For 40 years, Bruce Springsteen has held center stage as the quintessential American rock and roll artist, expressing the hopes and dreams of the American everyman and every woman through his vast array of insightful and inspirational songs. In Counting Down Bruce Springsteen: His 100 Finest Songs, rock writer Jim Beviglia dares to rank his finest songs in descending order from the 100th to his no. 1 greatest song. In this unique book, Beviglia reflects not only on why each song has earned its place on list but lays out the story behind each of the 100, supplying fresh insights on the musical and lyrical content of Springsteen's remarkable body of work. Counting Down Bruce Springsteen brings together critical historical and biographical information to explain the making and importance of each song to its listeners, painting a fascinating portrait of Springsteen as a major American songwriter and consummate recording artist. Counting Down Bruce Springsteen is the perfect playlist builder, whether it is for the diehard fan or the newbie just getting acquainted with the work of the Boss!

Wilcopedia is a comprehensive guide to the music of the preeminent American rock band of the twenty-first century. It offers a thorough appraisal of the entire Wilco canon, with detailed insights into every album and song the band have released, as well as side projects, collaborations, covers, and more. Since their formation in 1994, Wilco have become one of the most acclaimed and influential bands of modern times. While previous books have told their story in a biographical sense, Wilcopedia zeroes in on the music, tracing the evolution of the band s material from the studio to the concert stage, from the formative Uncle Tupelo recordings through the mould-breaking Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to latter-day gems Star Wars and Schmilco and beyond. Throughout their twenty-five year career, Wilco s founder and primary songwriter, Jeff Tweedy, has led his band through various shifts in line-up and genre that have kept fans on their toes and made their music difficult to categorize. While they are largely considered an Americana act, their music has touched on hard rock, electronica, pop, soul, punk, folk, and more. If you re looking for a thorough appraisal of the band s first quarter-century, one thing s for sure: Wilcopedia will love you, baby.

While she once made headlines with her hedonistic lifestyle, part of Nicks' irresistible appeal is her youthful vulnerability and mystical aura, making her an artist with whom fans have an unbreakable emotional connection. Crowned 'The Reigning Queen Of Rock And Roll' by Rolling Stone, and with gold and quadruple platinum solo albums under her beaded belt, Stevie Nicks has enjoyed the ultimate in rock 'n' roll success in her life as a recording artist - but this charmed life has come as a result of hard graft, self-belief and a devotion to creativity above all; hers has been a journey of intense highs and lows.This book, a celebration of the Stevie Nicks phenomenon, takes us on her journey from peripatetic mid-West childhood to her explosion onto the music scene as chiffon-swathed rock goddess, right up to present day. Including exclusive interviews with some of Stevie's associates and collaborators from over the years, author Zoe Howe explores the mystique while retaining the magic of this modern-day musical sorceress and wise woman of rock. This revised edition will include information about the full line-up Fleetwood Mac tour dates ('On With The Show'), the 24 Karat Gold self-portrait collection exhibition Stevie curated in Hollywood to coincide with her 24 Karat Gold album. Her work with the LA band Haim, coping with the loss of her close friends Glenn Frey and Prince, being a Rolling Stone cover girl again and more.

Here is the story of the boy from Brixton who became one of the most famous artists of the 20th century, returned to prominence in the 21st with music and visions informed by a sense of his own mortality and who through his life and work, changed lives and those of generations to come. David Bowie's music is loved by many and known by all as the soundtrack to the world of changes that was heralded by the creation of Ziggy Stardust. Through the hits and personas that followed, the work in art, drama, film and fashion, Bowie's voice rang clearly across the decades summoning everyone to a party where strangeness would be celebrated and the 'now' would always be new. Yet David Bowie remained forever the outsider, observing, creating, collaborating, inspiring and moving forward. This book follows a life that as much as any other was a personal journey but one in which so many joined and made part of their own.

