he Oxford Handbook of Pop Music, edited by Eric Weisbard, will feature about forty contributors thinking about pop music studies in relationship to popular music studies, with sections on the emergence of pop, pop forms, pop as music, intersections of identity, icons, and 21st century developments. For this roundtable, we propose to gather some of the book’s contributors and discuss pop style from the perspective of their different chapters. As of the conference, ideally, the collection will have just been sent off for peer review. This would be a perfect moment for an exchange of ideas and to receive feedback on particular approaches.
Roundtable participants will make opening remarks that showcase their project in general and how in particular style factors. Here are the topics that presenters are working on.
Moderator: Eric Weisbard, University of Alabama
Emily Gale, “’Oh, Lady, Touch Thy Lute Again’: Sex in Early Pop” -- case studies from an 1844 collection of song texts, The Parlour Songster, Containing A Superior Collection of the Most Popular Sentimental Songs. In particular, I am interested in how early pop song writers engaged musical instruments as sexual metaphors—lutes and guitars, in particular, feature prominently.
Jordan Brown: “Queen Bey: The Sampling Historiographies Behind the Icon” -- what aspects of her artistry solidify her as a “pop icon.” I stress the sampling practices within her own music, creating a sonic archive of popular music and Black socio-political movements, blending cultural context with the usage of 1s and 0s.
Marita Buanes Djupvik, “Vocal resistance – The defiant virtuosity of Whitney Houston”—critical musicology of how gender and race are negotiated in Houston's vocal performances, which resulted in both her popular success and her exclusion from forms of popular music seen as more "authentic" and worthy of serious academic study.
Craig Seymour -- “Be Your Natural Self:” How Black Queer Men Influenced Pop Music -- an attempt to map several animating moments when Black queer men—as innovative artists, taste-making curators, and interpretive audiences—helped birth sounds and performance styles that were later adopted as part of the pop mainstream.
Alex Blue V and Kyle DeCoste, The Dirty, Dirty South: Authenticating Place and Identity in Country Rap –for this roundtable, how country rappers use the Confederate flag to symbolize being outlaws and the aesthetics of mud as fashion.
Ann Powers, “The Beatles Are Not What You Think They Are”-- the Beatles as pop icons, as flexible and emblematically translucent as they were group-bonded and “progressive.” Given our tendency to default to a view of pop icons who suffer or overcome, might we need to reach, as well, to Abba and BTS, and think about collective icons, with the sustained success made possible by a diversified portfolio?
Sara Marcus, Pop Anthems -- pop songs that have been identified as feminist and/or queer anthems. What makes a pop song sound “anthemic,” aside from its lyrics or performer? What formal qualities in a song signal its intended reception as an anthem, and how do the songs’ receptions bear this out or pull against it? What’s the relationship between the pop anthem and the pop protest song?
Dan DiPiero, “Be Sweet”: Reflections on the Indie/Pop Nexus -- contemporary indie, including its feminization in music discourse, return to DIY roots, and the ways that its expansive approach to genre opens potential for crossing over into mainstream popularity. The idea that music can be widely popular while remaining recognizably “indie” by listeners is supported by shifts in the term’s usage over time.
Moderators
American Studies prof, Univ of Alabama, University of Alabama
Eric Weisbard is professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama, author of such books as Top 40 Democracy, Songbooks, and Hound Dog, co-founder and longtime organizer of the Pop Conference, and a former Village Voice music editor and Journal of Popular Music Studies co-editor...
Read More →
Speakers EG
Emily Gale is a feminist music scholar and assistant professor of musicology/ethnomusicology at the University of Lethbridge on Blackfoot Confederacy Territory in so-called Alberta, Canada. Emily’s book in progress, Sentimental Songs for Sentimental People: An Unheard History of...
Read More → JR
Graduate Candidate, Harvard University
Jordan R. Brown (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology and Presidential Scholar at Harvard University with a secondary field in African and African-American Studies. She is currently co-chair of Harvard’s Southern-Pian Society, co-chair of Project Spectrum, and a UNESCO...
Read More → MB
Marita Buanes Djupvik is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Inland Norway. Her research adopts an interdisciplinary approach, encompassing musical theoretical and socio-cultural analysis, audiovisual analysis, and music theory. Dr. Djupvik has published extensively...
Read More → CS
Craig Seymour has been studying Black music for nearly 30 years. He is the author of Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross and has published in such publications as The New York Times Magazine and the Washington Post. He has a Ph.D. in American Studies.
AB
Alex Blue V is an Assistant Professor of Black Studies in Media and Technology at McGill University. Blue is currently working on two books. The first, A Matter of Death and Life, is a “necrographic” study of narratives of death and dying in contemporary Detroit hip-hop. The second...
Read More →
Visiting Assistant Professor, Tulane University
Kyle DeCoste (he/him) is a scholar of popular music from New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in Gender and Sexuality Studies and Music at Tulane University. He specializes in U.S. popular music. His work, which is often collaborative and (auto)ethnographic...
Read More →
Writer, NPR Music
Ann Powers is NPR Music's critic and correspondent. She has worked at the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Village Voice, and is the author of four books, most recently Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell (2024). With Evelyn McDonnell, she edited Rock She Wrote: Women...
Read More →SM
Sara Marcus is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. Marcus is the author of Political Disappointment: A Cultural History from Reconstruction to the AIDS Crisis (Harvard University Press, 2023)—which was shortlisted for the Christian Gauss Award in literary...
Read More →
Dan DiPiero is a musician, Assistant Professor of Music Studies, and Affiliated Faculty in Race, Ethnic, and Gender Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. His first book, Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life (University of Michigan Press) was...
Read More →