Understanding Popular Music - Hardcover

Roy Shuker

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 041523509X ISBN 13: 9780415235099

Publisher: Routledge, 2001

Synopsis

Understanding Popular Music is a comprehensive introduction to the history and meaning of popular music. It begins with a critical assessment of the different ways in which popular music has been studied and the difficulties and debates which surround the analysis of popular culture and popular music.
Drawing on the recent work of music scholars and the popular music press, Shuker explores key subjects which shape our experience of music, including music production, the music industry, music policy, fans, audiences and subcultures, the musician as 'star', music journalism, and the reception and consumption of popular music. This fully revised and updated second edition includes:
*case studies and lyrics of artists such as Shania Twain, S Club 7, The Spice Girls and Fat Boy Slim
* the impact of technologies including on-line delivery and the debates over MP3 and Napster
* the rise of DJ culture and the changing idea of the 'musician'
* a critique of gender and sexual politics and the discrimination which exists in the music industry
* moral panics over popular music including the controversies surrounding artists such as Marilyn Manson and Ice-T
* a comprehensive discography, guide to further reading and directory of websites.

About this title

About the Author

Roy Shuker is Associate Professor in Media Studies at Massey University, New Zealand. He is the author of Popular Music: The Key Concepts (Routledge 1998).

Reviews

Presented in the larger context of cultural studies, Understanding Popular Music is a commendably comprehensive analysis not only of 20th-century popular music itself but also of its major cultural theorists. Shuker (media studies, Massey Univ., New Zealand) knowledgeably traces and treats almost every aspect of popular music, among them performance and recording technologies, the music industry, the music press, gender implications, political implications; and visual representations, both pre- and post-MTV. This substantially revamped work, first published in 1994, addresses newer artists, genres, and technologies and also reconsiders initial evaluations of many theories and theorists. As with most studies to date in this area, Shuker's is rigidly and regrettably confined to Anglo-American popular music; collections seeking an appropriate balance should consider World Music: The Rough Guide (LJ 12/89). Nevertheless, this book's sophistication and theoretical bent make it a superb choice for academic libraries. Public libraries should consider more accessible works like Nick Johnstone's Melody Maker History of 20th-Century Popular Music (LJ 3/15/00). Bill Piekarski, Lackawanna, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 041523509X
• ISBN 13: 9780415235099
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 304