To date, there has been a significant gap in work on the social history of music in Britain from 1950 to the present day. The three volumes of Live Music in Britain address this gap and do so through a unique prism-that of live music. The key theme of the books is the changing nature of the live music industry in the UK, focused upon popular music but including all musical genres. Via this focus, the books offer new insights into a number of other areas, including the relationship between commercial and public funding of music, changing musical fashions and tastes, the impact of changing technologies, the changing balance of power within the music industries, the role of the state in regulating and promoting various musical activities within an increasingly globalised music economy, and the effects of demographic and other social changes on music culture. Drawing on new archival research, a wide range of academic and non-academic secondary sources, participant observation and a series of interviews with key personnel, the books have the potential to become landmark works within Popular Music Studies and broader cultural history. The second volume covers the period from Hyde Park to the Hacienda (1968-84).

Pop music and rock music are often treated as separate genres but the distinction has always been blurred. Motti Regev argues that pop-rock is best understood as a single musical form defined by the use of electric and electronic instruments, amplification and related techniques. The history of pop-rock extends from the emergence of rock'n'roll in the 1950s to a variety of contemporary fashions and trends rock, punk, soul, funk, techno, hip hop, indie, metal, pop and many more. This book offers a highly original account of the emergence of pop-rock music as a global phenomenon in which Anglo-American and many other national and ethnic variants interact in complex ways. Pop-rock is analysed as a prime instance of 'aesthetic cosmopolitanism' that is, the gradual formation, in late modernity, of world culture as a single interconnected entity in which different social groupings around the world increasingly share common ground in their aesthetic perceptions, expressive forms and cultural practices. Drawing on a wide array of examples, this path-breaking book will be of great interest to students and scholars in cultural sociology, media and cultural studies as well as the study of popular music.

Despite the fact that most of jazz's major innovators and performers have been African American, the overwhelming majority of jazz journalists, critics, and authors have been and continue to be white men. No major mainstream jazz publication has ever had a black editor or publisher. Ain't But a Few of Us presents over two dozen candid dialogues with black jazz critics and journalists ranging from Greg Tate, Farah Jasmine Griffin, and Robin D. G. Kelley to Tammy Kernodle, Ron Welburn, and John Murph. They discuss the obstacles to access for black jazz journalists, outline how they contend with the world of jazz writing dominated by white men, and point out that these racial disparities are not confined to jazz but hamper their efforts at writing about other music genres as well. Ain't But a Few of Us also includes an anthology section, which reprints classic essays and articles from black writers and musicians such as LeRoi Jones, Archie Shepp, A. B. Spellman, and Herbie Nichols. Contributors Eric Arnold, Bridget Arnwine, Angelika Beener, Playthell Benjamin, Herb Boyd, Bill Brower, Jo Ann Cheatham, Karen Chilton, Janine Coveney, Marc Crawford, Stanley Crouch, Anthony Dean-Harris, Jordannah Elizabeth, Lofton Emenari III, Bill Francis, Barbara Gardner, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Jim Harrison, Eugene Holley Jr., Haybert Houston, Robin James, Willard Jenkins, Martin Johnson, LeRoi Jones, Robin D. G. Kelley, Tammy Kernodle, Steve Monroe, Rahsaan Clark Morris, John Murph, Herbie Nichols, Don Palmer, Bill Quinn, Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr., Ron Scott, Gene Seymour, Archie Shepp, Wayne Shorter, A. B. Spellman, Rex Stewart, Greg Tate, Billy Taylor, Greg Thomas, Robin Washington, Ron Welburn, Hollie West, K. Leander Williams, Ron Wynn

Stephen Botek apprenticed at the side of some of the greats of the jazz era, learning not only about music, but about life. Growing up in small-town Pennsylvania in the shadow of the Dorseys, Botek decides to follow his muse to a future in jazz. He gets mentored by clarinet great Buddy DeFranco and saxophone legend Joe Allard, meets up with greats such as Artie Shaw and Dizzy Gillespie along the way, and follows in Glenn Miller's footsteps with the Army Air Force Band. A primer on the jazz era, as well as an account of the benefits of apprenticeship, SONG ON MY LIPS not only recounts stories of the greats but takes us backstage, to their studios, and to many of the unique venues of the time. Jazz aficionados and new musicians alike will learn much about the music from this unique life story.

