Stan Hawkins - Böcker

Why is gender inseparable from pop songs? What can gender representations in musical performances mean? Why are there strong links between gender, sexuality and popular music? The sound of the voice, the mix, the arrangement, the lyrics and images, all link our impressions of gender to music. Numerous scholars writing about gender in popular music to date are concerned with the music industry’s impact on fans, and how tastes and preferences become associated with gender. This is the first collection of its kind to develop and present new theories and methods in the analysis of popular music and gender. The contributors are drawn from a range of disciplines including musicology, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, philosophy, and media studies, providing new reference points for studies in this interdisciplinary field. Stan Hawkins’s introduction sets out to situate a variety of debates that prompts ways of thinking and working, where the focus falls primarily on gender roles. Amongst the innovative approaches taken up in this collection are: queer performativity, gender theory, gay and lesbian agency, the female pop celebrity, masculinities, transculturalism, queering, transgenderism and androgyny. This Research Companion is required reading for scholars and teachers of popular music, whatever their disciplinary background.

This book investigates the phenomenon of queering in popular music and video, interpreting the music of numerous pop artists, styles, and idioms. The focus falls on artists, such as Lady Gaga, Madonna, Boy George, Diana Ross, Rufus Wainwright, David Bowie, Azealia Banks, Zebra Katz, Freddie Mercury, the Pet Shop Boys, George Michael, and many others. Hawkins builds his concept of queerness upon existing theories of opacity and temporality, which involves a creative interdisciplinary approach to musical interpretation. He advocates a model of analysis that involves both temporal-specific listening and biographic-oriented viewing. Music analysis is woven into this, illuminating aspects of parody, nostalgia, camp, naivety, masquerade, irony, and mimesis in pop music. One of the principal aims is to uncover the subversive strategies of pop artists through a wide range of audiovisual texts that situate the debates on gender and sexuality within an aesthetic context that is highly stylized and ritualized. Queerness in Pop Music also addresses the playfulness of much pop music, offering insights into how discourses of resistance are mediated through pleasure. Given that pop artists, songwriters, producers, directors, choreographers, and engineers all contribute to the final composite of the pop recording, it is argued that the staging of any pop act is a collective project. The implications of this are addressed through structures of gender, ethnicity, nationality, class, and sexuality. Ultimately, Hawkins contends that queerness is a performative force that connotes futurity and utopian promise.

The analysis of popular music forces us to rethink the assumptions that underpin our approaches to the study of Western music. Not least, it brings to the fore an idea that many musicologists still find uncomfortable - that commercial production and consumption can be aligned with artistic authenticity. Reading pop texts takes place through dialogue on many levels, which, as Stan Hawkins argues, deals with how musical events are shaped by personal alliances between the artist and the recipient. The need for a critical approach to evaluating popular music lies at the heart of this book. Hawkins explores the relationships that exist between music, spectatorship and aesthetics through a series of case studies of pop artists from the 1980s and 1990s. Madonna, Morrissey, Annie Lennox, the Pet Shop Boys and Prince represent the diversity of cultures, identities and sexualities that characterised the start of the MTV boom. Through the interpretation of aspects of the compositional design and musical structures of songs by these pop artists, Hawkins suggests ways in which stylistic and technical elements of the music relate to identity formation and its political motivations. Settling the Pop Score examines the role of irony and empathy, the question of gender, race and sexuality, and the relevance of textual analysis to the study of popular music. Interpreting pop music within the framework of musicology, Hawkins helps us to understand the pleasure so many people derive from these songs.

What defines pop music? Why do we consider some styles as easier listening than others? Arranged in three parts: Aesthetics and Authenticity - Groove, Sampling and Industry - Subjectivity, Ethnicity and Politics, this collection of essays by a group of international scholars deals with these questions in diverse ways. This volume prepares the reader for the debates around pop's intricate historical, aesthetic and cultural roots. The intellectual perspectives on offer present the interdisciplinary aspects of studying music and, spanning more than twenty-five years, these essays form a snapshot of some of the authorial voices that have shaped the specific subject matter of pop criticism within the broader field of popular music studies. A common thread running through these essays is the topic of interpretation and its relation to conceptions of musicality, subjectivity and aesthetics. The principle aim of this collection is to demonstrate that pop music needs to be evaluated on its own terms within the cultural contexts that make it meaningful.

