"Hearing Luxe Pop explores a deluxe-production aesthetic that has long thrived in American popular music. John Howland presents an alternative music history that centers on shifts in timbre and sound through innovative uses of media, orchestration, and arranging. He travels from symphonic jazz to the Great American Songbook; teenage symphonies of the Motown label and 1960s girl groups to the emerging "countrypolitan" sound of Nashville; the sunshine pop and baroque pop of the Beach Boys to the blending of soul and funk into 1970s disco; the hip-hop-with-orchestra events of Jay-Z and Kanye West to indie rock bands with the Brooklyn Philharmonic. The luxe aesthetic merges popular-music idioms with lush string orchestrations, big-band instrumentation, and symphonic instruments. This book attunes readers to hearing the discourses that gathered around the music and its associated images, and in turn examines pop's relations to aspirational consumer culture, spectacle, theatricality, glamour, sophistication, cosmopolitanism, and "classy" lifestyles"--

A guide for music: compositions, events, forms, genres, groups, history, industry, instruments, language, live music, musicians, songs, musicology, techniques, terminology , theory, music video. Music is a human activity which involves structured and audible sounds, which is used for artistic or aesthetic, entertainment, or ceremonial purposes. The traditional or classical European aspects of music often listed are those elements given primacy in European-influenced classical music: melody, harmony, rhythm, tone color/timbre, and form. A more comprehensive list is given by stating the aspects of sound: pitch, timbre, loudness, and duration. Common terms used to discuss particular pieces include melody, which is a succession of notes heard as some sort of unit; chord, which is a simultaneity of notes heard as some sort of unit; chord progression, which is a succession of chords (simultaneity succession); harmony, which is the relationship between two or more pitches; counterpoint, which is the simultaneity and organization of different melodies; and rhythm, which is the organization of the durational aspects of music.

GameAxis Unwired is a magazine dedicated to bring you the latest news, previews, reviews and events around the world and close to you. Every month rain or shine, our team of dedicated editors (and hardcore gamers!) put themselves in the line of fire to bring you news, previews and other things you will want to know.

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 unique reference book strives to define words and phrases that the average person often encounters but which may not be immediately familiar. Batten, kiosk, proctor, coup de grace, alliteration, parsec, corona, renal, joystick, decant, citadel. Broken down into over fifty categories—from cultural essentials likeart, history, and sports to modern obsessions like text messaging and hip hop slang—this book is a word lover's dream and a useful handbook for any student. It covers theatre. It even has a section of foreign words commonly used in English. Expand your vocabulary. Improve your writing. Broaden your horizons!

This comprehensive guide is a must-have for the legions of fans of the beloved and perennially popular music known as soul and rhythm & blues. The latest in the definitive All Music Guide series, the All Music Guide to Soul offers nearly 8 500 entertaining and informative reviews that lead readers to the best recordings by more than 1 500 artists and help them find new music to explore. Informative biographies, essays and “music maps” trace R&B's growth from its roots in blues and gospel through its flowering in Memphis and Motown, to its many branches today. Complete discographies note bootlegs, important out-of-print albums, and import-only releases. “Extremely valuable and exhaustive.” – The Christian Science Monitor

DIVNoted music historian Joseph Lanza seriously appraises an American musical tradition /div

A devout Catholic, a visionary—and some say prophetic—writer, Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) has gained a growing presence in contemporary popular culture. While O’Connor professed that she did not have an ear for music, allusions to her writing appear in the lyrics and narrative form of some of the most celebrated musicians on the contemporary music scene. Flannery at the Grammys sounds the extensive influence of this southern author on the art and vision of a suite of American and British singer-songwriters and pop groups. Author Irwin H. Streight invites critical awareness of O’Connor’s resonance in the products of popular music culture—in folk, blues, rock, gospel, punk, heavy metal, and indie pop songs by some of the most notable figures in the popular music business. Streight examines O'Connor's influence on the art and vision of multiple Grammy Award winners Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, R.E.M., and U2, along with celebrated songwriters Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Sufjan Stevens, Mary Gauthier, Tom Waits, and others. Despite her orthodox religious, and at times controversial, views and limited literary output, O’Connor has left a curiously indelible mark on the careers of the successful musicians discussed in this volume. Still, her acknowledged influence and remarkable presence in contemporary pop and rock songs has not been well noted by pop music critics and/or literary scholars. Many years in the making, Flannery at the Grammys achieves groundbreaking work in cultural studies and combines in-depth literary and pop music scholarship to engage the informed devotee and the casual reader alike.

If You're Feeling Sinister shows how Belle & Sebastian transformed themselves over the space of a decade, from a slightly shambolic cult secret into a polished, highly entertaining, mainstream pop group. Along the way, the book shows how the internet has revolutionized how we discover new music-often at the cost of romance and mystery.