Introduction: the problem with contemporary American song on screen

The ‘Carpool Karaoke’ segment from late-night American variety show The Late Late Show with James Corden (CBS 2015 to present) has become a ‘viral’ online hit in the last four years. ‘Carpool Karaoke’ involves the show's host, James Corden, driving celebrities around as they sing along to songs played through the car sound system. Like much contemporary television, ‘Carpool Karaoke’ is uploaded to YouTube after broadcast to become the following day's internet watercooler topic, shared via links across social media. For example, Adele's ‘Carpool Karaoke’ video reached more than 42 million views in its first five days on YouTube, and was at more than 235 million views in April 2021. Much of the online buzz surrounding the video centred on Adele rapping Nicki Minaj's verse from Kanye West's song ‘Monster’ (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 2010). Minaj shared a snippet from the video on her Instagram account; Minaj's fans then shared, liked and reposted both the YouTube video and Instagram post (which itself had more than 6.7 million views in 2020) across their own social media networks.

The movement of ‘Carpool Karaoke’ through the digital media landscape highlights some of the difficulties of discussing the formal and generic boundaries of contemporary singing on screen in popular media.Footnote ¹ Is ‘Carpool Karaoke’ a variety television segment, a short musical film, a collection of musical numbers, a long music video, a YouTube video or a social media post? Or is it in fact all of these things as it moves across the various distribution and consumption networks in the convergent media landscape? I use ‘Carpool Karaoke’ as an example here because it prompts the key question that drives this article: how can we locate the parameters of contemporary American song performance on screen as it moves across and appears within different film, television and music video formats?

Over the last two decades, different types of song performance in different types of screen media have developed and spread across the digital audiovisual landscape with increasing popularity. These include innovative forms of established genres, such as the film musical and the music video, as well as more recent forms of singing on screen, such as musical reality television shows and amateur cover versions of popular songs on YouTube. A whole host of new musical formats has popped up on YouTube, including remixes, mashups and the popular musical parody genre, alongside almost the entire history of recorded music and recorded musical performance. Professional music videos, or those made by major pop stars and record labels, are becoming longer in length and bigger in budget, and more frequently resemble a ‘cinematic’ style and format. Many of these forms of song on screen have strong, interconnecting aesthetic and structural flows (Ford and Macrossan Reference Ford and Macrossan2019, pp. 57–8). Because of intensifying media convergence, viewers can now watch different types of song performance from the one device, such as a smartphone, tablet, television or DVD player, or across the many devices they may own or can access. Different types of singing on screen can also be viewed on one platform, such as YouTube, video-on-demand service Netflix or broadcast television network FOX, or across many platforms, with just one click.

How do these diverse types of song performance function within different audiovisual media forms? What are the thematic, aesthetic and structural connections between broadcast musical Peter Pan Live! (NBC 2014), scripted musical teen television series Glee (FOX 2009–2015), Kanye West's self-directed 35-minute music video Runaway (2010) and Beyoncé's concert film Homecoming (Netflix 2019), for example? How can we understand these different types of contemporary American song performance on screen, and the connections, exchanges and resonances between them? This article aims to examine and rethink the parameters of contemporary American singing on screen within the last 20 years and thus reconceive the relations between different forms of song performance in film, television and video in the new millennium. Accounting for the expanded nature of different types of song performance on screen using only traditional understandings of the film musical, the musical number or the music video will only reach so far in today's digital media environment. While these types of song-based screen media still exist, and we may intuitively know what is or is not a professional music video, for example, it is getting harder to delineate their boundaries and to consider where they may merge and create new forms, such as Carpool Karaoke. I argue that the industrial, technological and aesthetic convergence of audiovisual media and the simultaneous expansion of screen genres and formats in the 2000s and 2010s requires a new framework for thinking through song performance on screen. This article therefore makes the case for consideration of contemporary screensong as a new conceptual and analytical category.

Of course, popular music has always been tied to visual media. In 1999, John Mundy traced the long-standing relationship between popular music and film, television and video, examining how popular music has been ‘mediated commercially, ideologically and aesthetically through the screen media throughout the twentieth century’ (p. 1). This is what he calls the ‘visual economy’ of popular music, a form he rightly argues is highly mediatised and has been for a long time (Mundy Reference Mundy1999). My conceptualisation of contemporary screensong begins where Mundy finishes, from the year 2000 until the present, to consider the relationship between popular song and the screen media in the contemporary moment.

My proposal and development of screensong as a conceptual category synthesises scholarship across cinema, music video and media studies with the aim of sparking new ways of looking at and understanding contemporary American song on screen. Bringing this scholarship into dialogue generates a more thorough and fertile understanding of the complex connections between various screen media and forms of song performance that is outside genre- or media-specific studies. It also accounts for the mutual exchanges taking place between various forms of screensong in the convergent media environment. I argue that the screensong is an inherently transgenre and transmedia object that moves through and incorporates elements of the film musical, music television and the music video.

