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  • © 2019

On Popular Music and Its Unruly Entanglements

Palgrave Macmillan
  • Provides fresh takes on familiar material and addresses some of the assumptions and conventions that exist around researching particular aspects of popular music
  • Demonstrates that the boundaries between different idioms, media, art forms, eras, and cultural spaces are permeable and negotiable within the field of Popular Music Research
  • Contributes to furthering the interdisciplinary study of popular music by showing how analytical and musicological approaches might lead researchers to surprisingly different musical and contextual places

Part of the book series: Pop Music, Culture and Identity (PMCI)

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Table of contents (13 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
  2. To Begin Untangling Popular Music

    • Kai Arne Hansen, Nick Braae
    Pages 1-12
  3. Broad Strokes

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 13-13
    2. Musicology Without Music

      • Kyle Devine
      Pages 15-37
    3. Narrativizing Recorded Popular Song

      • Alexander C. Harden
      Pages 39-57
    4. Linearity in Popular Song

      • Nick Braae
      Pages 83-99
  4. Audiovisual Entanglements

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 187-187
    2. Afterword

      • Allan F. Moore
      Pages 257-261
  5. Back Matter

    Pages 263-269

About this book

On Popular Music and Its Unruly Entanglements comprises eleven essays that explore the myriad ways in which popular music is entwined within social, cultural, musical, historical, and media networks. The authors discuss genres as diverse as mainstream pop, hip hop, classic rock, instrumental synthwave, video game music, amateur ukelele groups, and audiovisual remixes, while also considering the music’s relationship to technological developments, various media and material(itie)s, and personal and social identity. The collection presents a range of different methodologies and theoretical positions, which results in an eclecticism that aptly demonstrates the breadth of contemporary popular music research. The chapters are divided into three major sections that address: wider theoretical and analytical issues (“Broad Strokes”), familiar repertoire or concepts from a new perspective (“Second Takes”), and the meanings to arise from music’s connections with other media forms (“Audiovisual Entanglements”).

Editors and Affiliations

  • School of Media Arts, Waikato Institute of Technology, Hamilton, New Zealand

    Nick Braae

  • Department of Art and Cultural Studies, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Hamar, Norway

    Kai Arne Hansen

About the editors

Nick Braae is an academic staff member in Music at the Waikato Institute of Technology, New Zealand.



Kai Arne Hansen is Associate Professor of Music in the Department of Art and Cultural Studies, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences. 



Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access