This book discusses the history of music warning labels, specifically the Parental Advisory Label (PAL), and the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). It aims to answer these questions: How could the PMRC trigger a debate on music lyrics as a negative influence on children that led to the introduction of the PAL in the long run? What did the implementation of the PAL warning mean for musicians and how had the perception of music changed so that the advisory label was deemed necessary? The central thesis is that through the discourse on explicit lyrics, certain music was marked as an actual threat to children and society and consequently started to be perceived as such. By the way in which the discourse evolved, and how other actors conducted themselves in the debates, this understanding of certain music was repeatedly (re-)negotiated and connected to other current discourses, such as discourses on family values, sexuality, youth culture, generational conflicts and social problems. Through this, the understanding of certain music as a threat to children and society was constantly renewed. The book analyses the PMRC’s campaign on explicit lyrics and provides insights into their strategy and success from a historical perspective.

(Book). You've written what you think is a great melody, what you hope is a strong lyric, and you've cut what sounds to you like a killer track. But how do you know if it's a hit? And what do you do with it if it is? Your only option is How to Be a Hit Songwriter , essential reading for advanced songwriters. Molly-Ann Leikin is the award-winning songwriter/songwriting consultant who helps good songwriters all over the world become hit songwriters. Whether your work just needs a little rewriting, polishing or some strong connections, Leikin will guide you step by step to the top of the charts. In How to Be a Hit Songwriter she offers expert advice and exercises, including "Seven Easy Steps to Writing Hit Lyrics." The book features inside information that can turn your song into a potential hit. What's more, she's interviewed music industry power players who share tips that are essential to all developing artists.

Most pop songs are short-lived. They appear suddenly and, if they catch on, seem to be everywhere at once before disappearing again into obscurity. Yet some songs resonate more deeply—often in ways that reflect broader historical and cultural changes. In Footsteps in the Dark, George Lipsitz illuminates these secret meanings, offering imaginative interpretations of a wide range of popular music genres from jazz to salsa to rock. Sweeping changes that only remotely register in official narratives, Lipsitz argues, can appear in vivid relief within popular music, especially when these changes occur outside mainstream white culture. Using a wealth of revealing examples, he discusses such topics as the emergence of an African American techno music subculture in Detroit as a contradictory case of digital capitalism and the prominence of banda, merengue, and salsa music in the 1990s as an expression of changing Mexican, Dominican, and Puerto Rican nationalisms. Approaching race and popular music from another direction, he analyzes the Ken Burns PBS series Jazz as a largely uncritical celebration of American nationalism that obscures the civil rights era’s challenge to racial inequality, and he takes on the infamous campaigns to censor hip-hop and the radical black voice in the early 1990s. Teeming with astute observations and brilliant insights about race and racism, deindustrialization, and urban renewal and their connections to music, Footsteps in the Dark puts forth an alternate history of post–cold war America and shows why in an era given to easy answers and clichd versions of history, pop songs matter more than ever. George Lipsitz is professor of black studies and sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Among his many books are Life in the Struggle, Dangerous Crossroads, and American Studies in a Moment of Danger (Minnesota, 2001).

A detailed historical analysis of popular music in American film, from the era of sheet music sales, to that of orchestrated pop records by Henry Mancini and Ennio Morricone in the 1960s, to the MTV-ready pop songs that occupy soundtrack CDs of today..

The book explores the importance of free speech in America by telling the stories of its chief antagonists - the censors.

Cheney (ethnic studies, California Polytechnic State U.) considers the political expression of rap artists within the historical tradition of black nationalism. Interweaving songs and interviews with hip-hop artists and activists including Chuck D of Public Enemy and Rosa Clemente, manager of dead prez, Cheney links late 20th- century hip-hop nationalists with their 19th-century spiritual forebears and challenges the perception of hip-hop as simply sexist or misogynistic.

Understanding the Music Business offers students a current overview of the music business. Going beyond what most music business texts offer, Weismann delivers a contemporary approach that addresses the unanswered questions for today's music students, such as, "Is it really possible to make a living as musician?" Understanding the Music Business covers the basics in the first part of the text. This first section deals with the fundamentals of the industry, including recording, music publishing, agents, managers, radio and television, unions, the internet and new technology, and regional and international music markets. However, it is the second half of the text that breaks new ground by covering the career paths of new artists in the industry, the development and need for entrepreneurial skills, and the ways that individuals forge careers in the industry.

This book introduces Africana Cultures and Policy Studies as an interdisciplinary field of study, rooted in the historical experience of people of African descent and focusing on policy development, anlaysis, and practical application.