Simon Frith has been one of the most important figures in the emergence and subsequent development of popular music studies. From his earliest academic publication, The Sociology of Rock (1978), through to his recent work on the live music industry in the UK, in his desire to 'take popular music seriously' he has probably been cited more than any other author in the field. Uniquely, he has combined this work with a lengthy career as a music critic for leading publications on both sides of the Atlantic. The contributions to this volume of essays and memoirs seek to honour Frith's achievements, but they are not merely 'about Frith'. Rather, they are important interventions by leading scholars in the field, including Robert Christgau, Antoine Hennion, Peter J. Martin and Philip Tagg. The focus on 'sociology and industry' and 'aesthetics and values' reflect major themes in Frith's own work, which can also be found within popular music studies more generally. As such the volume will become an essential resource for those working in popular music studies, as well as in musicology, sociology and cultural and media studies.

Exploring U2: Is This Rock 'n' Roll? features new writing in the growing field of U2 studies. Edited by Scott Calhoun, with a foreword by Anthony DeCurtis, Exploring U2 contains selections from the 2009 inaugural gathering of "The Hype and The Feedback: A Conference Exploring The Music, Work and Influence of U2." In keeping with U2's own efforts to remove barriers that have long prevented dialogue for understanding and improving the human experience, this collection of essays examines U2 from perspectives ranging from the personal to the academic and is accessible to curious music fans, students, teachers, and scholars alike. Four sections organize sixteen essays from leading academics, music critics, clergy, and fans. From the academic disciplines of literature, music, philosophy, and theology, essays study U2's evolving use of source material in live performances, the layering of vocal effects in signature songs, the crafting of a spiritual community at live concerts, U2's success as a business brand, Bono's rhetorical presentation of Africa to the Western consumer, and readings of U2's work for irony, personhood, hope, conservatism, and cosmic-time. Official band biographer Neil McCormick considers U2 as a Dublin-shaped band, and Danielle Rheaume tells how discovering and returning Bono's lost briefcase of lyrics for the album October propelled her along her own artistic journey. This thoughtful and timely collection recognizes U2's music both as art and commentary on personal journeys and cultural dialogues about contemporary issues. It offers insights and critical assessments that will appeal not only to scholars and students of popular music and culture studies but to those in the fields of theology, philosophy, the performing arts, literature, and all intellectually curious fans of U2.

One of the defining aspects of music is that it exists in time. From clapping to dancing, toe-tapping to head-nodding, the responses of musicians and listeners alike capture the immediacy and significance of the musical beat. This Companion explores the richness of musical time through a variety of perspectives, surveying influential writings on the topic, incorporating the perspectives of listeners, analysts, composers, and performers, and considering the subject across a range of genres and cultures. It includes chapters on music perception, visualizing rhythmic notation, composers' writings on rhythm, rhythm in jazz, rock, and hip-hop. Taking a global approach, chapters also explore rhythmic styles in the music of India, Africa, Bali, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Indigenous music of North and South America. Readers will gain an understanding of musicians' approaches to performing complex rhythms of contemporary music, and revealing insights into the likely future of rhythm in music.

From Prince's superstardom to studio seclusion, this second book in the award-winning Prince Studio Sessions series spotlights how Prince, the biggest rock star on the planet at the time, risked everything to create some of the most introspective music of his four-decade career. Duane Tudahl takes us on an emotional and intimate journey of love, loss, rivalry, and renewal revealed through unprecedented access to dozens of musicians, singers, studio engineers, and others who worked with him and knew him best-with never-before-published memories from the Revolution, the Time, the Family, and Apollonia 6. Also included is a heartfelt foreword by musical legend Elton John about his time and friendship with Prince.

This is a study of the way in which popular words and music relate to American life. The question of what popular song was, and why it came into existence, as well as how each song fit within the context of the larger 20th Century society are considered and explained clearly and fruitfully. Songs of the Jazz Age and Swing Era are considered primarily in terms of song-types and their relation to the times. Post World War II songs are shown to have splintered into a multitude of different styles and variations within each style. Many 20th Century songs came to be closely identified with particular singers and performance groups, shifting the attention to the styles identified with particular performers and the audiences they reached. Tawa avoids overly-technical vocabulary, making this examination of hundreds of popular songs accessible to a wide variety of readers seeking to better their understanding of the often perplexing musical landscape of the time.

