For the Record: Studies in Rock and Popular Music – Serie

U2’s success and significance are due, in large part, to finding inventive, creative solutions for overcoming obstacles and moving past conventional boundaries. As it has embraced change and transformation over and over again, its fans and critics have come to value and expect this element of U2. These new essays from the disciplines of organizational communication, music theory, literary studies, religion, and cultural studies offer perspectives on several ways U2’s dynamic of change has been a constant theme throughout its career. The eight essays here come from the U2 Conference 2013, which explores the music, work, and influence of U2, furthering the scholarship on U2.

For the Beatles, 1967 marks a signal crossroads that would both transform the group’s career and place them on a trajectory towards their eventual disbandment. It was a year in which they exploded prevailing rock music demographics through the global onslaught and international success of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band beginning in June 1967. Yet it was also a period that saw them in a precarious state of flux throughout the summer and fall months, as the band attempted to recapture their artistic direction in the wake of Sgt. Pepper and the untimely death of manager Brian Epstein. The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper, and the Summer of Love draws readers into that pivotal year in the life of the band. For the Fab Four, 1967 would see the band members part ways with psychedelia and the avant-garde through the trials and tribulations of the Magical Mystery Tour, a project that resulted in a series of classic recordings, while at the same time revealing the bandmates’ aesthetic vulnerabilities and failings as would-be filmmakers and auteurs.

For the Beatles, 1967 marks a signal crossroads that would both transform the group’s career and place them on a trajectory towards their eventual disbandment. It was a year in which they exploded prevailing rock music demographics through the global onslaught and international success of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band beginning in June 1967. Yet it was also a period that saw them in a precarious state of flux throughout the summer and fall months, as the band attempted to recapture their artistic direction in the wake of Sgt. Pepper and the untimely death of manager Brian Epstein. The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper, and the Summer of Love draws readers into that pivotal year in the life of the band. For the Fab Four, 1967 would see the band members part ways with psychedelia and the avant-garde through the trials and tribulations of the Magical Mystery Tour, a project that resulted in a series of classic recordings, while at the same time revealing the bandmates’ aesthetic vulnerabilities and failings as would-be filmmakers and auteurs.

Focusing on female idols’ proliferation in the South Korean popular music (K-pop) industry since the late 1990s, Gooyong Kim critically analyzes structural conditions of possibilities in contemporary popular music from production to consumption. Kim contextualizes the success of K-pop within Korea’s development trajectories, scrutinizing how a formula of developments from the country’ rapid industrial modernization (1960s-1980s) was updated and re-applied in the K-pop industry when the state had to implement a series of neoliberal reformations mandated by the IMF. To that end, applying Michel Foucault’s discussion on governmentality, a biopolitical dimension of neoliberalism, Kim argues how the regime of free market capitalism updates and reproduces itself by 1) forming a strategic alliance of interests with the state, and 2) using popular culture to facilitate individuals’ subjectification and subjectivation processes to become neoliberal agents. As to an importance of K-pop female idols, Kim indicates a sustained utility/legacy of the nation’s century-long patriarchy in a neoliberal development agenda. Young female talents have been mobilized and deployed in the neoliberal culture industry in a similar way to how un-wed, obedient female workers were exploited and disposed on the sweatshop factory floors to sustain the state’s export-oriented, labor-intensive manufacturing industry policy during its rapid developmental stage decades ago. In this respect, Kim maintains how a post-feminist, neoliberal discourse of girl power has marketed young, female talents as effective commodities, and how K-pop female idols exert biopolitical power as an active ideological apparatus that pleasurably perpetuates and legitimates neoliberal mantras in individuals’ everyday lives. Thus, Kim reveals there is a strategic convergence between Korea’s lingering legacies of patriarchy, developmentalism, and neoliberalism. While the current K-pop literature is micro-scopic and celebratory, Kim advances the scholarship by multi-perspectival, critical approaches. With a well-balanced perspective by micro-scopic textual analyses of music videos and macro-scopic examinations of historical and political economy backgrounds, Kim’s book provides a wealth of intriguing research agendas on the phenomenon, and will be a useful reference in International/ Intercultural Communication, Political Economy of the Media, Cultural/ Media Studies, Gender/ Sexuality Studies, Asian Studies, and Korean Studies.