The first two sections of this article outline the shifting audiovisual landscape and expanding formats for the film musical, music television and the music video in the 2000s and 2010s. My conceptualisation of screensong is shaped by what Carol Vernallis identifies as the ‘audiovisual turn’ of contemporary media, including the important role that music plays in its intensified audiovisual aesthetics (Reference Vernallis2013, p. 33). The third and fourth sections return to ongoing debates around the boundaries of the film musical, the musical number and the music video to outline where the term screensong can build on and contribute to these theoretical discussions. My conceptualisation of contemporary screensong is also shaped by Adrian Martin's intervention in these debates about the film musical through his discussion of the ‘music-film’ (Reference Martin and Brophy2001, p. 74, emphasis in original). The final section outlines how using screensong as a conceptual category within the convergent digital landscape can help us understand the transmedia and transgenre nature of contemporary American song-based screen media. While we could once define something as a musical number or a music video, the contemporary media environment makes that difficult.

The shifting media landscape and the ‘audiovisual turn’

Over the last 20 years, significant shifts in the media environment have meant that a variety of screen media formats and genres that contain popular song performance (for example, the film musical, variety television and the music video) are now often produced, distributed and consumed across the same media platforms and devices. Global media and entertainment industries have all been affected by increasing conglomeration and have therefore become more vertically and horizontally integrated.Footnote ² In conjunction with these industrial shifts, new media technologies have changed the way audiovisual media are produced, distributed and consumed. Digital storage and editing software, computer-generated imagery, digital surround sound, three-dimensional technology, augmented reality and virtual reality have transformed the way media professionals produce film, television and video, while the internet, mobile phones, personal digital cameras and recording equipment, DVD and home theatre setups, and video-on-demand services have altered their consumption and production at home.

Media studies scholarship has chiefly addressed these industrial and technological changes through the lens of ‘convergence’. While convergence is defined in various ways by different media scholars, it is generally understood to mean the coming together of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media. Influential media scholar Henry Jenkins defines convergence as ‘the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences’ (Reference Jenkins2006, p. 2). Increasing conglomeration in conjunction with increasing technological convergence means that a range of audiovisual media are now produced by the same companies and distributed and consumed through the same channels (McPhail Reference McPhail2006, p. 60). Since Jenkins first began writing about media convergence, these changes have continued to affect patterns of media ownership, media production and consumption, and the way consumers think about audiovisual media in the 2000s and 2010s. More recently, Jenkins et al. (Reference Jenkins, Ford and Green2013) note how increasing convergence in the 2000s and 2010s meant that ‘old’ media began adopting and adapting to ‘new’ media technologies and practices, leading to the development of networked (as opposed to broadcast) media forms. ‘Networked’ or ‘spreadable’ media patterns are largely influenced by new social media platforms such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram and Snapchat, which created new logics of media distribution and consumption for both grassroots users and major corporations during this time.

Changing industry structures and production practices over the last 20 years have also worked in combination with new digital technologies to impact audiovisual aesthetics and form. From the early 2000s, film and television scholars began discussing how these changes have created crossmedia flows of audiovisual culture. For instance, film scholar Kay Dickinson (Reference Dickinson and Dickinson2003, p. 143) contends that the music video is responsible for an ‘MTV aesthetic’ in Hollywood film, where the image track is edited to the fast tempo of popular music. While David Bordwell (Reference Bordwell2002) similarly argues that the music video has influenced post-classical cinema, he also cites television editing as influencing close framing in film dialogue scenes. More recently, Mathias Bonde Korsgaard (Reference Korsgaard2017, p. 144) has noted the influence of millennial music video on cinema, arguing that ‘music video has generally served to make certain strands of cinema more musical, musicalizing [sic] its images and aesthetics’. Television scholars have also addressed the increasingly cinematic nature of ‘quality television’, including David Lavery (Reference Lavery and Lavery2002), Robin Nelson (Reference Nelson2007) and Trisha Dunleavy (Reference Dunleavy2009). Dunleavy contends that the enhanced visual style created by new digital technologies has ‘reduced the remaining aesthetic distinctions between television and cinema’ (Reference Dunleavy2009 p. 211).Footnote ³

The audiovisual properties of, and formal boundaries between, film, television and music video have continued to shift in the last 10 years as new social media platforms such as the video-sharing site YouTube have become key players in the audiovisual landscape. YouTube has more than 2 billion users worldwide who watch more than a billion hours of video every day, mostly on mobile devices (YouTube 2020, n.p.). Scholars have noted YouTube's impact on the formal and aesthetic boundaries of television and music video, in particular (Uricchio Reference Uricchio, Snickars and Vonderau2009; Edmond Reference Edmond2012). The development of mobile phone apps and the growing cultural influence of video and online digital games have also shaped audiovisual culture in recent years (Richardson and Gorbman Reference Richardson, Gorbman, Richardson, Gorbman and Vernallis2013, pp. 5–7).

Vernallis is one of the key scholars who has conceptualised these shifts as the ‘audiovisual turn’ of contemporary screen-based media. Vernallis argues that YouTube, music video and new digital cinema have all begun to look and work like one another, as they have all been influenced by the same technological developments and socioeconomic pressures (Reference Vernallis2013, p. 4). She posits that not only do audiovisual media increasingly resemble one another in form and function, but that ‘[w]e're in the midst of an international style that has heightened sonic and visual features; they've been intermedially reconfigured and accelerated’ (Vernallis Reference Vernallis2013). Importantly, Vernallis asserts that these new, heightened image–sound relations reflect the influence of the music video on cinema and television as well as the movement of music video directors into these media.Footnote ⁴ She argues this has resulted in ‘a mediascape that foregrounds musical feature’ (Vernallis Reference Vernallis2013). In the context of the ‘audiovisual turn’ Vernallis identifies, I am especially interested in song-based audiovisual media which presents people singing on screen. In an environment where all audiovisual media resemble each other, it makes sense to discuss the screensong. We are now living in a media environment where there is an excess of singing on screen-based media, where the audiovisual properties of that media are particularly heightened, but also especially foreground the song.