As humanly possible, this book attempts to evaluate every track that Paul McCartney has released on a major label. Thus, the premise of this book: to sift the gems from the chaff and examine what's driven McCartney up and down for fifty years. There are plenty of tracks suitable for casual fans, adolescents, even pre-schoolers. But there are tracks for an older audience too, tracks so good they can supply grown-ups with a rewarding soundtrack for a lifetime. It's these that make for a playlist worth keeping. From 1970 and beyond, the songwriting McCartney seemed to be saddled with a rickety who-cares system that generated iffy results. Gone were 'Eleanor Rigby' and 'Penny Lane'. Instead, came the thought-free 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' and 'Bip Bop', songs The Beatles wouldn't have considered for a second. Troubles swarmed around him as he searched for his place. The Beatles had theirs - where was his? Was he overly obsessed with perfection? Maybe. Or was it insecurity? His next record couldn't be a forward-thinking experiment, with sales falling wherever they may. It had to - had to - be a chart topper adored all over the world.

K-pop, described by Time Magazine in 2012 as "South Korea's greatest export", has rapidly achieved a large worldwide audience of devoted fans largely through distribution over the Internet. This book examines the phenomenon, and discusses the reasons for its success. It considers the national and transnational conditions that have played a role in K-pop's ascendancy, and explores how they relate to post-colonial modernisation, post-Cold War politics in East Asia, connections with the Korean diaspora, and the state-initiated campaign to accumulate soft power. As it is particularly concerned with fandom and cultural agency, it analyses fan practices, discourses, and underlying psychologies within their local habitus as well as in expanding topographies of online networks. Overall, the book addresses the question of how far "Asian culture" can be global in a truly meaningful way, and how popular culture from a "marginal" nation has become a global phenomenon.

In 1982, aged twenty-three, Simon Parkes paid GBP1 for a virtually derelict building in Brixton. Over the next fifteen years he turned it into Britain's most iconic music venue. And now he's telling his story: full of fond - and wild - reminiscences of the famous musicians who played at the venue, including Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Lou Reed, The Ramones, New Order, the Beastie Boys and The Smiths. This is about one man's burning desire for success against the odds, his passion for live music and the excitement of those wilderness years, a far cry from the corporate world that controls the scene today. From rock-star debauchery and mixing it up with Brixton gangsters to putting on the first legal raves in the UK and countless backroom business deals, this is the story of how to succeed in business with no experience and fulfil your teenage fantasies.

The author is a drummer with experience in a variety of musical genres and contexts, with emphasis on rock and related styles. This auto ethnographic Element presents the author's philosophy of playing drum kit. The text explains how playing drum kit matters to this musician and may resonate with others to whom making music matters in similar ways. The Element contains audio files of music in which the author plays drum kit in the ensemble settings described. There are photos of the author's drums and of him drumming. Based on June Boyce-Tillman's non-religious model of holistic spirituality and Tim Ingold's notion of correspondences, the author describes how playing drum kit enables him to experience transcendence - the magical nexus at which Materials, Construction, Values/Culture and Expression meet. Each of these domains, and the magic derived from their combination, is illustrated through examples of the author's live and recorded musical collaborations.

Vibe Merchants offers an insider's perspective on the development of Jamaican Popular Music, researched and analysed by a thirty-year veteran with a wide range of experience in performance, production and academic study. This rare perspective, derived from interviews and ethnographic methodologies, focuses on the actual details of music-making practice, rationalized in the context of the economic and creative forces that locally drive music production. By focusing on the work of audio engineers and musicians, recording studios and recording models, Ray Hitchins highlights a music creation methodology that has been acknowledged as being different to that of Europe and North America. The book leads to a broadening of our understanding of how Jamaican Popular Music emerged, developed and functions, thus providing an engaging example of the important relationship between music, technology and culture that will appeal to a wide range of scholars.

This book takes the reader through The Beatles career step by step as it happened. The objective is to comprehensively guide you through the recordings with detailed information about them, and to help those who are not fully au fait with all of The Beatles work to have a better understanding of what happened and when. Laid out in an easy to read format, it's a perfect starter for someone who has dipped in to the catalogue but wants to learn more. Listed chronologically are all the UK and US releases that make up the full body of official recordings. And although it is not an "anorak's paradise" The Beatles... The Easy Way includes sufficient information to also satisfy the more devoted fans.