Focusing on female idols’ proliferation in the South Korean popular music (K-pop) industry since the late 1990s, Gooyong Kim critically analyzes structural conditions of possibilities in contemporary popular music from production to consumption. Kim contextualizes the success of K-pop within Korea’s development trajectories, scrutinizing how a formula of developments from the country’ rapid industrial modernization (1960s-1980s) was updated and re-applied in the K-pop industry when the state had to implement a series of neoliberal reformations mandated by the IMF. To that end, applying Michel Foucault’s discussion on governmentality, a biopolitical dimension of neoliberalism, Kim argues how the regime of free market capitalism updates and reproduces itself by 1) forming a strategic alliance of interests with the state, and 2) using popular culture to facilitate individuals’ subjectification and subjectivation processes to become neoliberal agents. As to an importance of K-pop female idols, Kim indicates a sustained utility/legacy of the nation’s century-long patriarchy in a neoliberal development agenda. Young female talents have been mobilized and deployed in the neoliberal culture industry in a similar way to how un-wed, obedient female workers were exploited and disposed on the sweatshop factory floors to sustain the state’s export-oriented, labor-intensive manufacturing industry policy during its rapid developmental stage decades ago. In this respect, Kim maintains how a post-feminist, neoliberal discourse of girl power has marketed young, female talents as effective commodities, and how K-pop female idols exert biopolitical power as an active ideological apparatus that pleasurably perpetuates and legitimates neoliberal mantras in individuals’ everyday lives. Thus, Kim reveals there is a strategic convergence between Korea’s lingering legacies of patriarchy, developmentalism, and neoliberalism. While the current K-pop literature is micro-scopic and celebratory, Kim advances the scholarship by multi-perspectival, critical approaches. With a well-balanced perspective by micro-scopic textual analyses of music videos and macro-scopic examinations of historical and political economy backgrounds, Kim’s book provides a wealth of intriguing research agendas on the phenomenon, and will be a useful reference in International/ Intercultural Communication, Political Economy of the Media, Cultural/ Media Studies, Gender/ Sexuality Studies, Asian Studies, and Korean Studies.

Rock and Romanticism: Blake, Wordsworth, and Rock from Dylan to U2 is an edited anthology that seeks to explain just how rock and roll is a Romantic phenomenon that sheds light, retrospectively, on what literary Romanticism was at its different points of origin and on what it has become in the present. This anthology allows Byron and Wollstonecraft to speak back to contemporary theories of Romanticism through Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. Relying on Löwy and Sayre’s Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity, it explores how hostility, loss, and longing for unity are particularly appropriate terms for classic rock as well as the origins of these emotions. In essays ranging from Bob Dylan to Blackberry Smoke, this work examines how rock and roll expands, interprets, restates, interrogates, and conflicts with literary Romanticism, all the while understanding that as a term “rock and roll” in reference to popular music from the late 1940s through the early 2000s is every bit as contradictory and difficult to define as the word Romanticism itself.

Rock and Romanticism: Blake, Wordsworth, and Rock from Dylan to U2 is an edited anthology that seeks to explain just how rock and roll is a Romantic phenomenon that sheds light, retrospectively, on what literary Romanticism was at its different points of origin and on what it has become in the present. This anthology allows Byron and Wollstonecraft to speak back to contemporary theories of Romanticism through Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. Relying on Löwy and Sayre’s Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity, it explores how hostility, loss, and longing for unity are particularly appropriate terms for classic rock as well as the origins of these emotions. In essays ranging from Bob Dylan to Blackberry Smoke, this work examines how rock and roll expands, interprets, restates, interrogates, and conflicts with literary Romanticism, all the while understanding that as a term “rock and roll” in reference to popular music from the late 1940s through the early 2000s is every bit as contradictory and difficult to define as the word Romanticism itself.

The Rock Music Imagination is an exploration of rock artists in their social and artistic contexts, particularly between 1964 and 1980, and of rock music in relation to literature, that is, creative expression, fantastic imagination, and contemporary fiction about rock. Robert McParland analyzes how rock music touches our imaginative lives by looking at themes that appear in classic rock music: freedom and liberation, utopia and dystopia, community, rebellion, the outsider, the quest for transcendence, monstrosity, erotic and spiritual love, imaginative vision, and mystery. The Rock Music Imagination explores blues imagination, countercultural dreams of utopia, rock’s critiques of society and images of dystopia, rock’s inheritance from romanticism, science fiction and mythic imagination in progressive rock, and rock’s global reach and potential to provide hope and humanitarian assistance.