This collection of essays by distinguished authors explores the present-day field of theological aesthetics: from von Balthasar’s contribution and parallel developments to correctives and alternatives to his approach. A tribute to von Balthasar’s own project expands into a dialogue with ancient and medieval traditions in search of revelatory aesthetics. The contributors outline challenges to his approach (including Protestant perspectives) and introduce new ways of viewing the field of theological aesthetics, which ultimately opens up to the idea of concrete cultural contexts and practical human needs determining the use of the arts and aesthetic sensibilities in theology.

Who are pop dandies? Why are stars like David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker, Pete Doherty and Robbie Williams so dandified? Taking up a wide range of British pop stars, Hawkins seeks to find out why so many have cast themselves in roles that often take style to absurd extremes. In this study, male pop artists are mapped against a cultural and historical background through a genealogy of personalities, such as Oscar Wilde, W.H. Auden, Andy Warhol, Noël Coward, Derek Jarmen, David Beckham and countless others. A critical analysis of issues and approaches to musical performance through masculinity becomes the focal point of this fascinating study. Ranging from the sixties to beyond the twentieth century, The British Pop Dandy considers the construction of the male pop icon through the spectacle of videos, live concerts and films. Why do we derive pleasure from the performing body, and how is entertainment linked to categories of gender and sexuality? The author insists that pop performances can be understood through human characteristics that relate to the particulars of dandyism, camp and glamour, and this he theorizes through the work of Charles Baudelaire. One of the political objectives of the dandy is to liberate himself through a denial of the structures that assume fixed identity. Not least, it is acts of queering in pop music that characterize entire generations of male artists in the UK. Setting out to discover what distinguishes the British pop dandy, Hawkins considers the role of music and performance in the articulation of hyperbolic display. It is argued that the recorded voice is a construction that idealizes self-representation, and absorbs the listener's attention. Particularly, camp address in singing practice is taken up in conjunction with a discussion of intimacy, which forms part of the strategy of the performer. In a range of songs and videos selected for music analysis, Hawkins points to the uniqueness of the voice as it expresses a transgressive quality that often comes across 'put-on', naive and vulnerable. To this end, vocal performativity is considered part of music's discursive disciplining through some of the greatest pop tracks, videos, concerts and films of our time. It is also argued that shifting signs of masculinity can be understood through musical process and style. While musicological in its main focus, this study is interdisciplinary and sets out to open new modes of thinking on the complex issues surrounding how masculinity, music and culture have developed in the UK.

The career of the prolific pop artist Prince has become inextricably intertwined with the history of popular music since the late 1970s. This multi-instrumental icon, who remains one of the highest-grossing live performers in America, has been called a genius for his musicianship, composition and incredible performances. But Prince holds iconic status for more than his music. Best known for his racial blurring and extravagant sexual persona, Prince's music and visual iconography has always chimed with the ambiguity of subjectivity at any given moment. 'Prince' the sign offers a space for fans to evaluate and reconfigure their attitudes towards their own identities, and towards their position as subjects within the socio-cultural sphere. This much-needed interdisciplinary analysis is the first of its kind to examine critically Prince's popular music, performances, sounds, lyrics and the plethora of accompanying visual material such as album covers, posters, fashions, promotional videos and feature films. Specifically, the book explores how and why he has played such a profoundly meaningful and significant role in his fans' lives.

What defines pop music? Why do we consider some styles as easier listening than others? Arranged in three parts: Aesthetics and Authenticity - Groove, Sampling and Industry - Subjectivity, Ethnicity and Politics, this collection of essays by a group of international scholars deals with these questions in diverse ways. This volume prepares the reader for the debates around pop's intricate historical, aesthetic and cultural roots. The intellectual perspectives on offer present the interdisciplinary aspects of studying music and, spanning more than twenty-five years, these essays form a snapshot of some of the authorial voices that have shaped the specific subject matter of pop criticism within the broader field of popular music studies. A common thread running through these essays is the topic of interpretation and its relation to conceptions of musicality, subjectivity and aesthetics. The principle aim of this collection is to demonstrate that pop music needs to be evaluated on its own terms within the cultural contexts that make it meaningful.