Expanding screensong formats: the film musical, music television and the music video in the new millennium

One way to conceptualise these shifting boundaries for song-based screen media is to consider how the contemporary media landscape has significantly expanded the possibilities of the screen musical. In the first two decades of the new millennium, the musical genre experienced a period of revitalisation, development and expansion across film, television and video forms. First, American film musicals of various subgenres appeared to experience renewed popularity with cinema audiences during the 2000s and 2010s. As Steven Cohan (Reference Cohan and Cohan2010, p. 1) notes, the box office success of Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann 2001) and its ancillary products ‘was thought to signal renewed interest in the genre globally’ at the time. Further, Hollywood trade publications were addressing the commercial triumphs of the genre, as journalists David Rooney and Jonathan Bing wrote in Reference Rooney and Bing2003: ‘After the success of “Moulin Rouge” and “Chicago,” Hollywood has expressed excitement that the long-dormant musical is ready for a comeback’ (n.p.).

Nine of the top 10 highest grossing live-action film musicals at the US box office have occurred post 2000: Chicago (Rob Marshall 2002), Mamma Mia! (Phyllida Lloyd 2008), Les Misérables (Tom Hooper 2012), La La Land (Damian Chazelle 2016), Beauty and the Beast (Bill Condon 2017), The Greatest Showman (Michael Gracey 2017), Mary Poppins Returns (Rob Marshall 2018), Aladdin (Guy Ritchie 2019) and The Lion King (Jon Favreau 2019). The live-action remake of the Disney animation The Lion King in 2019 (Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff 1994) is currently the highest grossing musical ever, making more than US$1.6 billion during its run (Bajgrowicz Reference Bajgrowicz2019, n.p.).

Millennial musical biopics Ray (Taylor Hackford 2004), Walk the Line (James Mangold 2005), Straight Outta Compton (F. Gary Gray 2015), Jersey Boys (Clint Eastwood 2014), I Can Only Imagine (Andrew and Jon Erwin 2018), Rocketman (Dexter Fletcher 2019) and Bohemian Rhapsody (Bryan Singer 2019) are in the top 10 highest grossing musical biopics in the USA ever (Fuster Reference Fuster2019, n.p.). Millennial musical comedies A Mighty Wind (Christopher Guest 2003), School of Rock (Richard Linklater 2003), Be Cool (Gray 2005), Music and Lyrics (Marc Lawrence 2007), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (Jake Kasdan 2007), Get Him to the Greek (Nicholas Stoller 2010), Pitch Perfect (Jason Moore 2012), Pitch Perfect 2 (Elizabeth Banks 2015) and Pitch Perfect 3 (Trish Sie 2017) are also high earners at the box office.

However, in addition to its renewed popularity in the cinema, the musical genre also developed and spread throughout various television and video forms in the 2000s and 2010s as the digital media landscape provided new avenues for its distribution and consumption. As Caryl Flinn (Reference Flinn, Richardson, Gorbman and Vernallis2013) notes:

‘Carpool Karaoke’ is one such example of the expanding musical genre: the segment can be considered a short ‘musical’, but also regularly features songs from stage and screen musicals.

Nonetheless, we can also think of ‘Carpool Karaoke’ as a ‘musical number’, or a song-and-dance sequence considered an essential building block of the musical genre. Much film musical scholarship has focused on the different forms and functions of the musical number, but it is generally understood as some form of diegetic musical performance, whether song- or dance-based or both (McDonnell Reference McDonnell and Neumeyer2013, p. 251). The musical number has always appeared in film genres and formats other than the musical, such as the singing cowboy Westerns of the 1930s (McDonnell Reference McDonnell and Neumeyer2013) or the short musical clips distributed through Panoram Soundies in the 1940s and Scopitone video jukebox machines of the 1950s and 1960s (Herzog Reference Herzog, Beebe and Middleton2007). Paramount also released a series of promotional ‘Screen Songs’ from 1929 to 1938, with a bouncing ball over the displayed lyrics for the audience to sing. An alternative history of the musical number can also be traced through television and the music video, as these media have a long history of musical performance outside the film musical. However, song- and dance-based sequences that resemble the musical number are now moving across the contemporary media landscape with more freedom and flexibility than ever before.

The new millennium has ushered in different forms of the musical number – particularly singing musical performance rather than dance – that are increasingly appearing in American screen media not typically defined as musicals (Ford and Macrossan Reference Ford and Macrossan2019, p. 57–8). For example, Julie Brown (Reference Brown2001) notes the growing use of musical numbers and musical episodes in fictional non-musical television shows such as dramedy Ally McBeal (FOX 1997–2002) and teen fantasy Buffy the Vampire Slayer (The WB 1997–2001, UPN 2001–2003) in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Kelly Kessler (Reference Kessler2015) argues that this increase in song-based musical numbers:

This renewed musicalisation across television forms meant that later in the 2000s and in the 2010s, music-based television series with regular musical numbers also became popular, including Viva Laughlin (CBS 2007), Eli Stone (ABC 2008–2009), Flight of the Concords (HBO 2007–2009), Smash (NBC 2012–2013), Nashville (ABC 2012–2016, CMT 2016–2018), Galavant (ABC 2015–2016), Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (The CW 2015 to present) and Empire (FOX 2015 to present).

