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This chapter explores the aesthetics of pop music in general and then focuses on how specific artists might facilitate religious experience. It examines not just ‘light’ popular music, but also the various types to which Christians have sometimes taken most exception, among them hard rock and rap. Artists considered include the Beatles, Madonna, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Nick Cave, and The Bad Seeds.

From the early 1960s through to the mid-1970s, a widespread desire on the Italian left to resist the ‘schematization of everyday life’, triggered by the pressures of politics and mass media, led to a politicization across different musical genres. The discourse of intellectuals and artists was significantly influenced by the writings of the founder of the Italian Communist Party Antonio Gramsci, and in turn led the PCI of the early 1970s to an unambiguous commitment to resist ‘any impulse to identify with any specific “poetics” or “tendency”,...to ignore the great variety of creative experiences’ (Giorgio Napolitano), whilst affirming a faith in innovation and renewal as the vehicle for oppositional sentiment. This chapter examines this complex cultural network as it manifested itself in the distinct musical terrains of folk music, rock, jazz, and free improvisation, and avant-garde music theatre.

Chris Cutler is a percussionist, composer, lyricist, and writer. He was a member of avant-rock group Henry Cow between 1971 and 1978, after which he co-founded international groups including Art Bears, News from Babel, Cassiber, and The Science Group. He founded and runs the independent label and distribution service ReR/Recommended. This chapter recounts the evolution of political concerns within Henry Cow, as manifested in (amongst other things) the group's relationship to the record industry, its attitude to the different musical genres on which it drew, and its aspiration to collective forms of organisation and musical practice. The band's experience of playing for events organised by leftist groups (including the Italian Communist Party) are described, as are the alternative performance circuits established by Cutler in the later 1970s.

This chapter focuses on whether pop music subcultures promote self-harming and other factors related to delinquency. Put simply, it considers whether listening to certain forms of pop music is related to a range of behaviours that society deems undesirable. It begins by briefly describing some of the instances where pop music has caused public outrage around the world. From here, it addresses whether there is a relationship between delinquency and an interest particularly in rap and rock music, before briefly noting how an interest in these musical styles is also associated with the commission by young fans of a range of other undesirable behaviours. The chapter then considers another possible consequence of musical taste that, in addition to delinquency, has also caused grave concern, namely self-harming and suicide. Finally, it addresses whether adolescents can accurately comprehend pop music lyrics, and whether pop music should be censored.

This chapter examines the development of rock ‘n’ roll music in China and its links with the emergent youth culture. It focuses on how young rebels use their own rock music as a means of reflecting their changing attitudes, behaviour, and “mood of living.” It examines Tian Zuangzhuang 's Rock Kids, Zhang Yuan 's Beijing Bastards, and Jiang Wen 's In the Heat of the Sun.

WMMS, aka “The Buzzard,” dominated Cleveland radio in the 1970s and 1980s by pitching “balls-out rock ‘n’ roll” to a city struggling with deindustrialization. Rock on radio was transformed from underground freeform aimed at college students to an AOR approach whose Joe Sixpack ethos was symbolized by Bruce Springsteen. Yet in the early 1980s the station experienced its greatest ratings success and crisis of definition when it played Michael Jackson, a push against segregated formatting but also a nod to a sales staff that believed it needed yuppie listeners rather than working class “earthdogs” who preferred metal. Ultimately, WMMS was defeated in the ratings by syndicated jock Howard Stern, a voice for those earthdogs, and the diminished station was bought by the megachain Clear Channel. Clear Channel made any notion of WMMS as Cleveland’s special station absurd, but it had the corporate power to devote a format to earthdog listeners – struggling white men, 18-34, united by belligerence. Rock was the most contentious of formats within the Top 40 system, because its genre ideals were particularly fierce about resisting standardization.

No other recording artist has tapped into the reimagined roots of the old, millennial America to the extent Bob Dylan (1941- ) has. He represents something unique: a millionaire purveyor of technologized, capitalist popular culture whose work projects a consistent though often subliminal message of the end of the world. Dylan’s songs are also a prime example of the hybridity of American apocalyptic thought. Dylan has invoked millennium throughout his career, including times when he was seen as a nihilistic radical of the counter-culture. Furthermore, the technologies of recording, radio, television, and other media has meant a broader diffusion of this imagery among the general public than at any previous time in history. This chapter shows that each musical idiom that Dylan has chosen to deliver his message, together with his tendency to mix popular culture imagery with that drawn from the Bible, has deflected and obscured this eschatogical message. The very eclecticism of Dylan’s sources acts to distance him from any single tradition, and his career has seen every possible take on the theme of millennium, from postmodern pastiche to sincere gospel.

