Music has long played a role in American presidential campaigns as a mode of both expressing candidates’ messages and criticizing the opposition. The relevance of music in the 2016 campaign for the White House took various forms in a range of American media: a significant amount of popular music was used by campaigns, many artist endorsements were sought by candidates, ever changing songs were employed at rallies, instances of musicians threatening legal action against candidates burgeoned, and artists and others increasingly used music as a form of political protest before and after Election Day. The 2016 campaign was a game changer, similar to the development of music in the 1840 campaign, when “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” helped sing William Harrison into the White House. The ten chapters in this collection place music use in 2016 in historical perspective before examining musical messaging, strategy, and parody. The book ultimately explores causality: how do music and musicians affect presidential elections, and how do politicians and campaigns affect music and musicians? The authors explain this interaction from various perspectives, with methodological approaches from several fields, including political science, legal studies, musicology, cultural studies, rhetorical studies, and communications and journalism. These chapters will help the reader understand music in the 2016 election to realize how music will be relevant in 2020 and beyond.

This Expanded Edition features even more insights on “Weird Al” Yankovic, including his activities during a tumultuous 2020 and 2021, diving deeper into the world of the iconic man who has made a career out of making us laugh. Funny music is often dismissed as light and irrelevant, but Yankovic’s fourteen successful studio albums prove there is more going on than comedic music's reputation suggests. Lily Hirsch weaves together original interviews with the prince of parody himself, creating a fresh take on comedy and music’s complicated romance. She reveals that Yankovic’s jests have always had a deeper meaning, addressing such topics as bullying, celebrity, and racial and gender stereotypes. The Expanded Edition celebrates Yankovic’s vast influence on musicians, comedians, and performing artists as well as what the man has meant to fans—in a time of uncertainty, Yankovic has served as a much-needed bright spot for many. From his love of accordions and Hawaiian print shirts to his popular puns and trademark dance moves, Weird Al is undeterred by those who say funny music is nothing but a low-brow pastime. And thank goodness. With his good-guy grace still intact, Yankovic remains unapologetically and unmistakably himself. Reveling in the mischief and wisdom of Yankovic’s over forty-year career, this book is an Al-expense-paid tour of a true comedic and musical genius.

This book explores the role of music in the some five hundred feature-length films on the Middle Ages produced between the late 1890s and the present day. Haines focuses on the tension in these films between the surviving evidence for medieval music and the idiomatic tradition of cinematic music. The latter is taken broadly as any musical sound occurring in a film, from the clang of a bell off-screen to a minstrel singing his song. Medieval film music must be considered in the broader historical context of pre-cinematic medievalisms and of medievalist cinema’s main development in the course of the twentieth century as an American appropriation of European culture. The book treats six pervasive moments that define the genre of medieval film: the church-tower bell, the trumpet fanfare or horn call, the music of banquets and courts, the singing minstrel, performances of Gregorian chant, and the music that accompanies horse-riding knights, with each chapter visiting representative films as case studies. These six signal musical moments, that create a fundamental visual-aural core central to making a film feel medieval to modern audiences, originate in medievalist works predating cinema by some three centuries.

Charlamagne Tha God, New York Times bestselling author of Black Privilege and always provocative cohost of Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club, reveals his blueprint for breaking free from your fears and anxieties. Being “shook” is more than a rap lyric for Charlamagne, it’s his mission to overcome. While it may seem like he’s ahead of the game, he is actually plagued by anxieties, such as the fear of losing his roots, the fear of being a bad dad, and the fear of being a terrible husband. In the national bestseller Shook One, Charlamagne chronicles his journey to beat those fears and shows a path that you too can take to overcome the anxieties that may be holding you back. Ironically, Charlamagne’s fear of failure—of falling into the life of stagnation or crime that caught up so many of his friends and family in his hometown of Moncks Corner—has been the fuel that has propelled him to success. However, even after achieving national prominence as a radio personality, Charlamagne still found himself paralyzed by anxiety and distrust. Here, in Shook One, he is working through these problems—many of which he traces back to cultural PTSD—with help from mentors, friends, and therapy. Being anxious doesn’t serve the same purpose anymore. Through therapy, he’s figuring out how to get over the irrational fears that won’t take him anywhere positive. Charlamange hopes Shook One can be a call to action: Getting help is your right. His second book “cements the radio personality’s stance in making sure he’s on the right side of history when it comes to society’s growing focus on mental health, while helping remove the negative stigma” (Billboard).

Ben Harris is a talented news photographer whose job puts him where the action is—a job that costs him his marriage and his family. His ex-wife marries his editor and boss. For the sake of his two children, Harris swallows his pride and offers his hand in friendship. Then his best friend is killed by the blast of a concealed bomb in Harris’s surveillance van. He looks into the stories Gallagher was investigating to find the killer—and the target. Frames Per Second is the story of a flawed but good man trying to make the best of a bad situation. Trying to uncover the truth of his friend’s death, trying to keep his family together, trying to reconcile with the new man in their lives—and, ultimately, fighting desperately to keep them alive.