Turbo-folk music is the most controversial form of popular culture in the new states of former Yugoslavia. Theoretically ambitious and innovative, this book is a new account of popular music that has been at the centre of national, political and cultural debates for over two decades. Beginning with 1970s Socialist Yugoslavia, Uros Cvoro explores the cultural and political paradoxes of turbo-folk: described as 'backward' music, whose misogynist and Serb nationalist iconography represents a threat to cosmopolitanism, turbo-folk's iconography is also perceived as a 'genuinely Balkan' form of resistance to the threat of neo-liberalism. Taking as its starting point turbo-folk's popularity across national borders, Cvoro analyses key songs and performers in Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia. The book also examines the effects of turbo on the broader cultural sphere - including art, film, sculpture and architecture - twenty years after its inception and popularization. What is proposed is a new way of reading the relationship of contemporary popular music to processes of cultural, political and social change - and a new understanding of how fundamental turbo-folk is to the recent history of former Yugoslavia and its successor states.

(Book). Although together for only five years, The Yardbirds exerted tremendous influence on the music and style of the '60s and for decades beyond. Their impact has been felt throughout the rock genre, from psychedelia to blues-rock, heavy metal, and the music of today's jam bands. The Yardbirds came from middle-class England, embraced the soulful music of the African-American South, and helped re-import it back into the States as the embryo of heavy metal music. In the process, the band produced three guitar greats: Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. Every fan of The Yardbirds, or of '60s-derived music in general, will revel in this book (which includes more than 50 photos from the group's heyday, plus a detailed diary of every gig, recording and broadcast they did) and enjoy reading the stories old and new as much as Clayson enjoys telling them.

Quincy Jones: A Research and Information Guide is an annotated bibliography and discography on one of the most prolific composers, arrangers, and conductors in American music. This reference work will appeal to wide range of musicologists, ethnomusicologists and cultural studies scholars.

Music and Identity in Ireland and Beyond represents the first interdisciplinary volume of chapters on an intricate cultural field that can be experienced and interpreted in manifold ways, whether in Ireland (The Republic of Ireland and/or Northern Ireland), among its diaspora(s), or further afield. While each contributor addresses particular themes viewed from discrete perspectives, collectively the book contemplates whether 'music in Ireland' can be regarded as one interrelated plane of cultural and/or national identity, given the various conceptions and contexts of both Ireland (geographical, political, diasporic, mythical) and Music (including a proliferation of practices and genres) that give rise to multiple sites of identification. Arranged in the relatively distinct yet interweaving parts of 'Historical Perspectives', 'Recent and Contemporary Production' and 'Cultural Explorations', its various chapters act to juxtapose the socio-historical distinctions between the major style categories most typically associated with music in Ireland - traditional, classical and popular - and to explore a range of dialectical relationships between these musical styles in matters pertaining to national and cultural identity. The book includes a number of chapters that examine various movements (and 'moments') of traditional music revival from the late eighteenth century to the present day, as well as chapters that tease out various issues of national identity pertaining to individual composers/performers (art music, popular music) and their audiences. Many chapters in the volume consider mediating influences (infrastructural, technological, political) and/or social categories (class, gender, religion, ethnicity, race, age) in the interpretation of music production and consumption. Performers and composers discussed include U2, Raymond Deane, Afro-Celt Sound System, E.J. Moeran, Seamus Ennis, Kevin O'Connell, Stiff Little Fingers, Frederick May, Arnold

Mute Records is one of the most influential, commercially successful, and long-lasting of the British independent record labels formed in the wake of the late-1970's punk explosion. Yet, in comparison with contemporaries such as Rough Trade or Stiff, its legacy remains under-explored. This edited collection addresses Mute's wide-ranging impact. Drawing from disciplines such as popular music studies, musicology, and fan studies, it takes a distinctive, artist-led approach, outlining the history of the label by focusing each chapter on one of its acts. The book covers key moments in the company's evolution, from the first releases by The Normal and Fad Gadget to recent work by Arca and Dirty Electronics. It shines new light on the most successful Mute artists, including Depeche Mode, Nick Cave, Erasure, Moby, and Goldfrapp, while also exploring the label's avant-garde innovators, such as Throbbing Gristle, Mark Stewart, Labaich, Ut, and Swans. Mute Records examines the business and aesthetics of independence through the lens of the label's artists.