"Everybody has to start somewhere. Businessmen start on the ground floor and try to work their way up the corporate ladder. Baseball players bide their time in the minor leagues wishing for an opportunity to move up and play in the majors. Musical compositions aren't very different-some songs just don't climb the charts the first time they're recorded. However, with perseverance, the ideal singer, the right chemistry, impeccable timing, vigorous promotion, and a little luck, these songs can become very famous." So writes Bob Leszczak in the opening pages of Who Did It First? Great Pop Cover Songs and Their Original Artists. In this second volume in the Who Did It First? series, Leszczak explores the hidden history of the most famous, indeed legendary, pop songs and standards. As he points out, the version you purchased, swayed to, sang to, and grew up with is often not the first version recorded. Like wine and cheese, some tunes do get better with age, and behind each there is a story. Included are little-known facts and amusing anecdotes, often gathered through Leszczak's vast archive of personal interviews with the singers and songwriters, record producers and label owners, who wrote, sang, recorded, and distributed either the original first cut or one of its classic covers. The second in a series of titles devoted to the story of great songs and their revival as great covers, Who Did It First? Great Pop Cover Songs and Their Original Artists is the perfect playlist builder. So whether quizzing friends at a party, answering a radio station contest, or just satisfying an insatiable curiosity to know who really did do it first, this work is a must-have.

In the 1920s, Southern record companies ventured to cities like Dallas, Atlanta, and New Orleans, where they set up primitive recording equipment in makeshift studios. They brought in street singers, medicine show performers, pianists from the juke joints and barrelhouses. The music that circulated through Southern work camps, prison farms, and vaudeville shows would be lost to us if it hadn't been captured on location by these performers and recorders. Eminent blues historian Paul Oliver uncovers these folk traditions and the circumstances under which they were recorded, rescuing the forefathers of the blues who were lost before they even had a chance to be heard. A careful excavation of the earliest recordings of the blues by one of its foremost experts, Barrelhouse Blues expands our definition of that most American style of music.

The Singer-Songwriter in Europe is the first book to explore and compare the multifaceted discourses and practices of this figure within and across linguistic spaces in Europe and in dialogue with spaces beyond continental borders. The concept of the singer-songwriter is significant and much-debated for a variety of reasons. Many such musicians possess large and zealous followings, their output often esteemed politically and usually held up as the nearest popular music gets to high art, such facets often yielding sizeable economic benefits. Yet this figure, per se, has been the object of scant critical discussion, with individual practitioners celebrated for their isolated achievements instead. In response to this lack of critical knowledge, this volume identifies and interrogates the musical, linguistic, social and ideological elements that configure the singer-songwriter and its various equivalents in Europe, such as the French auteur-compositeur-interprete and the Italian cantautore, since the late 1940s. Particular attention is paid to the emergence of this figure in the post-war period, how and why its contours have changed over time and space subsequently, cross-cultural influences, and the transformative agency of this figure as regards party and identity politics in lyrics and music, often by means of individual case studies. The book's polycentric approach endeavours to redress the hitherto Anglophone bias in scholarship on the singer-songwriter in the English-speaking world, drawing on the knowledge of scholars from across Europe and from a variety of academic disciplines, including modern language studies, musicology, sociology, literary studies and history.