Teen television series with regular musical numbers were also extremely popular in the USA and around the world in the 2000s and 2010s, including Disney's ‘tween’ musical drama series Hannah Montana (Disney 2006–2011) and the subsequent film Hannah Montana: The Movie (Peter Chelsom 2009), as well as the High School Musical (Kenny Ortega 2006, 2007, 2008) made-for-television movie franchise, and musical teen television series Glee (FOX 2009–2015) (Ford and Macrossan Reference Ford and Macrossan2019, p. 58). Following on from this, live broadcasts of Broadway musicals also became popular in the 2010s, including The Sound of Music Live! (2013), Peter Pan Live! (2014), The Wiz Live! (2015), Hairspray Live! (2016), Grease Live! (FOX 2016), A Christmas Story: Live (FOX 2016) and Jesus Christ Superstar: Live in Concert (2018), among others (Ford and Macrossan Reference Ford and Macrossan2019).

The musical number also moved into new television formats in the 2000s with the global explosion of reality television talent shows including American Idol (FOX 2002–2016, ABC 2018 to present), which was modelled on the UK's Pop Idol (ITV 2001–2003). American Idol was both internationally broadcast and converted to 55 national franchises, including Canadian Idol (CTV 2003–2008) and Australian Idol (Network Ten 2003–2009). The Idol franchise also inspired spinoff singing competition franchises around the world, including The Voice (2010 to present), created by Dutch producers John De Mol and Roel van Velzen, The X Factor (2004 to present) and Got Talent (2006 to present), the latter two both created by original American Idol judge and producer Simon Cowell.

As I have argued elsewhere, the expansion of all this song-based screen media can also be understood as the expansion of the music video (Ford and Macrossan Reference Ford and Macrossan2019, p. 58). Many musical numbers in films and television series are shot and edited in a style that resembles the music video, in that the editing follows the beat and flow of the music. These ‘numbers’ are often uploaded to YouTube as individual music videos (either through the official YouTube channels or as pirated copies uploaded by fans). Moreover, the music video experienced a period of rapid change in the 21st century as the ‘traditional’ music video began growing its distribution and consumption networks in the early 2000s (Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard2017). Professional music video content went from dominating television in the 1990s on MTV to the internet in the 2000s on video-sharing sites such as Dailymotion, Vimeo, Vevo, Metacafe, MyVideo and YouTube. While YouTube is home to range of video content, professional mainstream music videos are the most watched content on the site, comprising eight of the top 10 most viewed videos.Footnote ⁵ Many of these often go ‘viral’. Maura Edmond (Reference Edmond2012, pp. 316–7) argues that music videos are the perfect viral content because they fit the aesthetic demands of online video clip culture: they are short, catchy and geared towards visually striking imagery.

New types of music video also began appearing on these platforms. Like ‘Carpool Karaoke’, the ‘Lip-Sync Battle’ and ‘Wheel of Musical Impressions’ segments from variety show The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (NBC 2014 to present) are regular YouTube hits. The parody music video is also a popular genre (see, for example, Amy Schumer's Milk Milk Lemonade, or anything by comedian Weird Al Yankovic). Furthermore, as previously discussed, contemporary music videos made by major pop stars now frequently resemble a ‘cinematic’ style, such as Lana Del Rey's 27-minute Tropico (Anthony Mandler 2013) and Childish Gambino's 55-minute music video/film Guava Island (Hiro Murai 2019). Beyoncé has released two ‘visual albums’, Beyoncé (2013) and Lemonade (2016), 60 minute films that combine a collection of music videos for each song on the album.

While not unprecedented (Michael Jackson's 1983 Thriller music video ran for 13 minutes), increasing amounts of music-video-like content on the internet and within both narrative and non-narrative film and television has significantly altered our understanding of what makes a ‘music video’ in the 21st century. Early music video scholarship was largely divided into two camps that either examined music video's visual properties (mainly in film scholarship) or its aural properties (largely in popular music studies). Scholars often categorised the form as falling into various types, such as the ‘performance’, ‘narrative’ or ‘conceptual’ videos, as theorised by Simon Frith (Reference Frith1988), or as combining different elements of ‘performance’, ‘narrative’ and ‘dream-like visuals’ with varying emphasis, as suggested by Marsha Kinder (Reference Kinder1984). While there was a surge of writing on music video in the 1980s and 1990s, music video scholarship was sparse in the 2000s, but picked up again in the 2010s (see Williams Reference Williams2003; Vernallis Reference Vernallis2004, Reference Vernallis2013; Beebe and Middleton Reference Beebe and Middleton2007; Keazor and Wubbena Reference Keazor and Wubbena2010; Railton and Watson Reference Railton and Watson2011; Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard2017; Cookney et al. Reference Cookney, Fairclough and Goddard2017).

