In this book David Brackett crosses the disciplines of cultural studies in music theory to consider how listeners evaluate popular songs and how they come to attribute a rich variety of meanings to them.

The musicological study of popular music has developed, particularly over the past twenty years, into an established aspect of the discipline. The academic community is now well placed to discuss exactly what is going on in any example of popular music and the theoretical foundation for such analytical work has also been laid, although there is as yet no general agreement over all the details of popular music theory. However, this focus on the what of musical detail has left largely untouched the larger question - so what? What are the consequences of such theorization and analysis? Scholars from outside musicology have often argued that too close a focus on musicological detail has left untouched what they consider to be more urgent questions related to reception and meaning. Scholars from inside musicology have responded by importing into musicological discussion various aspects of cultural theory. It is in that tradition that this book lies, although its focus is slightly different. What is missing from the field, at present, is a coherent development of the what into the so what of music theory and analysis into questions of interpretation and hermeneutics. It is that fundamental gap that this book seeks to fill. Allan F. Moore presents a study of recorded popular song, from the recordings of the 1920s through to the present day. Analysis and interpretation are treated as separable but interdependent approaches to song. Analytical theory is revisited, covering conventional domains such as harmony, melody and rhythm, but does not privilege these at the expense of domains such as texture, the soundbox, vocal tone, and lyrics. These latter areas are highly significant in the experience of many listeners, but are frequently ignored or poorly treated in analytical work. Moore continues by developing a range of hermeneutic strategies largely drawn from outside the field (strategies originating, in the most part, within psychology and philosophy) but still deeply r

This is a comprehensive essay on musical meaning and performing music meaningfully - 'interpreting music' in both senses of the term. The author argues that music, far from being closed to interpretation is the paradigm of interpretation in general.

Interpreting Music Video introduces students to the musical, visual, and sociological aspects of music videos, enabling them to critically analyze a multimedia form with a central place in popular culture. With highly relevant examples drawn from recent music videos across many different genres, this concise and accessible book brings together tools from musical analysis, film and media studies, gender and sexuality studies, and critical race studies, requiring no previous knowledge. Exploring the multiple dimensions of music videos, this book is the perfect introduction to critical analysis for music, media studies, communications, and popular culture.

Reading Pop collects together key essays on the interpretation of pop songs previously published in the journal Popular Music. In sixteen varied studies by many of the best-known scholars, all the most influential approaches are represented. An introduction by leading pop academic Richard Middleton puts them into context and outlines the main debates. A select bibliography of other writings on pop music analysis adds to the usefulness of the book, which will become a central text in popular music studies. - ;Reading Pop collects together key essays on the interpretation of pop songs previously published in the journal Popular Music. In sixteen varied studies by many of the best-known scholars, all the most influential approaches are represented. An introduction by leading pop academic Richard Middleton puts them into context and outlines the main debates. A select bibliography of other writings on pop music analysis adds to the usefulness of the book, which will become a central text in popular music studies. - ;extensive introduction is particularly valuable ... the paperback price is worth it for the introduction, and the Bjornberg and Tagg essays, alone. - Allan More, British Journal of Music Education

Existing books on the analysis of popular music focus on theory and methodology and normally discuss parts of songs briefly as examples. In this book the obverse is true: songs take centre stage. The authors analyse them from a variety of theoretical positions, compare their different hearings and discuss the ways in which they make sense of specific songs. By concentrating on 13 well-known and recent songs, this book offers some model analyses that can be studied at home or used in seminars and classrooms for students of popular music at all academic levels.

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.

The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches widens the scope of analytical approaches for popular music by incorporating methods developed for analyzing contemporary art music. This study endeavors to create a new analytical paradigm for examining popular music from the perspective of developments in contemporary art music. "Expanded approaches" for popular music analysis is broadly defined as as exploring the pitch-class structures, form, timbre, rhythm, or aesthetics of various forms of popular music in a conceptual space not limited to the domain of common practice tonality but broadened to include any applicable compositional, analytical, or theoretical concept that illuminates the music. The essays in this collection investigate a variety of analytical, theoretical, historical, and aesthetic commonalities popular music shares with 20th and 21st century art music. From rock and pop to hip hop and rap, dance and electronica, from the 1930s to present day, this companion explores these connections in five parts: Establishing and Expanding Analytical Frameworks Technology and Timbre Rhythm, Pitch, and Harmony Form and Structure Critical Frameworks: Analytical, Formal, Structural, and Political With contributions by established scholars and promising emerging scholars in music theory and historical musicology from North America, Europe, and Australia, The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches offers nuanced and detailed perspectives that address the relationships between concert and popular music.

Based on the critically acclaimed podcast that has broken down hundreds of Top 40 songs, Switched On Pop dives in into eighteen hit songs drawn from pop of the last twenty years--ranging from Britney to Beyoncé, Kelly Clarkson to Kendrick Lamar--uncovering the musical explanations for why and how certain tracks climb to the top of the charts. In the process, authors Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan reveal the timeless techniques that animate music across time and space.

Categorizing Sound addresses the relationship between categories of music and categories of people, particularly how certain ways of organizing sounds becomes integral to how we perceive ourselves and how we feel connected to some people and disconnected from others. Presenting a series of case studies ranging from race music and old-time music of the 1920s through country and R&B of the 1980s, David Brackett explores the processes by which genres are produced. Using in-depth archival research and sophisticated theorizing about how musical categories are defined, Brackett has produced a markedly original work.