Settling the Pop Score: Pop Texts and Identity Politics (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series) - Softcover

Arguing that music not only affects our identities but shapes them, this work explores the interpretation of popular music within a broad, interdisciplinary framework of musicology. It examines the functions of pop music within a constantly shifting social plane from the 1980s onwards, suggesting various approaches for the analysis of pop music. The author examines selected case-studies, and asks what these "pop texts" have signified for him in his particular social context, leading him to considerhow musical meaning resides in social values. He focuses on the authorial identity and the problems associated with musicological practice,

Stan Hawkins is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Oslo, Norway.