Korsgaard suggests five new types of music video have emerged in the digital environment: ‘participatory/interactive’, ‘user-generated content’, ‘remakes/remixes’, ‘alternate length’ and ‘high/low definition’ – enabled by technologies such as smartphone apps, handheld cameras, three-dimensional technology and satellite navigation (Reference Korsgaard2017, pp. 175–7). This has resulted in alternative music video forms, such as Icelandic pop singer Bjork's Biophilia (2011) app album and Canadian alternative rock band Arcade Fire's interactive music video We Used to Wait (Chris Milk 2011), which changes its visuals based on the spectator's input home address on Google Maps. YouTube was again one of the key drivers of these changing music video forms, largely because it provides opportunities for grassroots music makers to create and distribute material outside the traditional popular music hierarchy (Hearsum and Inglis Reference Hearsum, Inglis, Gorbman, Richardson and Vernallis2013, p. 497). The digital media environment has therefore not only increased the range of material that can be called a music video, or that has music-video-like properties; the music video now operates across and within a range of audiovisual media. The traditional definition of a music video as a short 3 minute clip produced by a record company ‘in which images are put to a recorded pop song in order to sell the song’ simply does not hold anymore (Vernallis Reference Vernallis2013, p. 208).

The ‘rebirth’ of the film musical in the 2000s

While scholars were grappling with the shifting aesthetic and formal boundaries of various audiovisual media in the early 2000s, the aesthetic and formal features of the film musical genre were also the subject of critical discussion in film studies. These two areas of enquiry may at first seem unrelated, but their central focus on the role of music in shaping and directing the image (and narrative) is important for my conceptualisation of contemporary American screensong. I return to these discussions because I argue that contemporary American screensong is in dialogue with, operates within and passes through the broader musical genre rather than just the Hollywood film musical. These discussions revolved around the apparent renewed popularity of the genre at the global box office, and particularly innovative forms of the musical that were being released at the time (see, for example, Kinder Reference Kinder2002; Natale Reference Natale2000; Graham Reference Graham2000; Muir Reference Muir2005). These films include Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare adaptation Love's Labour's Lost (2000), which was panned by film critics; Lars von Trier's anti-musical Dancer in the Dark (2000), which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival; and Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge!, which made $179 million at the global box office and featured a hit pop remake of Patti Labelle's 1974 song ‘Lady Marmalade’ (Box Office Mojo Reference Mojo2019, n.p.; Bronson Reference Bronson2003, p. 399). Musicals also experienced renewed critical regard in the early 2000s, as Rob Marshall's adaptation of popular stage musical Chicago won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, in 2003.

My interest in the scholarly discussion on the rebirth of the film musical genre is twofold. First, the ‘audiovisual turn’ affecting all media was reshaping the formal and aesthetic characteristics of new film musicals appearing in the 2000s. Both popular and scholarly discussions of these films, especially Moulin Rouge!, have noted their postmodern qualities and innovative takes on the musical genre (Arroyo Reference Arroyo2000; Kinder Reference Kinder2002; Marshall Reference Marshall2005; van der Merwe Reference van der Merwe2010). The influence of the music video on new audiovisual aesthetics was changing the structure and visual style of film musicals and the ways in which their musical numbers looked and worked within them. These discussions highlight the transgenre nature of contemporary screensong in that the numbers in Moulin Rouge! incorporate elements of both the Hollywood musical and the music video. Vernallis (Reference Vernallis2013, p. 33) cites Moulin Rouge! as a key text that displays the qualities of the new ‘audiovisual turn’. The second reason for my interest in these debates is that the innovative characteristics of millennial film musicals are often discussed in relation to the classical Hollywood musical. For example, David Jays argues that Dancer in the Dark is part of a history of European ‘anti-musicals’ that ‘acknowledge the energy of American musicals but have sought to accentuate the contradictions’ (Jays Reference Jays2000, p. 19). Similarly, much scholarly work on Love's Labour's Lost focused on the film's supposedly unsuccessful negotiation of classical Hollywood musical conventions (Friedman Reference Friedman2004; Marshall Reference Marshall2005).

The dominance of the classical Hollywood format in both popular and academic understandings of the musical genre played a role in labelling this moment, and these films, a ‘rebirth’. This is part of a wider tendency in film musical scholarship to favour the structures of the classical Hollywood musical as the epitome of the genre. Through the scholarly focus on the classical Hollywood, ‘the definition of the musical has been narrowed down to certain narrative patterns and production histories’ that tend to ignore other approaches or musicals made outside the USA (Marshall and Stillwell Reference Marshall and Stilwell2000, p. 1). Several influential texts have come to dominate understandings of the musical genre in Anglo-American academic discourse: Richard Dyer's essay ‘Entertainment and Utopia’ (Reference Dyer1977), Rick Altman's book The American Film Musical (Reference Altman1987) and Jane Feuer's volume The Hollywood Musical (Reference Feuer1982, Reference Feuer1993). These works generally view the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) productions of the 1940s and 1950s, such as The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli 1953) or Gigi (Vincente Minnelli 1958), as the ideal iterations of the genre. Dyer, Altman and Feuer offer rich dissections of classical Hollywood musicals, and much scholarship has followed their lead by considering the genre through a focus on American films and their narrative structures and settings. The dominance of the Hollywood format in both scholarly and popular understandings of the musical means that the genre is frequently described as ‘dying out’ in the 1960s and 1970s (Feuer Reference Feuer1993, p. xi). However, this perspective does not account for the way the musical genre has developed across several decades and national cinemas outside the USA and classical Hollywood. Further, in the post-classical era, Hollywood continued making non-classical forms of the genre, including rock ’n’ roll films such as the Elvis Presley vehicles of the 1960s, musical biopics such as Coal Miner's Daughter (Michael Apted 1980), dance films such as Flashdance (Adrian Lyne 1983) and Disney's animated features, among others.