This chapter explores the emergence of a rock culture as a window through which to analyze ideals and debates over masculinity. Beginning in 1966, an extremely active rock culture emerged in Argentina, one that attracted increasing numbers of working- and middle-class young men as poets, musicians, and fans. Rock culture acted as a platform for young men to articulate a practical and poetical criticism of male “ordinary life.” By upholding the symbolic potential of the pibes (boys) and forging a so-called “fraternity of longhaired boys,” rockers questioned the values attached to the hegemonic notions of masculinity, including sobriety and breadwinning capability. Drawing on a transnational repertoire of sounds and ideas, they shaped a cultural politics that on the one hand led toward “modernizing” masculinity and, on the other, iconoclastically rejected the authoritarian and repressive components of the dynamics of sociocultural modernization.

This chapter zooms out to examine the broader historical and stylistic context of rock. The roots of rock—especially in common-practice music, the blues, and Tin Pan Alley / jazz—have been widely discussed, but this chapter attempts to identify more systematically the features that rock shares with these previous styles, as well as its unique features. A historical survey of rock itself and its various subgenres finds that it underwent major changes in the early 1960s but remained rather stable over the next three decades, and in some respects rather homogenous. The chapter then considers some other genres with which rock has interacted and sometimes fused: folk, Latin pop, jazz, electronic dance music, rap, and country. Finally, it considers the development of rock since 2000, finding some changes in the style but also many continuities.

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about a stylistic analysis of rock music. It offers arguments against the assumption that rock is simply a crude extension of common-practice music and explains that rock exhibits melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic characteristics that are not found in any other musical style. It also suggests that the stylistic norms of rock depend on ideas from the common practice, but differ from common-practice norms in crucial ways.

This chapter examines harmonic succession in rock music. It discusses music theorists' view that rock music follows the standards of the common practice with regard to harmonic progression and suggests that the standard patterns of harmonic succession used in rock are best understood when compared with the traditional norms from which they depart. It also analyzes the harmonic succession in several rock songs including Bee Gees' “To Love Somebody”, Moody Blues'“Nights In White Satin”, and Journey's “Faithfully”.

This chapter looks at how Chicago soul, rock and folk artists created new music during the late 1960s as part of an emerging popular counterculture, commonly described as the hippie movement. These musicians included singer/songwriter Terry Callier, experimental composer/producer Charles Stepney and his conceptual ensemble Rotary Connection as well as the band Baby Huey and The Babysitters. How much these racially integrated performers and audiences tried to transcend the entrenched segregation within Chicago is a major theme, as is describing how these groups gave rise to such internationally celebrated singers as Minnie Riperton and Chaka Khan. A consideration of how these artists generally influenced later generations of rock performers as well as hip-hop DJs and producers concludes this chapter.

This chapter examines gender norms and sexuality, drug use, and music—important signifiers of identity, sociability, and agency. In popular parlance, “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll” often prompts thoughts of hippies practicing free love while stoned and listening to Jimi Hendrix. A lot of that happened. But the adage also serves as a doorway into a broad range of sensibilities, innovations, and conflicts that lay bare cultural contestations—with generational overtones and sociopolitical implications—during Chile’s road to socialism then dictatorship. Sex, drugs, and rock music were part and parcel of a generation’s Zeitgeist, as many young people searched for things ethereal and new at a unique time in modern history.

This chapter presents the scope, rationale, and approach of the book. Unlike much previous research on rock, the book is focused on musical rather than sociocultural aspects; it is primarily theoretical (focused on general features of the style) rather than analytical (focused on understanding individual works), though it is argued that developing a stronger theoretical foundation for rock will benefit analysis. Rock is defined broadly, to include a wide range of late twentieth-century Anglo-American popular styles. The chapter addresses some potentially controversial aspects of the book, such as the idea of rock as a musical “language,” the use of concepts from common-practice theory, the use of music notation, and the focus on purely musical aspects of the rock style. The chapter also describes the corpus of harmonic analyses and melodic transcriptions that is used in the book.

This chapter describes the Nashville music scene from both geographic and historical perspectives. The founding artists of the MuzikMafia did not incite a revolution in Nashville; they merely worked the system. Thus, a discussion of the MuzikMafia must begin with the system itself: the Nashville scene. The many districts and venues that comprise Nashville’s music scene reflect the city’s musical diversity. Nashville’s rich musical history shows that the city’s roots are by no means limited to commercial country. The early presence and historical significance of art music, dance bands, and jazz is little known. However, these styles have been integral components of musical life in Nashville since the first half of the twentieth century. Nashville also has a close relationship with rock music since the rise of rock and roll in the 1950s.

This chapter focuses on the development of rock and pop electronic music. It argues that the steady integration of electronic devices with more traditional rock and pop instruments established an important link on a purely technical level with the main genres of electronic music, one that has largely remained unbroken to the present day. Artistic links, however, have proved far more tenuous, for the philosophical and stylistic differences have not proved easy to bridge. Furthermore, excursions into new sound worlds by rock and pop musicians have often lacked any sustained development. Many groups in search of a distinctive identity experimented with the more exotic possibilities of synthesizers and associated devices during the early stages of their career, only to return to more traditional sound repertoires in later years. The chapter also considers the Techno movement, which has forged the greatest practical links with the core activities of electronic and computer music.