of those cultural industries which are primarily concerned with the creation, management and selling of music, either as a physical/digital product, a performance, or as a bundle of intellectual property rights. We tease out the implications of this, especially as they relate to understanding what is routinely referred to as ‘the music industry’ and the development of policies for it.