Table Of ContentUnderstanding Popular
Music Culture
This extensively revised and expanded fifth edition of Understanding Popular Music
Culture provides an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the production,
distribution, consumption, and meaning of popular music, and the debates that
surround popular culture and popular music.
Reflecting the continued proliferation of popular music studies, the new music
industry in a digital age, and the emergence of new stars, this new edition has
been reorganized and extensively updated throughout, making for a more
coherent and sequenced coverage of the field. These updates include:
(cid:1) two new chapters entitled ‘The Real Thing’: Authenticity, covers, and the
canon and ‘Time Will Pass You By’: Histories and popular memory
(cid:1) newcasestudiesonartistsincludingtheRollingStones,Lorde,OneDirection,
and Taylor Swift
(cid:1) further examples of musical texts, genres, and performers throughout
including additional coverage of Electronic Dance Music
(cid:1) expanded coverage on the importance of the back catalogue and the box set,
reality television, and the music biopic
(cid:1) greater attention to the role and impact of the internet and digital develop-
ments in relation to production, dissemination, mediation, and consumption,
including the role of social network sites and streaming services
(cid:1) each chapter now has its own set of expanded references to facilitate further
investigation.
Additional resources for students and teachers can also be found on the
companion web site (www.routledge.com/cw/shuker), which includes additional
case studies, links to relevant web sites, and a discography of popular music
metagenres.
Roy Shuker is Adjunct Professor in Media Studies at Victoria University of
Wellington,NewZealand.HispreviouspublicationsincludedUnderstandingPopular
Music Culture (fourthedition,2012)andPopularMusic:TheKeyConcepts(thirdedition,
2012).
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Understanding Popular
Music Culture
Fifth edition
Roy Shuker
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Thiseditionpublished2016
byRoutledge
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©1994,2001,2008,2013,2016RoyShuker
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trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintent
toinfringe.
Firstpublished1994
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
Shuker,Roy.
Understandingpopularmusicculture/RoyShuker.--Fifthedition.
pagescm
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Popularmusic--Historyandcriticism.2.Popularculture--History--
20thcentury.3.Popularmusic--Historyandcriticism.I.Title.
ML3470.S542016
781.64--dc23
2015030149
ISBN:978-1-138-90783-6(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-138-90785-0(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-315-69487-0(ebk)
TypesetinBaskerville
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgements viii
‘What’s Goin’ On’: Introduction: popular music culture 1
1 ‘Every 1’s a Winner’: The music industry and the
record companies 9
2 ‘Pump Up the Volume’: Music and technology 25
3 ‘I’m Just a Singer’: Making music, the rock musician, and the
success continuum 39
4 ‘So You Want To Be a Rock ‘N’ Roll Star?’: Auteurs and stars 59
5 ‘Message Understood’: Musical texts 81
6 ‘The Real Thing’: Authenticity, covers, and the canon 99
7 ‘It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me’: Genre 112
8 ‘Shop Around’: Marketing and mediation 127
9 ‘U Got the Look’: From film and television to YouTube 145
10 ‘The Cover of “Rolling Stone”’: The music press 161
11 ‘My Generation’: Identity, consumption, and fandom 177
12 ‘Sound of our Town’: Subcultures, sounds, and scenes 196
13 ‘Revolution’: Social change, conscience rock,
and identity politics 211
14 ‘Pushin’ Too Hard’: Moral panic, state regulation,
and censorship 230
vi Contents
15 ‘We Are the World’: Globalization and state music policy 244
16 ‘Time Will Pass You By’: Histories and popular memory 261
17 ‘Wrap It Up’: Making music and making meaning 275
Appendix 1: Chapter song titles 279
Appendix 2: Popular music timeline 281
Appendix 3: Musical analysis 290
Selected references 293
Index 295
Preface
This study is an extensively revised edition of Understanding Popular Music Culture
(fourth edition, 2012). Reflecting the continued proliferation of publications in
popularmusicstudies,thenewmusicindustryinadigitalage,andtheemergence
ofnewstars,theearliervolumehasbeenreorganized.Anumberofchaptershave
been recast, making for a more coherent and sequenced coverage of the field;
there are two new chapters; and the book is 12,000 words longer. Further
examples of musical texts, genres, and performers have been added throughout,
including new case studies of the Rolling Stones, Taylor Swift, Lorde, and One
Direction; the importance of the back catalogue and the box set; and the music
biopic. I have paid greater attention to the role of the internet, the influence of
which has been felt across music production, dissemination and mediation, and
consumption. Each chapter now has its own references to facilitate further
investigation.