The music, performances, and cultural impact of some of the most enduring figures in popular music are explored in Rock Music Icons: Musical and Cultural Impacts. This collection investigates authenticity, identity, and the power of the voices and images of widely circulated and shared artists that have become the soundtrack of our lives.

The music, performances, and cultural impact of some of the most enduring figures in popular music are explored in Rock Music Icons: Musical and Cultural Impacts. This collection investigates authenticity, identity, and the power of the voices and images of widely circulated and shared artists that have become the soundtrack of our lives.

In U2’s Songs of Trauma and Hope: “Between the Midnight and the Dawning", Ingunn Røysland and Charles Ivan Armstrong show that trauma is an important theme for U2. While this leads the band to confront extreme instances of grief and suffering, this does not prevent them to cross (in the words of their song “A Sort of Homecoming”) “the fields of mourning to a light that's in the distance.” Theories from trauma and memory studies are deployed in the examination of song lyrics and performances by U2, spanning from the early days of the band to more recent times. In their exploration of light and dark, of hope and trauma within the U2 catalogue, Røysland and Armstrong acknowledge the complexity of the songs, addressing different layers, including romantic as well as divine allegory. The authors also address the band’s troublesome lyrics, with an entire chapter devoted to “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” as well as the role of multidirectional memory and significant places, so-called lieux de mémoire, in U2’s dealings with a ranger of historical conflicts and crises. They further examine how music plays an important part in the path of healing from traumatic wounds, analysing the reception of the songs. Ultimately, it is suggested, U2 shows us how to get “through the night.”

Examining Blank Spaces and the Taylor Swift Phenomenon: An Investigation of Contingent Identities examines Taylor Swift’s art, her public image, and Swiftie fan communities. Keith Nainby argues that Swift’s songs offer a consistent focus on evolving identities, helping create the unique character of Swiftie fan communities.

Conveying Lived Experience through Rock and Pop Music Lyrics explores seven decades of lyrics to elucidate themes about the human experience. The opening chapters discuss romantic relationships and break ups. Subsequent chapters consider lyrics describing nostalgia, as well as those about leaving home, going on the road, and returning home. Then, successive chapters examine the outsider in society, those experiencing mental illness, and alcohol and drug use. Next, songs of social and political critique are surveyed, followed by an examination of utopian and dystopian lyrics. The final chapters analyze songs using prophetic voices and those about the afterlife. This survey shows how lyrics convey the lived experience of people in contemporary society.

Concepts We’ll Ponder: Identity, Improvisation, and Community in the Phish Experience launches the rapidly growing field of Phish Studies by revealing how the band’s music and culture offer meaningful insights that extend beyond concert grounds into broader social, cultural, and political phenomena. Emerging from the inaugural Phish Studies Conference at Oregon State University, its sixteen innovative essays embody an ethos of serious play; the essays adopt creativity, joy, and improvisation as tools for scholarly inquiry.Distinctively interdisciplinary, the collection draws from diverse disciplines including musicology, communications, statistics, and philosophy. By blending academic methods with passionate “phan” encyclopedic knowledge, the authors of this volume challenge traditional hierarchies between fan/scholar, personal/professional, and high/low culture. They explore “phan” identity, decode the complexities of famous jams, examine concerts as healing spaces, analyze show ratings, and more. In their examinations of the “Camden Chalk Dust,” “Colonel Forbin’s Ascent,” and the “Phish Chicks” community, and beyond, these scholars invite readers to treat Phish as an “intellectual playground” and explore the significance of the Phish experience.

Robert McParland explores American music as a bridge between art, audiences, and the environment.American Melodies is a study of America’s varied music genres that is grounded in interviews with folk, rock, and jazz musicians, music listeners, songwriters, and organizers of music programs in local communities. The author explores artists’ ecological, social, and technological concerns and the ways that music as an art form can reflect upon and actively reshape lived realities. Through interviews and conversations, he examines how the spirit of jazz, folk music and Americana, country, and rock music brings to life relationships between people, connection with their communities, and expression of social and ecological concern.