My conceptualisation of contemporary American screensong is shaped by Martin's intervention in these debates about the film musical through his discussion of the ‘music-film’ (Reference Martin and Brophy2001, p.74, emphasis in original). Martin (Reference Martin and Brophy2001) challenges the dominance of the classical Hollywood format in academic discussions of the film musical and argues that it is part of a larger aesthetic category he defines as the ‘music-film’, or any film driven by music. To discuss music-films is thus to consider any film where the musical scores ‘seem to “direct”, dictate or suggest the rhythms of montage or mise en scene’ (Martin Reference Martin and Brophy2001). Martin's discussion of the music-film frames my conceptualisation of contemporary American screensong as in dialogue with, and part of, the broader musical genre. As highlighted in Vernallis's arguments, outlined earlier, music-driven audiovisual media of all kinds is increasingly populating the contemporary media environment. The ‘musical number’ – a key building block of the film musical genre – is also increasingly moving through the contemporary media environment with more flexibility than ever before. Vernallis's (Reference Vernallis2013) discussion of the ‘audiovisual turn’ in contemporary media aesthetics and Martin's theorisation of the music-film highlights the need for new conceptual frameworks that can address the musicality (in both form and content) of much contemporary audiovisual media, as well as locate it across media, genre and scholarly disciplinary boundaries. While I return to an American focus on the musical, I follow Martin by working outside traditional understandings of the film musical genre; screensong is a flexible conceptual category for analysing transmedia and transgenre objects that exist both within and beyond the film musical genre or the music video.

The case for screensong

The industrial, technological and aesthetic convergence of audiovisual media and the simultaneous expansion of screen genres and formats in the 2000s and 2010s requires a new framework for examining song performance on screen. I therefore argue for a new conceptual and analytical category, the screensong, as a way to grapple with the challenges of understanding the breadth and depth of song-based screen media in the convergent media landscape. I conceptualise the screensong in two ways.

First, I use the term screensong to identify a broad category of screened musical entertainment in the media landscape. The term screensong here refers to audiovisual representations of singing across film, television, video or other screen-based media. Screensong in this context can be both singular and plural in that it refers to the screensong, a singular, discreet audiovisual unit of a screened representation of song, and a broad category of screen texts, genres and formats that may contain one or many screensongs, or singing performances. This permits a flexibility and breadth of analysis across various screen texts, genres and musical styles, from arthouse film productions and mainstream commercial film musicals to scripted, variety and reality television, and various lengths and formats of video. Conceptualising screensong as both one identifiable unit and a broad category allows consideration of how song performance is used by, and appears in, film, television and video of different genres and formats to achieve different aesthetic, narrative and economic ends. Screensong is therefore a transgenre and transmedia object. I use the terms transgenre and transmedia to describe how screensong both appears in and works across different genres and media forms, but also incorporates different genres and media forms.Footnote ⁶ To examine screensong in this way is therefore to examine both screen texts that include a large volume of song performance, such as film musicals and reality pop programmes, and screen texts that are themselves distinct units of screensong, such as music videos and YouTube clips.

The second way in which this article conceptualises screensong is as a particular type of screened musical entertainment that has emerged in the global media landscape and especially within American popular culture. I argue that the industrial and technological conditions of the digital convergence era have engendered a specific type of contemporary American screensong that fuses popular song with moving images of a singer or singers; hence the term screensong. Contemporary American screensong is characterised by an intensified audiovisual aesthetic driven by the song; it is produced, distributed and consumed within the digital media landscape as a highly commodified form, and it is used as a structuring and storytelling device for both narrative and non-narrative screen texts.

I borrow the term ‘intensified audiovisual aesthetic’ from Vernallis, who applies it to works where ‘it is not just camera and editing, but all parameters – acting, lighting, performance, sound effects, musical materials … everything becomes heightened, set off, voluble’ (Reference Vernallis2008, p. 278). Within the intensified audiovisual aesthetic of contemporary American screensong, the song and singing directs the image in an especially heightened way. For example, the recent live-action remake of Disney's animated musical Aladdin (Guy Ritchie 2019) represents a wider trend in contemporary American screensong that returns to the traditional musical numbers of the classical Hollywood musical, but extends and enhances them through the heightened audiovisual capabilities of post-classical digital cinema and the music video. The musical number ‘Friend Like Me’ performs traditional narrative functions whereby the Genie (Will Smith) introduces himself and his magical powers to Aladdin (Mena Massoud) (and the audience) by conjuring up all the riches, food, clothes and animals Aladdin can wish for. These narrative qualities are extended, however, through modern digital audiovisual technologies like computer-generated imagery whereby elements of the live-action image become animated and move in sequence with the song. Aside from literal representations of the Genie's lyrics (40 thieves appear when he sings about them, his arms turn into guns when he sings about ammunition, and so on), other elements of the image become ‘voluble’: the Genie's face stretches and snaps back on the end of his line, the lamp is thrown into the air and follows an arc up and down with the line of the trumpet, Aladdin and the Genie's dancing is digitally sped up, slowed down and snapped to the beat of the song.

