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Tag Archives: songs

Songs in Conversation: Prince & Peter Gabriel Making It Big

Putting two songs on aspirational success released a decade apart into conversation 26 years later.

1 March 2022 in Music, Songs in Conversation.

Reachin’ Not Drowning: Songs in Conversation About Abortion

The personal is political and sometimes – as in the case of abortion – the political is personal.

8 October 2019 in Music, Politics, Songs in Conversation.

“I Didn’t Mean to Turn You Kong” – Seeking out #MeToo in Pop Music

Listening to Cherrelle’s “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On” in the #MeToo moment.

6 February 2018 in Music.

Imagining What Silence Looks Like: Prince & Queering the Popular Love Song

The dark sound and minimalist instrumentation on “If I Was Your Girlfriend” demonstrates Prince’s willingness to bend and distort expectations with a lyrical and sonic playfulness that challenges the listener to think beyond the obvious gender stereotypes inherent in most popular love songs.

2 May 2017 in Gender, Music, Queer.

“Nobody Speak” – Pulling Back the Curtain on Trumpist Politics

You wanna hear a good joke? Nobody speak, nobody get choked.

17 January 2017 in Music, Politics.

Songs in Conversation: Don’t Knock the Intimacy of Urban Sound

Tony Orlando & Dawn’s “Knock Three Times” vs. Suzanne Vega’s “Luka” in the soundscape of urban living.

30 August 2016 in Music, Songs in Conversation, Sound Studies, Urban Space.

Songs in Conversation: Those are Some Fragile Men, Baby Doll.

Defamiliarizing gender to highlight its constructedness.

7 June 2016 in Gender, Music, Songs in Conversation.

Songs In Conversation: I Can Go For Dialogics

Dialogics represent the rejection of a finality of meaning. It moves back and forth like a crossfade.

14 October 2014 in Music, Songs in Conversation.

Cracking the Prototype: Serial Monogamy and the Pop Love Song

Songs that explore the more complex reality inherent in the tension between the intensity of romantic feelings and the experience of serialized monogamy.

24 June 2014 in Music, Songs in Conversation.

So, You Say You Want a Revolution? It’s Gonna Be Alright, Just Buy Something.

The Nike commercial is simply a recapitulation of the song’s co-opting of revolutionary affect to sell popular music itself as a commodity and line the Beatles’ pockets.

3 June 2014 in Music, Politics.

The Who’s “I’m a Boy” as Transgender Anthem

Gender identity is over-determined.

29 April 2014 in Gender, Music, Queer.

Sympathy for “Sympathy for the Devil”

The finest trick humanity ever played was persuading itself that he devil was real.

18 March 2014 in Music.

“Movies, Museums and the Hall of Fame” – Beat Street & the Past Future of Hip Hop

Hip Hop got up big time, and I love that, but its focus on cultural production left its political potential untapped.

25 February 2014 in Authenticity, Film, Music.

Rock On and Drive: Songs in Conversation

Rock n’ roll songs about rock n’ roll disillusionment.

7 January 2014 in Music, Songs in Conversation.

Nothing (But Taxis): Songs in Conversation on the Environment

I prefer a song that explores our conflicted relationship to “nature.”

12 November 2013 in Environmentalism, Music, Politics, Songs in Conversation.

“And Then We Take It Higher” – Interpreting Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue”

Poor black and brown people in the West joined by music and their relation to power.

29 October 2013 in Music, Race, Urban Space.

Me Up On My Pony On My Boat

Expressing a desire to retreat from complex adult desire demonstrates how painful those desires can be.

6 May 2013 in Music.

“Our baby’s gone. . .” Camp and Multivocality in The Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home.”

The weird corniness of “She’s Leaving Home” comes from its perfect ability to stand for its own artifice

1 April 2013 in Music.

Alternate Futures of Wonder

Like a great deal of science fiction Stevie Wonder’s “Saturn” presents an alternate future by imagining an alternate past

29 January 2013 in Music, Race.

Thrills, Chills, and Safe Sexuality: The Sounds of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”

The “scariness” of black sexuality made palatable.

8 October 2012 in Music, Sexuality, Sound Studies.

Gender Policing “This Woman’s Work”

The very act of singing what he is singing is the woman’s work he sings about.

1 August 2012 in Gender, Music, Queer, Sexuality, Songs in Conversation.

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