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Brian Wilson (Paperback, New)
Loot Price: R718
Discovery Miles 7 180
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Brian Wilson (Paperback, New)
Series: Icons of Pop Music
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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Finalist, ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Awards 2012, Performing
Arts and Music (Adult Non-Fiction) Brian Wilson is a musical
genius. Ever since British press agent Derek Taylor launched a
publicity campaign with that theme to promote the landmark LP Pet
Sounds in 1966, some variation of that claim has been obligatory
when discussing the significance of the Beach Boys' founder and
chief composer. Originally designed to liberate Wilson from his
outmoded image as a purveyor of sun-and-surf teen pop so the
symphonic sophistication of his music might be properly
appreciated, the assertion has been repeated so often in the
forty-plus years since as to render it virtually meaningless.
Indeed, if anything, the label today seems an albatross around the
man's neck, inasmuch as Wilson's slow-but-steady reemergence as a
working musician since 1998 after three decades of mental illness
and drug abuse, has been freighted with expectations that he again
produce something as epochal as "Good Vibrations" to justify the
adoration he inspires in impassioned defenders. Brian Wilson
interrogates this and other paradigms that stymie critical
appreciation of Wilson's work both with the Beach Boys and as a
solo artist. This is the first study of Wilson to eschew chronology
for a topical organization that allows discussion of lyrical themes
and musical motifs outside of any prejudicial presumptions about
their place in the trajectory of his career. The chapter on lyrics
explores questions of quality, asking why the words to Wilson's
songs are often considered a detriment, before surveying such
tendencies as melancholy and introspection, the conceit of
childlike wisdom, his depiction of women, and Americana/nostalgia.
The section on music focuses on his falsetto, the famous harmonies,
the peculiar whiteness of the Beach Boys' sound, as well as song
structure. A final chapter on iconicity asks how rock criticism's
investment in auteurship both maintains and limits his reputation.
Finally, Curnutt examines what Brian Wilson means to his most
fervent fans. Together, these issues emphasize the often overlooked
point that, despite his status as a "living legend," Brian Wilson
does not always fit neatly into the paradigms of taste and value by
which critics grant certain artists entry into the pantheon of pop
and rock importance.
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