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POP CONFERENCE 2025

Baby, It’s a Look!
Popular Music, Style, and Fashion at the Edge

March 13 - 15, 2025

Los Angeles, California

Presented by USC Thornton School of Music

With the  International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-US) and Critical Minded


Over three exciting days of panels, roundtables, keynotes, and special events, the 23rd annual Pop Conference will explore the deep and complex relationship between popular music, style, and fashion. This year’s theme, “Baby, It’s a Look: Popular Music, Style, and Fashion at the Edge,” draws its inspiration from a 2017 Leikeli47 lyric and marks the first joint gathering of PopCon and IASPM-US since 2012.

Fashion and music are inextricably linked, from Josephine Baker’s banana skirt, Cab Calloway’s zoot suits, Billie Holiday’s signature gardenia, to The Beatles’ mop-top haircuts. Today, the connection between pop music and fashion remains stronger than ever. Visualizers thrive on streaming platforms; fashion runways in Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and Johannesburg deploy pop music to bring designers’ visions to life; and musicians themselves blaze new trails designing streetwear collections and serving as creative directors for major fashion houses. 

But style has always been much more than just commerce or escapism—it has long been a space for critique, refusal, defiance, and radical expression. At its most powerful, style challenges norms, blurs boundaries, and pushes artistic and cultural frontiers, moving us right to the edge. 

This year’s conference returns to USC’s Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles just months after January 2025’s catastrophic Eaton and Palisades wildfires, and during a time of profound global upheaval and turmoil. The 2025 “Baby, It’s a Look: Popular Music, Style, and Fashion at the Edge” conference presents a remix, an opportunity to reconsider how fashion and music shape the world we live in, reflecting our realities, struggles, and aspirations while leading us toward the very edge of what feels possible.

Open to the public and free admission with conference registration on Eventbrite. Some events may require separate registration.
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Baby, It's a Look: A Critical Karaoke Jam Session
Saturday March 15, 2025 4:15pm - 6:00pm PDT
Newman Recital Hall
In this Pop Conference tradition, presenters each share brief reflections on songs about style.
Speakers
AK
RB

Rikki Byrd

University of Texas, Austin
avatar for Alice Zhao

Alice Zhao

Brown University
Alice Zhao is a PhD student in Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She received her M.A. in Curatorial Practices from the University of Southern California with a Graduate Certificate in Performance Studies, and holds a B.A. in History of Art and Political Science from the... Read More →
avatar for Elliott H. Powell

Elliott H. Powell

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Elliott H. Powell is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music (University of Minnesota Press, 2020), which received the Woody Guthrie Prize from the... Read More →
avatar for madison moore

madison moore

Brown University
Co-Producer, Pop Conference 2025madison moore (any pronouns) is an artist-scholar, DJ and Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. He is broadly invested in the aesthetic, sonic and spatial strategies queer and trans people of color use to both survive... Read More →
avatar for Eddy Francisco Alvarez Jr.

Eddy Francisco Alvarez Jr.

Associate Professor and Chair, California State University-Fullerton
Program Committee, Pop Conference 2024Eddy Francisco Alvarez Jr. an interdisciplinary scholar from North Hollywood, is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Chicanx Studies at California State University, Fullerton. His scholarly- creative work has been published in... Read More →
JK

Jason King

Producer, Pop Conference 2025 Jason King, Dean of the USC Thornton School of Music, is a multi-talented Canadian-American scholar, journalist, author, musician, performer, producer, songwriter, radio and video host and event curator. Before his appointment at USC, King was chair... Read More →
DK
AO
TM
Saturday March 15, 2025 4:15pm - 6:00pm PDT
Newman Recital Hall
  Session

Attendees (18)


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