Analyzing Popular MusicAllan F. Moore How do we know music? We perform it, we compose it, we sing it in the shower, we cook, sleep and dance to it. Eventually we think and write about it. This book represents the culmination of such shared processes. Each of these essays, written by leading writers on popular music, is analytical in some sense, but none of them treats analysis as an end in itself. The books presents a wide range of genres (rock, dance, TV soundtracks, country, pop, soul, easy listening, Turkish Arabesk) and deals with issues as broad as methodology, modernism, postmodernism, Marxism and communication. It aims to encourage listeners to think more seriously about the 'social' consequences of the music they spend time with and is the first collection of such essays to incorporate contextualisation in this way. |
Contents
1 | |
ten apothegms and four instances | 16 |
analyzing the words in pop song | 39 |
score sound design and exoticism in The XFiles | 60 |
house music as rhetoric | 80 |
the case of Try a Little Tenderness | 103 |
popular music and urban geography | 131 |
8 Jethro Tull and the case for modernism in mass culture | 158 |
9 Pangs of history in late 1970s newwave rock | 173 |
10 Is anybody listening? | 196 |
popular music and ethnomusicology | 218 |
240 | |
Discography | 258 |
261 | |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic album analysis appears approach argues aspects band bars bass beat become beginning chord chorus clearly communication complex context continues create critical cultural dance described detail discussion distinct drum earlier early effect example experience fact feel Figure four Franklin function genre guitar harmonic hear historical idea important issue kind knowledge late layers least less listening live Marxism meaning melody move notes object ofthe organ original particular patterns performance perhaps phrase playing popular music position possible practices production progression provides question range recording Redding references relation result rhyme rhythm rhythmic rock score seems sense situation social song sound space specific structure studies style suggest theory things track tune turn understanding urban verse vocal voice X-Files