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"[An] impressive and important contribution to popular music studies. . .[Brackett's] work could function not just as a model for popular music analysis but also as a very helpful introduction to popular music culture and history. Starting from a musicological perspective, Brackett addresses many of the problems raised by the sociological account of popular music that has so far dominated the field. . . . should become essential reading in any popular music course."—Simon Frith, author of Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music
List of contents
Preface
1 Introduction
Prelude
I. Codes and competences
II. Who is the author?
III. Musicology and popular music
IV. Postlude
2 Family values in music? Billie Holiday's and Bing Crosby's
"I'll Be Seeing You"
I. A tale of two (or three) recordings
II. Critical discourse
III. Biographical discourse
IV. Style and history
V. Performance, effect, and affect
3 When you're lookin' at Hank (you're looking at country)
I. Lyrics, metanarratives, and the great authenticity debate
II. Sound, performance, gender, and the hanky-tonk
III. "A feeling called the blues"
IV. The emergence of "country-western"
4 James Brown's "Superbad" and the double-voiced utterance
I. The discursive space of black music
II. Signifyin(g)-words and performance
III. Musical signifyin(g)
5 Writing, music, dancing, and architecture in Elvis Costello's
"Pills and Soap"
I. The "popular aesthetic"
II. Style and aesthetics
III. Interpretation and (post)modern pop
IV. A question of influence
6 Afterword: the citizens of Simpleton
Appendix
A. Reading the spectrum photos
B. Registral terminology
Notes
Bibliography
Select discography
Index
About the author
David Brackett is Assistant Professor of Music at SUNY, Binghamton.
Summary
There is a well-developed vocabulary for discussing classical music, but when it comes to popular music, how do we analyze its effects and its meaning? This text demonstrates how listeners form opinions about popular songs, and how they come to attribute a rich variety of meaning to them.
