When singer Amy Winehouse was found dead at her London home in 2011, the press inducted her into what Kurt Cobain's mother named the 27 Club. Now he's gone and joined that stupid club, she said in 1994, after being told that her son, the front man of Nirvana, had committed suicide. I told him not to... Kurt's mom was referring to the extraordinary roll call of stars who died at the same young age, including Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison of the Doors. All were talented. All were dissipated. All were 27. In this haunting book, author Howard Sounes conducts the definitive forensic investigation into the lives and deaths of the six most iconic members of the Club, as well as some lesser known members, to discover what, apart from coincidence, this phenomenon signifies. In a grimly fascinating journey through the dark side of the music business, Sounes uncovers a common story of excess, madness, and self-destruction. The fantasies, half-truths, and mythologies that have become associated with the Club are debunked. Instead, a clear and compelling narrative emerges, one based on hard facts, that unites these lost souls in both life and death.

Pink Floyd are one of the world's most successful rock bands of all time. After their breakthrough record, "The Dark Side Of The Moon", brought prog rock to the masses, they have never looked back, and their influence continues today in rock, ambient and techno music. "Pink Floyd: Glorious Torment" is an unofficial, intriguing review of their path to mega success, tracking too the dismay of Syd Barrett's decline and the battles and the glory of their music. Covering all the major events in their long career this great new book is accompanied by revealing and evocative images of the band.

The first in-depth study of David Bowie’s music videos across a sustained period takes on interweaving storyworlds of an iconic career. Remarkable for their capacity to conjure elaborate imagery, Bowie’s videos provide fascinating exemplars of the artistry and remediation of music video. When their construction is examined across several years, they appear as time-travelling vessels, transporting kooky characters and strange story-world components across time and space. By charting Bowie’s creative and collaborative process across five distinct phases, David Bowie and the Art of Music Video shows how he played a vital role in establishing music video as an artform. Filling a gap in the existing literature, this book shines a light on the significant contributions of directors such as Mick Rock, Stanley Dorfman and David Mallet, each of whom taught Bowie much about how to use the form. By examining Bowie's collaborative process, his use of surrealist strategies and his integration of avant-garde art with popular music and media, the book provides a history of music video in relation to the broader fields of audiovisual media, visual music and art.

Geek Rock: An Exploration of Music and Subculture examines the relationship between geek culture and popular music, tracing a history from the late 1960s to the present day. The term "geek rock" refers to forms of popular music that celebrate all things campy, kitschy, and quirky. In this collection of essays, contributors explore the evolution of this music genre, from writing songs about poodles, girls, monster movies, and outer space to just what it means to be "white and nerdy." Editors Alex DiBlasi and Victoria Willis have gathered eleven essays from across the world, covering every facet of geek culture from its earliest influences, including *Frank Zappa *Captain Beefheart *Devo *They Might Be Giants *Weird Al Yankovic *Present-day advocates of "Nerdcore" Geek Rock offers a working history of this subgenre, which has finally begun to come under academic study. The essays take a variety of scholarly approaches, encompassing musicology, race, gender studies, sociology, and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Geek Rock will be of interest to readers of all backgrounds: music scholars, college and university professors, sociologists, and die-hard fans.

This book features the images from Pink Floyd's album sleeves and promotional material designed for the group. It features almost all Pink Floyd's iconic album covers, posters, singles bags, a selection of band photos, booklet pages and rough artwork that developed into iconic designs. This new edition incorporates an additional 32 pages of material used in re-issues created since 2007. Storm Thorgerson, who died in 2013, was a world-famous designer whose memoirs of his time spent with Pink Floyd are combined with all the artwork he created to represent the band at each stage of their career. Storm revisited the work he created for the albums and offers insights into the work that went into the creation of this legendary album art. Designers who worked with Storm have all contributed to this new edition of Mind Over Matter. Amongst the new material is artwork from the Oh By The Way box set, the Atom Heart Mother 40th Anniversary 'Wire Cow' sculpture, the Why Pink Floyd? Campaign and the Dark Side Of The Moon 40th Anniversary images and stickers.