Contemporary American screensong is characterised by the intensified audiovisual aesthetics of contemporary media, where image–sound relations are not only amplified, but also driven by a musical logic. Contemporary American screensong has a particularly heightened relationship between sound and image, since the song directs and shapes every aspect of the image. This is because the song we hear on the soundtrack is sung by someone on the visual track, but also because all elements of the song are taken up by elements on the screen: the singer and their physical, vocal, and emotional performance, and also the camera, editing, lighting, staging and other elements of mise en scene. As Vernallis and other scholars have noted, visual media have become more musical, and popular music has become more visual in the wake of recent digital technologies (Holt Reference Holt2011, p. 50). This song-driven audiovisual unit of contemporary American screensong is predominant in the contemporary media landscape, and especially in film, television and video.

As outlined in the example above, many screensongs are integrated into larger narratives of film and television musicals. Integration is variously defined, but in most film musical scholarship, the term refers to ‘the relationship of the number to the development of plot and character’ (McDonnell Reference McDonnell and Neumeyer2013, p. 251). The musical numbers – or screensongs – in ‘integrated musicals’ express character emotions and move the story along. Screensongs are also used as structuring devices in non-narrative screen texts such as reality show American Idol, variety show Lip-Sync Battle (Paramount 2015 to present) and Beyoncé's Coachella concert film Homecoming, for example. The individual screensongs from these various texts also work and move independently across the media landscape. These screensongs join the millions of music videos and amateur song clips on YouTube that are exchanged across the internet, remixed, redistributed and used as promotional content and as bite-size free entertainment to be watched on smart phones and other devices by billions of people around the globe.

The term screensong cannot describe all of the new film musical, musical number, and music video forms circulating in the digital media environment. Music videos in particular will not always show a person singing (or pretending to sing) on screen. However, screensong is an effective means of describing a wide range of new and developing song-based screen content that was once considered a music video or a musical number in film and television. To call ‘Friend Like Me’ a musical number or a music video, while somewhat accurate, is inadequate; it only works in certain media distribution and consumption contexts. Scholarly discussions on the shifting formal boundaries of film, television and music video account for the transmedia nature of screensong and highlight the need for new conceptualisations of singing on screen in the contemporary environment.

Rethinking the musical genre through the screensong

Since the publication of Martin's essay in 2001, several film scholars have provided new perspectives on the musical genre's global variety and varied history. This includes work on new national and local contexts, production histories and periods, music genre or thematic concerns (see Conrich and Tincknell Reference Conrich and Tincknell2006; Cohan Reference Cohan and Cohan2010; Creekmur and Mokdad Reference Creekmur and Mokdad2012; Gordon and Jubin Reference Gordon and Jubin2017; and Donnelly and Carroll Reference Donnelly and Carroll2017). Many scholars have considered the film musical in relation to other media such as television, music video, early cinema shorts, radio, opera, theatre and YouTube (Allan Reference Allan1990; Mundy Reference Mundy1999; Herzog Reference Herzog2010; Fleeger Reference Fleeger2014). These critical discussions about non-classical Hollywood forms of the musical inevitably raise questions about how the broader transmedia musical genre is defined and how its boundaries are changing over time.

Scholars have addressed forms of song and singing in films where this singing does not resemble the classical Hollywood musical number. For instance, Gorbman examines ‘artless singing’, or singing that ‘is not a professional performance, and is done in synch sound with appropriate indices of spatial realism, and without the magical backing of an orchestra’ (Reference Gorbman2011, p. 157). Gorbman argues that these artless singing moments, like the classical Hollywood musical number, are used for a variety of narrative, dramatic and structural functions (Gorbman Reference Gorbman2011, p. 158). Amy Herzog (Reference Herzog2010) also explores how ‘musical moments’ reconfigure time and space in film in both classical Hollywood musicals, but also the short musical clips played on Scopitone jukeboxes, cinematic versions of the opera Carmen (Georges Bizet 1875), Jacques Demy's French musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and Tsai Ming-Liang's The Hole (1998). Herzog insightfully points out moments where both diegetic and non-diegetic music can take on an especially significant role both within and outside the film musical genre, indeed throughout the history of audiovisual media. She also notes how these ‘musical moments’ allow for change, and for the particular sensorial qualities of the music to take over the visual properties. Herzog's musical moments, however, much like Martin's discussion of the music-film, is a much broader phenomenon than the one I am proposing here. The screensong is not only directed by song, but is an audiovisual representation of singing where we see someone singing (or attempting to sing) on screen. Herzog's formulation of the musical moment may account for the many instances in film, television and other audiovisual media, when a song may be played on the soundtrack and take on special significance in directing or dominating the visual track. In contrast, however, my conceptualisation of the screensong attempts to account for the increase in popularity, diversity and significance of singing performance across a range of contemporary audiovisual media.

