Interpreting Popular Music

David Brackett is Assistant Professor of Music at SUNY, Binghamton.

Preface

1 Introduction
Prelude
I. Codes and competences
II. Who is the author?
III. Musicology and popular music
IV. Postlude

2 Family values in music? Billie Holiday's and Bing Crosby's
"I'll Be Seeing You"
I. A tale of two (or three) recordings
II. Critical discourse
III. Biographical discourse
IV. Style and history
V. Performance, effect, and affect

3 When you're lookin' at Hank (you're looking at country)
I. Lyrics, metanarratives, and the great authenticity debate
II. Sound, performance, gender, and the hanky-tonk
III. "A feeling called the blues"
IV. The emergence of "country-western"

4 James Brown's "Superbad" and the double-voiced utterance
I. The discursive space of black music
II. Signifyin(g)-words and performance
III. Musical signifyin(g)

5 Writing, music, dancing, and architecture in Elvis Costello's
"Pills and Soap"
I. The "popular aesthetic"
II. Style and aesthetics
III. Interpretation and (post)modern pop
IV. A question of influence

6 Afterword: the citizens of Simpleton

Appendix
A. Reading the spectrum photos
B. Registral terminology

Notes
Bibliography
Select discography
Index