George Harrison was one of the most prolific popular music composers of the late 20th century. During his tenure with the Beatles, he caught the wave of 1960s pop culture and began channeling its pervasive influence through his music. Often described as "The Invisible Singer," his solo recordings reveal him to be an elusive, yet essential, element in the Beatles' sound. The discussion of George Harrison's Beatle tracks featured in the text employs a Songscape approach that blends accessible music analysis with an exploration of the virtual space created on the sound recording. This approach is then used to explore Harrison's extensive catalog of solo works, which, due to their varied cultural sources, seem increasingly like early examples of Global Pop. In that sense, the music of George Harrison may ultimately be viewed as an important locus for pan-cultural influence in the 20th century, making this book essential reading for those interested in the history of songwriting and recording as well as the cultural study of popular music.

"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 Rock and Roll Cover Songs and Their Original Artists. In this third and final volume to the Who Did It First? series, readers explore the hidden history of the most famous, indeed legendary, rock songs and standards. Did you know that the Wild Ones had a "Wild Thing" before the Troggs? Were you aware that it took a second shot for "Double Shot of My Baby's Love" to make the charts? Had you heard that Guy Villari and the Regents dated "Barbara Ann" five years before the Beach Boys? Were you privy to the fact that there was "Hanky Panky" going on with Ellie Greenwich and the Raindrops, as well as the Summits, before Tommy James and the Shondells made the song a number 1 classic? Some of the information contained within these pages will shock, rattle and roll you. You may fancy yourself a music expert, but this third and last in a series of titles devoted to the story of great songs and their revival as great covers is filled with eye openers. In many instances, one's eyes will open even wider as a result of the list of cover artists (with Paul Anka's remake of Nirvana's "Smells like Teen Spirit" leading the pack). Who Did It First? Great Rock and Roll 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.

Boy Bands and the Performance of Pop Masculinity provides a history of the boy band from the Beatles to One Direction, placing the modern male pop group within the wider context of twentieth- and twenty-first-century popular music and culture. Offering the first extended look at pop masculinity as exhibited by boy bands, this volume links the evolving expressions of gender and sexuality in the boy band to wider economic and social changes that have resulted in new ways of representing what it is to be a man. The popularity of boy bands is unquestionable, and their contributions to popular music are significant, yet they have attracted relatively little study. This book fills that gap with chapters exploring the challenges of defining the boy band phenomenon, its origins and history from the 1940s to the present, the role of management and marketing, the performance of gender and sexuality, and the nature of fandom and fan agency. Throughout, the author illuminates the ways in which identity politics influence the production and consumption of pop music and shows how the mainstream pop of boy bands can both reinforce and subvert gender and class hierarchies.

In today's culture, popular music is a vital site where ideas about gender and sexuality are imagined and disseminated. Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer and Feminist Interventions explores what that means with a wide-ranging collection of chapters that consider the many ways in which contemporary pop music performances of gender and sexuality are politically engaged and even radical. With analyses rooted in feminist and queer thought, contributors explore music from different genres and locations, including Beyonce's Lemonade, A Tribe Called Red's We Are the Halluci Nation, and celebrations of Vera Lynn's 100th Birthday. At a bleak moment in global politics, this collection focuses on the concept of critical hope: the chapters consider making and consuming popular music as activities that encourage individuals to imagine and work toward a better, more just world. Addressing race, class, aging, disability, and colonialism along with gender and sexuality, the authors articulate the diverse ways popular music can contribute to the collective political projects of queerness and feminism. With voices from senior and emerging scholars, this volume offers a snapshot of today's queer and feminist scholarship on popular music that is an essential read for students and scholars of music and cultural studies.

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.

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).

"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.

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 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.

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.

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.