Table Of ContentCoastal Environments
in Popular Song
This book examines how popular music is able to approach the subjects of
bio-politics, climate change, solastalgia, and anthropomorphisation, alongside
its more common diet of songs about love, dancing, and break-ups – all the
while satisfying its primary remit of being entertaining and listenable.
Nearly a thousand books have been published on bioethics since Van
Rensselaer Potter’s Bioethics Bridge to the Future (1971), with a marked
increase in the past 20 years. However, not one of these books has focused
itself on popular music, something Christopher Partridge describes as
‘central to the construction of [our] identities, central to [our] sense of self,
central to [our] well-being and, therefore, central to [our] social relations’.
This edited collection examines popular music through a range of topics,
from romance to climate change.
Coastal Environments in Popular Song is perfect for students, scholars,
and researchers alike interested in bioethics, social history, and the history
of music.
Glenn Fosbraey is the Head of English, Creative Writing, and American
Studies at The University of Winchester. He has published various books,
chapters, and journal articles about the academic study of song lyrics
including Writing Song Lyrics (2019), and Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity,
and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music (2021).
Routledge Advances in the History of Bioethics
Series Editors: Chris Mounsey, Stan Booth,
and Madeleine Mant
Routledge Advances in the History of Bioethics aims to act as a nexus for
debates typically in collections of diverse but explicitly interrelated essays
about the histories and literatures of bioethical debates from a wide spec-
trum of disciplines, methodologies, periods, and geographical contexts.
This series champions conversations from within interdisciplinary collision
spaces, considering the effects of physical and metaphysical environments
upon factual and fictional spaces.
Bodies of Information
Reading the VariAble Body from Roman Britain to Hip Hop
Edited by Chris Mounsey and Stan Booth
The History and Bioethics of Medical Education
“You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”
Edited by Madeleine Mant and Chris Mounsey
Reconsidering Extinction in Terms of the History of Global Bioethics
Edited by Stan Booth and Chris Mounsey
Stewardship and the Future of the Planet
Promise and Paradox
Edited by Rachel Carnell and Chris Mounsey
Coastal Environments in Popular Song
Lost Horizons
Edited by Glenn Fosbraey
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Advances-in-the-History-of-Bioethics/book-series/RAITHOB
Coastal Environments
in Popular Song
Lost Horizons
Edited by Glenn Fosbraey
First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Glenn Fosbraey; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Glenn Fosbraey to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fosbraey, Glenn, editor.
Title: Coastal environments in popular song : lost horizons / edited by
Glenn Fosbraey.
Description: [1.] | New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Series: Routledge
advances in the history of bioethics | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022031602 (print) | LCCN 2022031603 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032137957 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032137964 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003230847 (ebook)
Classification: LCC ML3918.P67 C65 2022 (print) | LCC ML3918.P67
(ebook) | DDC 782.42164—dc23/eng/20220809
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022031602
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022031603
ISBN: 978-1-032-13795-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-13796-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-23084-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003230847
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Contributors’ Biographies vii
Introduction 1
GLENN FOSBRAEY
PART 1
Campaigns, Protests, and Warnings 7
1 Confucius and the Ethical Edge: Shake It Baby Now, Twist
and Shout 9
PAUL D. SLADKY
2 “Nobody Can Stop the Waves”: Constructing the Coast in
Dutch Pop Music 26
COCO D’HONT
3 Frost or Fire? Popular Music Responses to Climate Change,
From Woodstock to Glastonbury 43
CHRIS MOUNSEY
PART 2
Sensuality, Romance, and Hedonism 59
4 The Sensual Coast: Eroticism, Perception, Encounter 61
JONATHAN DAY
5 Seaside Ports, Coastal Cities and Tropical Islands: Songs of
Sex Work and Inequality by the Sea 83
NATASHA MULVIHILL
vi Contents
PART 3
Politics, Isolation, and Nostalgia 101
6 From Endless Summer to Endless Bummer: The Californian
‘Beach Song’ From The Beach Boys to Weezer 103
GLENN FOSBRAEY
7 Island Logic: Roots Reggae, Rasta, and Postcolonial Critique 119
JUSTIN PATCH
8 Flotsam and Jetsam: British Coastal Songs of Jettison,
Discovery, and Retrieval (1984–2021) 133
KEVAN MANWARING
9 The Sonically Evoked Spaces of Post-Rock in an Era of
Climate Reality 150
GARETH SCHOTT
Index 172
Contributors’ Biographies
Jonathan Day works as a musician, writer, and image-maker. He is
Co-director of Performance Research at Birmingham Institute of Crea-
tive Arts/Birmingham Conservatoire. He has released a series of record-
ings and published five books and numerous articles. He performs
internationally, recently in Australia, Hong Kong, China, India, Finland,
Thailand, Cyprus, and at major festivals in the UK.
Coco d’Hont is the author of Extreme States: The Evolution of American
Transgressive Fiction 1960–2000 (Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2019).
Her research interests include gender and queer theory, horror and
popular culture, and contemporary fiction. Her work has appeared
in the European Journal of American Studies (2017), The Palgrave
Handbook to Horror Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Com-
parative American Studies (2019), and Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity,
and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music (Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2021).