This collection of original essays is in tribute to the work of Derek Scott on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. As one of the leading lights in Critical Musicology, Scott has helped shape the epistemological direction for music research since the late 1980s. There is no doubt that the path taken by the critical musicologist has been a tricky one, leading to new conceptions, interactions, and heated debates during the past two decades. Changes in musicology during the closing decades of the twentieth century prompted the establishment of new sets of theoretical methods that probed at the social and cultural relevance of music, as much as its self-referentiality. All the scholars contributing to this book have played a role in the general paradigmatic shift that ensued in the wake of Kerman's call for change in the 1980s. Setting out to address a range of approaches to theorizing music and promulgating modes of analysis across a wide range of repertories, the essays in this collection can be read as a coming of age of critical musicology through its active dialogue with other disciplines such as sociology, feminism, ethnomusicology, history, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, aesthetics, media studies, film music studies, and gender studies. The volume provides music researchers and graduate students with an up-to-date authoritative reference to all matters dealing with the state of critical musicology today.

This collection of essays by distinguished authors explores the present-day field of theological aesthetics: from von Balthasar’s contribution and parallel developments to correctives and alternatives to his approach. A tribute to von Balthasar’s own project expands into a dialogue with ancient and medieval traditions in search of revelatory aesthetics. The contributors outline challenges to his approach (including Protestant perspectives) and introduce new ways of viewing the field of theological aesthetics, which ultimately opens up to the idea of concrete cultural contexts and practical human needs determining the use of the arts and aesthetic sensibilities in theology.

Who are pop dandies? Why are stars like David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker, Pete Doherty and Robbie Williams so dandified? Taking up a wide range of British pop stars, Hawkins seeks to find out why so many have cast themselves in roles that often take style to absurd extremes. In this study, male pop artists are mapped against a cultural and historical background through a genealogy of personalities, such as Oscar Wilde, W.H. Auden, Andy Warhol, Noël Coward, Derek Jarmen, David Beckham and countless others. A critical analysis of issues and approaches to musical performance through masculinity becomes the focal point of this fascinating study. Ranging from the sixties to beyond the twentieth century, The British Pop Dandy considers the construction of the male pop icon through the spectacle of videos, live concerts and films. Why do we derive pleasure from the performing body, and how is entertainment linked to categories of gender and sexuality? The author insists that pop performances can be understood through human characteristics that relate to the particulars of dandyism, camp and glamour, and this he theorizes through the work of Charles Baudelaire. One of the political objectives of the dandy is to liberate himself through a denial of the structures that assume fixed identity. Not least, it is acts of queering in pop music that characterize entire generations of male artists in the UK. Setting out to discover what distinguishes the British pop dandy, Hawkins considers the role of music and performance in the articulation of hyperbolic display. It is argued that the recorded voice is a construction that idealizes self-representation, and absorbs the listener's attention. Particularly, camp address in singing practice is taken up in conjunction with a discussion of intimacy, which forms part of the strategy of the performer. In a range of songs and videos selected for music analysis, Hawkins points to the uniqueness of the voice as it expresses a transgressive quality that often comes across 'put-on', naive and vulnerable. To this end, vocal performativity is considered part of music's discursive disciplining through some of the greatest pop tracks, videos, concerts and films of our time. It is also argued that shifting signs of masculinity can be understood through musical process and style. While musicological in its main focus, this study is interdisciplinary and sets out to open new modes of thinking on the complex issues surrounding how masculinity, music and culture have developed in the UK.

This book investigates the phenomenon of queering in popular music and video, interpreting the music of numerous pop artists, styles, and idioms. The focus falls on artists, such as Lady Gaga, Madonna, Boy George, Diana Ross, Rufus Wainwright, David Bowie, Azealia Banks, Zebra Katz, Freddie Mercury, the Pet Shop Boys, George Michael, and many others. Hawkins builds his concept of queerness upon existing theories of opacity and temporality, which involves a creative interdisciplinary approach to musical interpretation. He advocates a model of analysis that involves both temporal-specific listening and biographic-oriented viewing. Music analysis is woven into this, illuminating aspects of parody, nostalgia, camp, naivety, masquerade, irony, and mimesis in pop music. One of the principal aims is to uncover the subversive strategies of pop artists through a wide range of audiovisual texts that situate the debates on gender and sexuality within an aesthetic context that is highly stylized and ritualized. Queerness in Pop Music also addresses the playfulness of much pop music, offering insights into how discourses of resistance are mediated through pleasure. Given that pop artists, songwriters, producers, directors, choreographers, and engineers all contribute to the final composite of the pop recording, it is argued that the staging of any pop act is a collective project. The implications of this are addressed through structures of gender, ethnicity, nationality, class, and sexuality. Ultimately, Hawkins contends that queerness is a performative force that connotes futurity and utopian promise.