This book has been written as a systematic attempt to introduce the wider
study of popular music culture, locating the musical recording in the wider social
field. Popular music culture refers to the ways of making, disseminating, and
consuming music; the economic and technological practices associated with these
processes; and the sounds, images, and discourse (thinking, debating, and writing)
created by these practices. The interrelationship of ritual, pleasure, and economics
in popular music continues to create audiences, to fuel individual fantasy and
pleasure, and to create musical icons and cultural myths. Understanding Popular
Music Culture offers a contribution towards mapping this soundscape.
Acknowledgements
As in the earlier editions of this book, this revised study has relied extensively on
theworkofmanycriticsand‘colleaguesatadistance’,whohavewrittenextensively
on cultural studies and popular music. Many of the ‘best’ ideas here are theirs;
the errors of fact and argument – the bum notes – remain mine. To list them
risksleavingoutsomeone:acheckofmytextandreferencesprovidesarollcallof
sorts; my thanks to you all. I have benefited enormously from my membership of
IASPM – the International Association for the Study of Popular Music – through
itsconferences,publications,e-maildiscussions,and,aboveall,fromthefriendships
and insights its members have provided me with.
Advice, publications and work ‘in press’, research theses, and recordings were
providedbyChristinaBallico,SamanthaBennett,TonyaCooper,ShaneHoman,
Amanda Mills, and Keith Beattie.
Cameron Shuker helped me to access and better understand social media sites
and digital music; Emma Shuker assisted with the study of Taylor Swift and
fandom and One Direction.
The discussion of the career and marketing of the Rolling Stones draws on my
article in Rock Music Studies (2015, 2(3)); the new ‘Histories’ chapter utilizes an
essay review from Perfect Beat; and the study of record collecting adapts material
from Wax Trash and Vinyl Treasures (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015; paperback edition).
At Routledge, my thanks to Natalie Foster, for encouraging me to undertake a
new edition; to Sheni Kruger, who provided very helpful feedback along the way
and who gracefully put up with my delays; and to Andrew Watts, for his very
useful input as Production Editor. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Alison Jones
for exemplary copy editing.
‘ ’ ’ ’
What s Goin On
Introduction: popular music culture
In May 2015 an analysis conducted by researchers at Queen Mary College and
Imperial College, London, applied techniques derived from evolutionary biology
to17,000songsfromtheUSBillboardchartsbetween1960and2010andconcluded
that hip hop was a more significant musical intervention than the ‘British inva-
sion’ of the US charts in the mid-1960s, spearheaded by the Beatles. The study,
widely reported internationally, provoked considerable debate and opposition to
its findings and a reassertion of the importance of the Beatles as the catalyst for a
musical and cultural revolution.
As I complete this book in mid-2015 in Wellington, New Zealand, there are
numerous other indications of the visibility and pervasiveness of popular music
and the various forms it takes.
(cid:1) MediaWorks launched a new nationwide New Zealand radio network,
Magic, on 20 April. Targeting 50 to 69 year olds, it will play music from
Elvis to the Beach Boys, Roy Orbison to Dusty Springfield, and ‘a bit of old
rockers like Rod Stewart’ (Sunday Star-Times, 12 April 2015: D13).
(cid:1) Wellington concerts include Queen – It’s a Kinda Magic, a tribute band
featuring Giles Taylor as Freddie Mercury; ‘Latinheart throb’ Ricky Martin;
former punk rocker and 1980s’ MTV star, Billy Idol, who headlines with
America’s Cheap Trick and Australia’s hard rock band the Angels; and Ed
Sheeran, who draws almost 6,000 into a singalong at his sell-out concert.
(cid:1) Prime time television features the semi-finals of reality series American Idol,
which continues to attract substantial audiences; the three part biopic, Cilla,
which highlights the singer’s early career in Liverpool in the 1960s; and
Empire, the music business and hip hop drama that drew 21 million viewers
for its US finale.
(cid:1) It is announced that in 2014 vinyl sales in Britain exceeded a million for the
first time since 1997, helping to drive a boom in the sale of turntables.
(cid:1) As part of International Record Store Day, April 18, Neil Finn performs at
Slowboat Records, one of the few local surviving vinyl-based record stores.
(cid:1) The release of a box set of Bob Dylan and the Band’s 1967 sessions, The
Basement Tapes Complete, with 138 tracks over six CDs, typifies the increasing
marketing of the back catalogue and the repackaging of musical history.