Billy Joel has sold over 150 million records, produced thirty-three Top-40 hits, received six Grammy Awards, and been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Fans celebrate him, critics deride him, and scholars have all but ignored him. This first-of-its-kind collection of essays offers close analysis and careful insight into the ways his work has impacted popular music during the last fifty years. Using diverse approaches, this volume serves as a model for how any scholar can approach the study of popular music. Ultimately, these chapters interrogate how popular music frames our experiences, constitutes our history and culture, and gains importance in our daily lives.

This book presents an analysis of 100 rock concert performances and attempts to answer the question "What makes a truly great rock performance?" Author Peter Smith, an experienced concert goer, delves into his own recollections of experiencing rock performances over the last 50+ years and, with the support of his daughter, Laura Smith, analyzes 100 selected performances covering the themes of icons, persona, energy, fandom, venues, communities, politics, art-rock, authenticity and maturity. The approach taken is based upon qualitative analysis, reflection, and autoethnography. The selected performances cover a range of diverse acts such as the Rolling Stones, ABBA, Sex Pistols, Barbara Streisand, David Bowie, and the like.

This book presents an analysis of 100 rock concert performances and attempts to answer the question "What makes a truly great rock performance?" Author Peter Smith, an experienced concert goer, delves into his own recollections of experiencing rock performances over the last 50+ years and, with the support of his daughter, Laura Smith, analyzes 100 selected performances covering the themes of icons, persona, energy, fandom, venues, communities, politics, art-rock, authenticity and maturity. The approach taken is based upon qualitative analysis, reflection, and autoethnography. The selected performances cover a range of diverse acts such as the Rolling Stones, ABBA, Sex Pistols, Barbara Streisand, David Bowie, and the like.

Paul McCartney has lived an extraordinary life in popular music and popular culture. His careers as a Beatle, as a solo musician and band leader in Wings, and in areas outside music have varied tremendously and are well-documented. That Was Me explores the impact of Paul McCartney as a musician outside the Beatles, identifying the continued excitement in generations of fans and listeners, and his perennial efforts to perform and record music. Richard Driver argues that his solo career is multi-faceted and extremely diverse, ranging from breaking sharply with the style and output of the Beatles to experimenting in orchestral and operatic music and returning to music designed to emulate and reproduce the style, success, and popularity of the Beatles. Through McCartney we can literally and symbolically view and revisit the popular music phenomenon that was the Beatles, and popular music from the 1950s to today.

This book explores the phenomena of Paul McCartney's career and his legacy in popular music and culture.Paul McCartney has lived an extraordinary life in popular music and popular culture. His careers as a Beatle, as a solo musician and band leader in Wings, and in areas outside music have varied tremendously and are well-documented. That Was Me: Paul McCartney’s Career and the Legacy of the Beatles explores the impact of Paul McCartney as a musician outside the Beatles, identifying the continued excitement in generations of fans and listeners, and his perennial efforts to perform and record music. Richard Driver argues that his solo career is multi-faceted and extremely diverse, ranging from breaking sharply with the style and output of the Beatles to experimenting in orchestral and operatic music and returning to music designed to emulate and reproduce the style, success, and popularity of the Beatles. Through McCartney we can literally and symbolically view and revisit the popular music phenomenon that was the Beatles, and popular music from the 1950s to today.

In this work, Ken Bielen explains how album cover art authenticates recording artists in a particular genre. He considers albums issued from the 1950s to the 1980s, the golden era of record album cover art. The whole album package is studied, including the front and back covers, the inside cover, the inner sleeve, and the liner notes. Performers in rock and roll, folk and folk rock, soul and disco, psychedelic, Americana nostalgia, and singer-songwriter genres are included in this study of hundreds of record album covers.

This book explores the relationships between rock and roll, social protest, and authenticity to consider how rock and roll could function as social protest music. The author begins by discussing the nature and origins of rock and roll and the nature of social protest and social protest music within the wider context of the evolution of the commercial music industry and the social and technological infrastructure developed for the mass dissemination of popular music. This discussion is followed by an examination of the causes of the public disapproval originally expressed toward rock and roll, and how they illuminate its social protest and subversive quality. By further investigating the nature of authenticity and its relationship to social protest and to commercialization, the author considers how social protest and commercialization are antithetical. This conclusion, if correct, has broad implications for human culture in advanced industrial society.