Music and Irish Identity represents the latest stage in a life-long project for Gerry Smyth, focusing here on the ways in which music engages with particular aspects of Irish identity. The nature of popular music and the Irish identity it supposedly articulates have both undergone profound change in recent years: the first as a result of technological and wider industrial changes in the organisation and dissemination of music as seen, for example, with digital platforms such as YouTube, Spotify and iTunes. A second factor has been Ireland's spectacular fall from economic grace after the demise of the "Celtic Tiger", and the ensuing crisis of national identity. Smyth argues that if, as the stereotypical association would have it, the Irish have always been a musical race, then that association needs re-examination in the light of developments in relation to both cultural practice and political identity. This book contributes to that process through a series of related case studies that are both scholarly and accessible. Some of the principal ideas broached in the text include the (re-)establishment of music as a key object of Irish cultural studies; the theoretical limitations of traditional musicology; the development of new methodologies specifically designed to address the demands of Irish music in all its aspects; and the impact of economic austerity on musical negotiations of Irish identity. The book will be of seminal importance to all those interested in popular music, cultural studies and the wider fate of Ireland in the twenty-first century.

While attention has been paid to various aspects of music education in China, to date no single publication has systematically addressed the complex interplay of sociopolitical transformations underlying the development of popular music and music education in the multilevel culture of China. Before the implementation of the new curriculum reforms in China at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there was neither Chinese nor Western popular music in textbook materials. Popular culture had long been prohibited in school music education by China's strong revolutionary orientation, which feared 'spiritual pollution' by Western cultures. However, since the early twenty-first century, education reform has attempted to help students deal with experiences in their daily lives and has officially included learning the canon of popular music in the music curriculum. In relation to this topic, this book analyses how social transformation and cultural politics have affected community relations and the transmission of popular music through school music education. Ho presents music and music education as sociopolitical constructions of nationalism and globalization. Moreover, how popular music is received in national and global contexts and how it affects the construction of social and musical meanings in school music education, as well as the reformation of music education in mainland China, is discussed. Based on the perspectives of school music teachers and students, the findings of the empirical studies in this book address the power and potential use of popular music in school music education as a producer and reproducer of cultural politics in the music curriculum in the mainland.

Cultural Histories of Noise, Sound and Listening in Europe, 1300-1918 presents a range of historical case studies on the sounding worlds of the European past. The chapters in this volume explore ways of thinking about sound historically, and seek to understand how people have understood and negotiated their relationships with the sounding world in Europe from the Middle Ages through to the early twentieth century. They consider, in particular: sound and music in the later Middle Ages; the politics of sound in the early modern period; the history of the body and perception during the Ancien Regime; and the sounds of the city in the nineteenth century and sound and colonial rule at the fin de siecle. The case studies also range in geographical orientation to include considerations not only of Britain and France, the countries most considered in European historical sound studies in English-language scholarship to date, but also Bosnia-Herzegovina, British Colonial India, Germany, Italy and Portugal. Out of this diverse group of case studies emerge significant themes that recur time and again, varying according to time and place: sound, power and identity; sound as a marker of power or violence; and sound, physiology and sensory perception and technologies of sound, consumption and meaning.

This book explores the highly-valued, and often highly-charged, ideal of authenticity in hip-hop - what it is, why it is important, and how it affects the day-to-day life of rap artists. By analyzing the practices, identities, and struggles that shape the lives of rappers in the London scene, the study exposes the strategies and tactics that hip-hop practitioners engage in to negotiate authenticity on an everyday basis. In-depth interviews and fieldwork provide insight into the nature of authenticity in global hip-hop, and the dynamics of cultural appropriation, globalization, marketization, and digitization through a combined set of ethnographic, theoretical, and cultural analysis. Despite growing attention to authenticity in popular music, this book is the first to offer a comprehensive theoretical model explaining the reflexive approaches hip-hop artists adopt to 'live out' authenticity in everyday life. This model will act as a blueprint for new studies in global hip-hop and be generative in other authenticity research, and for other music genres such as punk, rock and roll, country, and blues that share similar issues surrounding contested artist authenticity.