This collection of original essays is in tribute to the work of Derek Scott on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. As one of the leading lights in Critical Musicology, Scott has helped shape the epistemological direction for music research since the late 1980s. There is no doubt that the path taken by the critical musicologist has been a tricky one, leading to new conceptions, interactions, and heated debates during the past two decades. Changes in musicology during the closing decades of the twentieth century prompted the establishment of new sets of theoretical methods that probed at the social and cultural relevance of music, as much as its self-referentiality. All the scholars contributing to this book have played a role in the general paradigmatic shift that ensued in the wake of Kerman's call for change in the 1980s. Setting out to address a range of approaches to theorizing music and promulgating modes of analysis across a wide range of repertories, the essays in this collection can be read as a coming of age of critical musicology through its active dialogue with other disciplines such as sociology, feminism, ethnomusicology, history, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, aesthetics, media studies, film music studies, and gender studies. The volume provides music researchers and graduate students with an up-to-date authoritative reference to all matters dealing with the state of critical musicology today.

The career of the prolific pop artist Prince has become inextricably intertwined with the history of popular music since the late 1970s. This multi-instrumental icon, who remains one of the highest-grossing live performers in America, has been called a genius for his musicianship, composition and incredible performances. But Prince holds iconic status for more than his music. Best known for his racial blurring and extravagant sexual persona, Prince's music and visual iconography has always chimed with the ambiguity of subjectivity at any given moment. 'Prince' the sign offers a space for fans to evaluate and reconfigure their attitudes towards their own identities, and towards their position as subjects within the socio-cultural sphere. This much-needed interdisciplinary analysis is the first of its kind to examine critically Prince's popular music, performances, sounds, lyrics and the plethora of accompanying visual material such as album covers, posters, fashions, promotional videos and feature films. Specifically, the book explores how and why he has played such a profoundly meaningful and significant role in his fans' lives.

Why is gender inseparable from pop songs? What can gender representations in musical performances mean? Why are there strong links between gender, sexuality and popular music? The sound of the voice, the mix, the arrangement, the lyrics and images, all link our impressions of gender to music. Numerous scholars writing about gender in popular music to date are concerned with the music industry’s impact on fans, and how tastes and preferences become associated with gender. This is the first collection of its kind to develop and present new theories and methods in the analysis of popular music and gender. The contributors are drawn from a range of disciplines including musicology, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, philosophy, and media studies, providing new reference points for studies in this interdisciplinary field. Stan Hawkins’s introduction sets out to situate a variety of debates that prompts ways of thinking and working, where the focus falls primarily on gender roles. Amongst the innovative approaches taken up in this collection are: queer performativity, gender theory, gay and lesbian agency, the female pop celebrity, masculinities, transculturalism, queering, transgenderism and androgyny. This Research Companion is required reading for scholars and teachers of popular music, whatever their disciplinary background.

PROSE Award for Excellence in Music and the Performing Arts Finalist 2020Music videos promote popular artists in cultural forms that circulate widely across social media networks. With the advent of YouTube in 2005 and the proliferation of handheld technologies and social networking sites, the music video has become available to millions worldwide, and continues to serve as a fertile platform for the debate of issues and themes in popular culture. This volume of essays serves as a foundational handbook for the study and interpretation of the popular music video, with the specific aim of examining the industry contexts, cultural concepts, and aesthetic materials that videos rely upon in order to be both intelligible and meaningful. Easily accessible to viewers in everyday life, music videos offer profound cultural interventions and negotiations while traversing a range of media forms. From a variety of unique perspectives, the contributors to this volume undertake discussions that open up new avenues for exploring the creative changes and developments in music video production. With chapters that address music video authorship, distribution, cultural representations, mediations, aesthetics, and discourses, this study signals a major initiative to provide a deeper understanding of the intersecting and interdisciplinary approaches that are invoked in the analysis of this popular and influential musical form.