Glenn Fosbraey is the Associate Dean for Humanities and Social Sciences
and the Head of English and Creative Writing at the University of Win-
chester. Specialising in the academic study of song lyrics, his recent pub-
lications include Reading Eminem (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Viva
Hate: Exploring Hatred in Popular Music (Cambridge Scholars Press,
2022), and Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Pop-
ular Music (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021 – as co-editor).
Kevan Manwaring is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Arts University
Bournemouth. A BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinkers 2022 finalist, he
researches fantasy, ecology, and eco-fiction. He is the convenor of Writ-
ing the Earth – an annual programme of events for Earth Day. He is the
author of The Bardic Handbook, The Long Woman, and Lost Islands,
and editor of Heavy Weather: Tempestuous Tales of Stranger Climes
(The British Library) as well as collections of folk tales for The History
Press. He has contributed articles to Writing in Practice, New Writing,
and Gothic Nature. He blogs and tweets as the Bardic Academic.
viii Contributors’ Biographies
Chris Mounsey (University of Winchester) is the author of the mono-
graphs Christopher Smart: Clown of God (2001), Being the Body of
Christ (2012) and Sight Correction (2019). He has also edited Present-
ing Gender (2001), Queer People (2007), The Idea of Disability in the
Eighteenth Century (2014), Developments in the Histories of Sexu-
alities (2015), The Variable Body in History (2016), and Bodies of
Information (2020).
Dr Natasha Mulvihill is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Head of the
Centre for Gender and Violence and Research at the University of Bris-
tol. She is interested in interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches
to understanding gender, sex, and power. Natasha has written particu-
larly on the sex industry and on domestic, sexual, and ‘honour’ violence,
abuse, and exploitation.
Justin Patch is Associate Professor of Music at Vassar College, where he is
also affiliated with American Studies, Media Studies, and Asian Studies.
His research focuses on sound and emotion in contemporary US politi-
cal campaigns. Discordant Democracy: Sound, Affect, and Populism in
the Presidential Campaign was published in 2019 (Routledge). In 2022,
he and colleague Tom Porcello published the first textbook on sound
studies, Re-Making Sound: An Experiential Approach to Sound Stud-
ies (Bloomsbury Academic). Currently, he is completing a monograph
on citizen-made partisan art in contemporary US populism, entitled The
Arts of Populism: Signs, Sounds and Fury (Routledge).
Gareth Schott is a Professor in Screen and Media Studies at the University
of Waikato in Aotearoa/New Zealand. He is a media psychologist with
a broad interest in the impact of media on human psychology. His most
recent music-related research and publications include an examination of
parasocial grief following the deaths of musicians, the gender politics of
punk in first wave British punk and queer punk, and the transmedia sto-
rytelling practices of Sigur Rós. He also engages in research by creative
practice producing soundtrack and soundscape work.
Paul D. Sladky is an Associate Professor in the College of Humanities and
Social Sciences at Augusta University, where he specializes in English lan-
guage and literature, including courses on American Jazz, The Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison.
Introduction
Glenn Fosbraey
In his book I’ll Take You There: Pop Music and the Urge for Transcendence
Bill Frisicks-Warren notes that ‘Ours is a world in which great numbers of
people look to pop music . . . for guidance that conventional religious obser-
vance does not provide’.1 With climate change, overpopulation, pandemics,
famine, drought, and disease appearing on our news feeds on a daily basis,
it’s pop music’s duty to use its platform to speak out about global issues and
to try and enact positive change. Lost Horizons will examine how popular
music has addressed ‘the coast’, that romantic and mystic location where
land meets the sea and where recently, land falls into the sea. From the
pills and fights of The Who’s Brighton Beach to the moonlit black sands
of Crowded House’s Karekare, from The Beach Boys’ ‘summer dream’ at
Paradise Cove to Morrissey ‘trudging slowly over wet sand’, the coast has
been providing inspiration for songwriters since popular music began. But,
perhaps more importantly, it has been inspiring songwriters to speak out
about damage to coral reefs, pollution, sealife, unpredictable weather and
rising sea levels, exploitation, sex tourism, and erosion, all of which will be
discussed in the book. And these things need to be discussed, digested, acted
upon. In my chapter, I look at the South California coast in the early 1960s,
a time and place ‘arguably the most safe, prosperous and leisured [that]
humanity has ever enjoyed’,2 a paradise on earth where the clean freshwater
and immaculate sandy beaches endlessly played host to surfers, sunbathers,
and pleasure-seekers. But, 60 years on, things are very different.
In 2020, ‘there were 157 bad air days for ozone pollution – the invisible,
lung-searing gas in smog – across the vast, coast-to-mountains basin span-
ning Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties’.3
In 2021, Scientist David Valentine discovered
[C]ountless barrels of toxic waste, laced with DDT, littering the ocean
floor in between Long Beach and Catalina Island [which] had been hid-
den since the 1940s.4
The San Gabriel River becomes a raging torrent after heavy winter
rains, and can then transport a variety of undesirable invisible and vis-
ible contaminants to the coastal area of the Bight at Long Beach and
DOI: 10.4324/9781003230847-1