This new study of the intersection of romance novels with vocal music records a society on the cusp of modernisation, with a printing industry emerging to serve people's growing appetites for entertainment amidst their changing views of religion and the occult. No mere diversion, fiction was integral to musical culture and together both art forms reveal key intellectual currents that circulated in the early nineteenth-century British home and were shared by many consumers. Roger Hansford explores relationships between music produced in the early 1800s for domestic consumption and the fictional genre of romance, offering a new view of romanticism in British print culture. He surveys romance novels by Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, Sir Walter Scott, James Hogg, Edward Bulwer and Charles Kingsley in the period 1790-1850, interrogating the ways that music served to create mood and atmosphere, enlivened social scenes and contributed to plot developments. He explores the connections between musical scenes in romance fiction and the domestic song literature, treating both types of source and their intersection as examples of material culture. Hansford's intersectional reading revolves around a series of imaginative figures - including the minstrel, fairies, mermaids, ghosts, and witches, and Christians engaged both in virtue and vice - the identities of which remained consistent as influence passed between the art forms. While romance authors quoted song lyrics and included musical descriptions and characters, their novels recorded and modelled the performance of songs by the middle and upper classes, influencing the work of composers and the actions of performers who read romance fiction.

Since the 1980s, music videos have been everywhere, and today almost all of the most-viewed clips on YouTube are music videos. However, in academia, music videos do not currently share this popularity. Music Video After MTV gives music video its due academic credit by exploring the changing landscapes surrounding post-millennial music video. Across seven chapters, the book addresses core issues relating to the study of music videos, including the history, analysis, and audiovisual aesthetics of music videos. Moreover, the book is the first of its kind to truly address the recent changes following the digitization of music video, including its changing cycles of production, distribution and reception, the influence of music videos on other media, and the rise of new types of online music video. Approaching music videos from a composite theoretical framework, Music Video After MTV brings music video research up to speed in several areas: it offers the first account of the research history of music videos, the first truly audiovisual approach to music video studies and it presents numerous inspiring case studies, ranging from classics by Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham to recent experimental and interactive videos that interrogate the very limits of music video.

There is a growing awareness around the world of the pressing need to archive the material remnants of popular music so as to safeguard the national and local histories of this cultural form. Current research suggests that in the past 20 or so years there has been an expansion of DIY heritage practice, with the founding of numerous DIY popular music institutions, archives and museums around the world. This edited collection seeks to explore the role of DIY or Pro-Am (Professional-Amateur) practitioners of popular music archiving and preservation. It looks critically at ideas around "DIY preservationism," "self-authorised" and "unauthorised" heritage practice and the "DIY institution," while also unpacking the potentialities of bottom-up, community-based interventions into the archiving and preservation of popular music's material history. With an international scope and an interdisciplinary approach, this is an important reference for scholars of popular music, heritage studies and cultural studies.

Mabel Daniels (1877-1971): An American Composer in Transition assesses Daniels within the context of American music of the first half of the twentieth century. Daniels wrote fresh sounding works that were performed by renowned orchestras and ensembles during her lifetime but her works have only recently begun to be performed again. The book explains why works by Daniels and other women composers fell out of favor and argues for their performance today. This study of Daniels's life and works evinces transition in women's roles in composition, the professionalization of women composers, and the role that Daniels played in the institutionalization of American art music. Daniels's dual role as a patron-composer is unique and expressive of her transitional status.

This title was first published in 1983.

The chapters collected in this volume shed light on the areas of interaction between film studies and heavy metal research, exploring how the audio-visual medium of film relates to, builds on and shapes metal culture. At one end of the spectrum, metal music serves as a form of ambient background in horror films that creates an intense and somewhat threatening atmosphere; at the other end, the high level of performativity attached to the metal spectacle is emphasized. Alongside these tendencies, the recent and ongoing wave of metal documentaries has taken off, relying on either satire or hagiography.

