Moderator: Karlyn King
Emily Lordi, “Homegirl Diva: Whitney Houston's Late 90s”
In 1998, against the odds of her dazzling star image and supposedly advanced age of 35,
Whitney Houston revamped her look and sound on My Love is Your Love, an album of songs
about betrayal and fortitude that initiated her turn toward a new bent-but-not-broken
brand of hip-hop-inflected R&B. That record also established a 90s template for women
artists who would use their personal conflicts to craft edgier, more philosophical personae
(see Mariah’s Emancipation of Mimi, Beyonce’s Lemonade, Taylor’s Reputation). In response
to tabloid accounts of her drug use and the general foolishness of her husband Bobby
Brown, Whitney refashioned herself as a homegirl diva, a wounded warrior who looked
fresher than ever and could still sing her ass off. Hence, the critic Barry Walters, who
profiled her for OUT magazine in 1999—her first story for a gay publication—predicted
that My Love and its club remixes might accomplish what Whitney’s platinum record sales
and Bodyguard world domination hadn’t yet: “She may finally become hip.”
This paper explains how Whitney’s late-90s transformation was facilitated by a new
generation of artists: Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, Missy Elliott, Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill
all wrote and produced songs for My Love. Whitney had entered a feedback loop of cultural
influence—working with artists who had grown up idolizing her, but whose immersion in
hip hop helped her develop a new form of diva realness though which she reached and re-
energized fanbases of Black women and gay men. Though she never embraced hip-hop’s
masculinist style (baggy jeans and jerseys for women), she did exchange her gowns for
cigarette pants and camisoles; and her full 80s hair for a sleek cinnamon bob. And because
she at last appeared to be voicing her own well-publicized struggles in song—both through
her deeper voice and though a new form of R&B that combed through the details of
romantic strife—her new music spoke to more than for her constituencies, repping them
more as a queen than a princess.
Johann Pibert, “The Transformative Power of Fashion in Madonna and Her Autobiographical
Celebration Tour from a Concert-Psychological Perspective”
It is almost impossible to express Madonna’s influence on the fashion world without resorting
to exaggeration. The singer’s biographer Mary Gabriel writes, for example: “By 2002,
Madonna was fashion. Everything she wore became a trend; every designer she worked with
became a star; every fashion show she attended became a media event.” 1 Two decades later,
with the Celebration Tour, Madonna presents her autobiography in concert form, which
Vogue journalist Christian Allaire describes as follows: “Almost better than the setlist,
however, was the Queen of Pop’s epic new outfits for the stage—well, new in a sense. All of
them riff off of her most iconic looks over the years (including, yes, that signature Jean Paul
Gaultier cone bra).” 2 The rebellious cone bra that Madonna introduced in 1990 during the
Blond Ambition Tour was able to define the female body as a self-determined agent, which
some perceived as defiant or even aggressive. 3 Madonna’s social criticism she often conveys
through her outfits has made her a global icon for fans and the object of investigation for
academics in a field of its own: the Madonna studies.
Based on the Celebration Tour, this paper aims to reveal the influence of Madonna’s fashion
on her fans from a concert-psychological perspective. Affective concert psychology is an
emerging transdisciplinary paradigm that posits a precedence of affective phenomena over
cognitive ones and intertwines social sciences with humanities. Methodologically, participant
observation and fan surveys are enriched with insights from Madonna studies. The results
show how important Madonna’s transformative, sometimes rebellious use of fashion has been
in shaping people’s identities worldwide.
Hannah Rosa Schiller, “Madonna’s (Mis)matching of Sonic and Visual Age Markers as
Chrononormative Disruption”
“Do not age. Because to age is a sin. You will be criticized and vilified and definitely not played
on the radio.” Madonna has faced relentless age-related criticism throughout her multi-decade
career. In popular culture, policing women's age is a proxy for enforcing heteronormative
systems more broadly (Lemish and Muhlbauer 2012). This paper considers the relationship
between sonic and visual markers of age across Madonna’s career to interrogate the assumption
that there is something inherently youthful about pop as a genre of music and performance, and
that it is shameful or desperate for anyone not biologically young to try to engage. Through
analysis of Madonna's recorded vocal performance and production techniques across time in
parallel with public discourse regarding her evolving visual aesthetics, I argue that pop music
affords disruptions of chrononormativity through its potential for mismatches between sonic and
visual markers of age.
While existing literature has explored Madonna's aging with a primary focus on her appearance
and her displays of sexuality, this paper offers a new perspective by centering her voice and
musical style. First, by analyzing the sound and production of Madonna's recorded voice
throughout her first two albums, Madonna (1983) and Like A Virgin (1984), in conjunction with
her early visual brand, I argue that pop music is always already a performance of youth. Bearing
this in mind, I then analyze the production of Madonna's voice on her 2015 album Rebel Heart
(2015) alongside recent discourse regarding Madonna’s cosmetic enhancements to illustrate how
Madonna continues to perform youth while simultaneously leaving what I describe as “age
residue.” I end with a discussion of how these examples of (mis)matching visual and sonic
markers of age disrupt chrononormative expectations, and raise further questions about what pop
music is and what it could be.
Andrea Hu, “K-pop Divas: Late 2000s/Early 2010s Girl Groups, Empowerment, and Femininity”
When most people think of pop, their minds go straight to pop queen princess Britney Spears or Lady
Gaga, but in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the genre of K-pop produced styles, music, and fashion that
was an amalgamation of many different sources. It offered empowerment and rebellion—especially for
young girls and women.
Unlike the 5th generation of K-pop today, girl groups of the late 2000s and early 2010s were what we
could now consider as divas. Through their style, music video, lyrics, fashion, and dance, they were
unapologetic about their sexuality, existence, confidence, and how their body is in space. This was also a
time when the girls were debuting older and weren’t being marketed to sell youth. Women in South Korea
were and still are viewed under a conservative lens that follow binary gender roles, and the girl groups of
that time offered an alternative way of being outside of traditional, patriarchal expectations .
For this presentation, I’m particularly interested in looking into how K-pop girl groups of the late
2000s and early 2010s explored empowerment, sexuality, and gender through style, fashion, and music
under a conservative society. I’m curious if the girl groups have had any societal and or personal impact
when they were still actively promoting. On the flip side, were the groups viewed as simply selling lust and
sex? What does confidence/sexual confidence look like then and how does it look now specifically in
South Korean society? These questions beg me to look further into why the past girl groups’ music, style,
and fashion are practically nonexistent today. Mos