This collection of essays critically engages with factors relating to black urban life and cultural representation in the post-civil rights era, using Ice-T and his myriad roles as musician, actor, writer, celebrity, and industrialist as a vehicle through which to interpret and understand the African American experience. Over the past three decades, African Americans have faced a number of new challenges brought about by changes in the political, economic and social structure of America. Furthermore, this vastly changed social landscape has produced a number of resonant pop-cultural trends that have proved to be both innovative and admired on the one hand, and contentious and divisive on the other. Ice-T's iconic and multifarious career maps these shifts. This is the first book that, taken as a whole, looks at a black cultural icon's manipulation of (or manipulation by?) so many different forms simultaneously. The result is a fascinating series of tensions arising from Ice-T's ability to inhabit conflicting pop-cultural roles including: 'hardcore' gangsta rapper and dedicated philanthropist; author of controversial song Cop Killer and network television cop; self-proclaimed 'pimp' and reality television house husband. As the essays in this collection detail, Ice-T's chameleonic public image consistently tests the accepted parameters of black cultural production, and in doing so illuminates the contradictions of a society erroneously dubbed 'post-racial'.

This book reveals how a diverse blend of styles, regions, and cultures swirled into the folk-rock revolution - infusing popular music with a controversial mix of literate lyricism, social consciousness, and rock 'n' roll rebellion. A richly woven narrative of firsthand stories and informed historical analysis, it covers all the key folk-rock innovators: Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Lovin' Spoonful, Buffalo Springfield, Simon & Garfunkel, the Mamas & the Papas, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and dozens more, plus lesser-knowns such as Phil Ochs and Jackie DeShannon. Incorporating insights from musicians, producers, managers, club owners, record label executives and others who drove the movement, Turn! Turn! Turn! focuses on the birth and development of the music, but also shows how folk-rock changed popular music, the music industry, and society forever. Setting the scene with America's traditional folk of the early '60s, the book describes the sea change that began in 1964 when the social consciousness of folk met the energy of rock. It concentrates on 1965-66, when the best, most popular, and most controversial folk-rock was created. The book explores the dizzyingly fast cross-fertilization of such giants as the Beatles, the Byrds, and Dylan; the passionate conflicts between folk devotees and folk-rockers; the sudden frenzy of the media; and the unforgettable music that was born. Turn! Turn! Turn! also examines how folk-rock continued to influence late '60s psychedelic rock, country-rock and the British scene, as well as its gradual, partial transformation into the singer-songwriter movement.

'Counterculture' emerged as a term in the late 1960s and has been re-deployed in more recent decades in relation to other forms of cultural and socio-political phenomena. This volume provides an essential new academic scrutiny of the concept of 'counterculture' and a critical examination of the period and its heritage. Recent developments in sociological theory complicate and problematise theories developed in the 1960s, with digital technology, for example, providing an impetus for new understandings of counterculture. Music played a significant part in the way that the counterculture authored space in relation to articulations of community by providing a shared sense of collective identity. Not least, the heady mixture of genres provided a socio-cultural-political backdrop for distinctive musical practices and innovations which, in relation to counterculture ideology, provided a rich experiential setting in which different groups defined their relationship both to the local and international dimensions of the movement, so providing a sense of locality, community and collective identity.

Rock and roll music evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and 1950s, as a combination of African American blues, country, pop, and gospel music produced a new musical genre. Even as it captured the ears of the nation, rock and roll was the subject of controversy and contention. The music intertwined with the social, political, and economic changes reshaping America and contributed to the rise of the youth culture that remains a potent cultural force today. A comprehensive understanding of post-World War II U.S. history would be incomplete without a basic knowledge of this cultural phenomenon and its widespread impact. In this short book, bolstered by primary source documents, Mitchell K. Hall explores the change in musical style represented by rock and roll, changes in technology and business practices, regional and racial implications of this new music, and the global influences of the music. The Emergence of Rock and Roll explains the huge influence that one cultural moment can have in the history of a nation.

Death metal is one of popular music's most extreme variants, and is typically viewed as almost monolithically nihilistic, misogynistic, and reactionary. Michelle Phillipov's Death Metal and Music Criticism: Analysis at the Limits offers an account of listening pleasure on its own terms. Through an analysis of death metal's sonic and lyrical extremity, Phillipov shows how violence and aggression can be configured as sites for pleasure and play in death metal music, with little relation to the "real" lives of listeners. In some cases, gruesome lyrical themes and fractured song forms invite listeners to imagine new experiences of the body and of the self. In others, the speed and complexity of the music foster a "technical" or distanced appreciation akin to the viewing experiences of graphic horror film fans. These aspects of death metal listening are often neglected by scholarly accounts concerned with evaluating music as either 'progressive' or "reactionary." By contextualizing the discussion of death metal via substantial overviews of popular music studies as a field, Phillipov's Death Metal and Music Criticism highlights how the premium placed on political engagement in popular music studies not only circumscribes our understanding of the complexity and specificity of death metal, but of other musical styles as well. Exploring death metal at the limits of conventional music criticism helps not only to develop a more nuanced account of death metal listening it also offers some important starting points for rethinking popular music scholarship as a whole."