Offers expansive and intersecting understandings of erotic subjectivity, intimacy, and trauma in performance ethnography and in institutional and disciplinary settings. Focused on research within Africa and the African diaspora, contributors to this volume think through the painful iterations of trauma, systemic racism, and the vestiges of colonial oppression as well as the processes of healing and emancipation that emerge from wounded states. Their chapters explore an acoustemology of intimacy, woman-centered eroticism generated through musical performance, desire and longing in ethnographic knowledge production, and listening as intimacy. On the other end of the spectrum, authors engage with and question the fetishization of race in jazz; examine conceptions of vulgarity and profanity in movement and dance-ethnography; and address pain, trauma, and violation, whether physical, spiritual, intellectual, or political. Authors in this volume strive toward empathetic, ethical, and creative ethnographic engagements that summon vulnerability and healing. They propose pathways to aesthetic, discursive transformation by reorienting conceptions of knowledge as emergent, performative, and sonically enabled. The resulting book explores sensory knowledge that is frequently left unacknowledged in ethnographic work, advancing conversations about performed sonic and somatic modalities through which we navigate our entanglements as engaged scholars.

Madonna is perhaps one of the most consistently transgressive and self-transforming artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The recent release of two critically acclaimed and best-selling albums and a sold-out world tour have renewed media and academic interest in the artist. Madonna presents a set of strikingly new challenges to cultural analysis, and new developments in Gender, Queer and Ethnic studies have shed more light on her entire oeuvre. Whilst the contributors do refer to classic cultural theorists such as Baudrillard, Zizek, Foucault and Barthes, new theoretical approaches to Madonna's work feature prominently. In view of this, the present volume offers new perspectives on Madonna's work to date, addressing her configurations of race, gender and sex(uality) and with special emphasis on her resurrection after the Sex backlash in the early 1990s. The collection focuses on new Madonna-related topics such as Hinduism, Judaism, Japanese culture, All-American culture, Queer culture, Motherhood and her influence on newer 'girl acts' such as the Spice Girls and Britney Spears. The book explores the themes of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and celebrity consumption through the lens of Madonna's songs, videos and shows. An international array of scholars portrays Madonna's popularisation of the notion that identity is not fixed and can be continuously rearranged and revamped. The book should have wide appeal for all those concerned with gender studies, cultural studies, ethnic studies, lesbian and gay musicology as well as popular music studies.

The very first authorised biography of one of the most invigorating, inventive and independent bands the UK has ever produced. Written by Enter Shikari expert, Luke Morton, Standing Like Statues tells the Enter Shikari story through a series of comprehensive interviews with all members of the band and the team that surrounds them. This hardback edition is printed in full colour with a huge selection of unseen photographs.

Tempo: A Scarecrow Press Music Series on Rock, Pop, and Culture offers titles that explore rock and popular music through the lens of social and cultural history, revealing the dynamic relationship between musicians, music, and their milieu. Like other major art forms, rock and pop music comment on their cultural, political, and even economic situation, reflecting technological advances, psychological concerns, religious feelings, and artistic trends of the times. Like other major musical artists, Bruce Springsteen's work has reflected, revealed, and reacted to modern American realities over the course of his forty-year career. Since releasing his first record in 1973, Springsteen has sold more than a hundred million albums worldwide, played thousands of concerts, and won Grammy, Golden Globe, Emmy, and Academy awards. More importantly, however, he is one of the few twentieth-century singer-songwriters to serve as the voice of his generation, a defining artist whose works reflect the values, dreams, and concerns of many Americans. In Bruce Springsteen: American Poet and Prophet, Donald L. Deardorff II explores the works of "The Boss," defining the exact nature of Springsteen's cultural influence. With the release of seventeen studio albums, Springsteen's influence and popularity spans multiple generations. Deardorff classifies and explains Springsteen's remarkable reception as it evolved from small beginnings in the Jersey shore bars of the 1970s to worldwide fame today. This book thoughtfully considers the trenchant commentary Springsteen's albums make on the mythology of the American Dream, working-class concerns, the changing character of American masculinity, the relationship between Americans and their government, the importance of social justice, and the evocation of an American spirit. Bruce Springsteen: American Poet and Prophet will appeal to more than just Springsteen fans. It describes Springsteen as an apt critic of his own culture, whose music paints literary portraits that uncover the realities of an American society constantly evolving, while striving toward its own betterment.