Black Music, Black Poetry offers readers a fuller appreciation of the diversity of approaches to reading black American poetry. It does so by linking a diverse body of poetry to musical genres that range from the spirituals to contemporary jazz. The poetry of familiar figures such as Paul Laurence Dunbar and Langston Hughes and less well-known poets like Harryette Mullen or the lyricist to Pharaoh Sanders, Amos Leon Thomas, is scrutinized in relation to a musical tradition contemporaneous with the lifetime of each poet. Black music is considered the strongest representation of black American communal consciousness; and black poetry, by drawing upon such a musical legacy, lays claim to a powerful and enduring black aesthetic. The contributors to this volume take on issues of black cultural authenticity, of musical imitation, and of poetic performance as displayed in the work of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Amiri Baraka, Michael Harper, Nathaniel Mackey, Jayne Cortez, Harryette Mullen, and Amos Leon Thomas. Taken together, these essays offer a rich examination of the breath of black poetry and the ties it has to the rhythms and forms of black music and the influence of black music on black poetic practice.

The late Jan Fairley (1949-2012) was a key figure in making world music a significant topic for popular music studies and an influential contributor to such world music magazines as fRoots and Songlines. This book celebrates her contribution to popular music scholarship by gathering her most important work together in a single place. The result is a richly informed and entertaining volume that will be of interest to all scholars in the field while also serving as an excellent introduction for students interested in popular music as a global phenomenon. Fairley's work was focused on the problems and possibilities of cross-cultural musical influences, fantasies and flows and on the importance of performing circuits and networks. Her interest in the details of music-making and in the lives of music-makers means that this collection is also an original and illuminating study of music and politics. In drawing on Jan Fairley's journalism, this volume also offers students a guide to various genres of world music, from Cuban son to flamenco, as well as an insight into the lives of such world music stars as Mercedes Sosa and Silvio RodrA guez. This is inspiring as well as essential reading.

As recommended by USA Today and excerpted on Rolling Stone.com! More than forty years after breaking up, The Beatles remain the biggest-selling and most influential group in the history of popular music. Fans endlessly replay their songs, craving more, while thousands of cover versions of their songs have been recorded and performed. Band biographies, pop music histories, song books, and academic titles on the Fab Four clutter shelves. But never has there been a definitive guide to the finest songs of The Beatles after they called it quits. Still the Greatest is a love song to the songwriting and recording achievements of Paul, John, George, and Ringo after each struck out on his own. In this creative history, Jackson selects the best songs in each solo career and organizes them into fantasy albums they might have formed had the legendary group stayed together. This romp through the post-Beatles history of each artist delves into the circumstances behind the composition, recording, and reception of each work, offering a refreshing take on how spectacular much of The Beatles' second act truly is. Jackson assesses the more than seventy albums and nine hundred songs the four collectively released, selecting the creme de la creme of their output. Still the Greatest brims with facts (release dates, writing and performing credits, and information about production techniques) and insightful analyses of the music and lyrics. In telling the stories behind the songs, Jackson recounts the remarkable influence the Post Fab Four continued to have long after the big split. Both a handy reference and an engrossing cover-to-cover read, Still the Greatest is an invaluable companion for those who thought it all ended with the 1970 album Let It Be.

Throughout the 1970s, no style of pop music was more controversial than progressive rock, and no progressive rock band was more controversial than Emerson, Lake and Palmer. The group's imaginative fusion of rock, jazz, and classical motifs with cutting-edge technology, breathtaking virtuosity, and monumental stage shows made them hugely popular on both sides of the Atlantic -- and gave rise to a host of detractors. In "Endless Enigma, Edward Macan argues that ELP was an important contributor not only to progressive rock, but to 1970s rock in general. Besides a magisterial band biography, Macan provides a comprehensive critical examination of the band's music and, in particular, its best albums, such as "Brain Salad Surgery, which addressed technology's role in fostering societal alienation and totalitarianism. His analyses are so perceptive, precise, and detailed, that listening to the recordings in conjunction with his comments opens new avenues of thought about the band and its music.