Film scholars have also discussed the ways in which popular music on a soundtrack can impact storytelling and character development. Anahid Kassabian (Reference Kassabian2001, pp. 2–3) has made an influential argument for the ‘compiled score’, or how a popular music soundtrack can work as a traditional composed film score. Marshall Crenshaw (Reference Crenshaw1994), Kelly Ritter (Reference Ritter2001), T. Berliner and P. Furia (Reference Berliner and Furia2002), Jerrold Levinson (Reference Levinson, Braudy and Cohen2004), Hilary Lapedis (Reference Lapedis1999), Paul N. Reinsch (Reference Reinsch2013) and David E. James (Reference James2016) have all explored how a popular music soundtrack can work in this way, addressing how such music can possess narrative agency, reflect a character's emotions and change spectator expectations and readings of cinema. The shifting borders and exchanges between various audiovisual media in the digital convergence era requires a return to these ongoing debates about the parameters of the film musical and popular music soundtracks to consider the ways in which the genre is developing in the contemporary moment. Both popular and academic debates about the limits of the musical have continued well into the 2010s as new variations of the genre continue to appear.

Recent film musical scholarship has considerably expanded and updated the perspectives on, and histories of, the film musical, and hence the use of song in film. What has been less recognised is how a variety of song-based screen media in the digital convergent era – film, television, video and other audiovisual media – operate in dialogue with the classical Hollywood musical, the music video and with the broader musical genre. As discussed in the example of Aladdin above, many forms of contemporary American screensong reference the classical Hollywood musical in their narrative structures and thematic concerns yet incorporate an intensified audiovisual aesthetic that draws on the music video. Several recent scholarly works on the musical, however, continue to focus on 20th-century Hollywood feature-film productions (Dyer Reference Dyer2012; Grant Reference Grant2012; Barrios Reference Barrios2014; Mordden Reference Mordden2016). My conceptualisation of contemporary screensong draws on Vernallis and Martin and the debates they are engaging with, particularly around the limits of the musical, but focuses on a specific song-based audiovisual form that has appeared in American popular culture in the last 20 years. Furthermore, Martin's understanding of the music-film as any filmic work driven by music, Herzog's discussion of musical moments which can be both music or song-based or Kassabian's argument for the compiled score of popular music cannot account for or describe the importance of singing performance within contemporary audiovisual media. The act of singing on screen has moved beyond its traditional locations in the film musical or the music video and spread through a variety of audiovisual media in the contemporary environment, including cover videos on YouTube, musical impressions on late night shows and dynamic singing competition reality television series the world over.

Screensong is a flexible conceptual category for analysing transmedia and transgenre objects that exist both within and beyond the film musical genre or the music video. For example, the unique formal, aesthetic, structural and thematic qualities of musical teen dramedy series Glee were enabled by the rebirth of the film musical at the beginning of the 2000s, the increasing nostalgia for shared musical pasts in American popular culture, and the development of new forms of popular music celebrity in reality television. Written and created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, Glee follows the New Directions, a ‘glee’ club or show choir, as they navigate high school. The New Directions sing and dance their way through the show choir competition circuit, performing a mix of showtunes and pop hits. Issues of teen identity in Glee are explored not only through dramatic sequences, but also through musical numbers. The songs’ lyrical content often crystallises the central issues at play for each character or the episode. Glee is therefore an ‘integrated’ musical in that its song sequences advance the plot and develop character (Block Reference Block, Knapp, Morris and Wolf2011, p. 98). Like much contemporary screensong, Glee extends the traditional musical number through the visual style of the music video: the camera movement, fast-paced editing and visual structures of Glee's musical numbers follow the tempo and rhythm of the song (Hunting and McQueen Reference Hunting and McQueen2014, p. 292).

While Glee draws on the classical Hollywood musical and the music video, it is also informed by a range of television genres and traditions, including fictional musical series such as Cop Rock (ABC 1990), teen-focused musical programmes such as American Bandstand (WFIL-TV 1952–1957, ABC 1957–1987), teen dramas that incorporate popular music such as The Monkees (NBC 1966–1968), reality talent shows that rely on young competitors such as American Idol, special musical television episodes such as those in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and teen dramas that license, promote and monetise music such as The OC (WB 2003–2007) (Hunting and McQueen Reference Hunting and McQueen2014, pp. 290–91). In doing so, Glee provides a distinctly millennial musical television series that fulfils the cultural, formal, aesthetic and commercial potential of contemporary American screensong in the 2010s.

As an unusual blend of the musical, the music video, teen television and the cover version, Glee demonstrates that contemporary screensong is an inherently transgenre and transmedia object. Although Glee calls on earlier forms of American screensong, I argue that Glee is its own unique cultural object. The show's musical numbers – its screensongs – work in ways that are symptomatic of the contemporary media environment. Glee is both enabled by, and a product of, millennial popular culture and the new media environment. Premiering in 2009, Glee sits at the intersection of the revival of the film musical genre in the early 2000s, the popularity of reality television talent formats such as American Idol, and the growth of amateur musical production on MySpace and YouTube. Indicative of the unusual, and distinctly millennial, characteristics of Glee is that the show became a cultural and commercial phenomenon. At its peak in 2010 and 2011, Glee had 13.5 million American viewers on the night of a broadcast (O'Connell Reference O'Connell2015, n.p.).

The development of innovative forms of contemporary American screensong such as Glee has also, in turn, influenced established genres such as the film musical. For example, the musical numbers of recent biopic Rocketman, about Elton John, work in ways symptomatic of the contemporary media environment, blending a heightened audiovisual aesthetic with several screensong styles. These range from the standard rehearsal and performance numbers crucial to representing artistic development within a biopic to the spontaneous numbers of traditional Hollywood musicals where all characters, including non-musical ones, burst into song and dance. For example, early in Rocketman when Elton John is still the young Reggie Dwight, the cast begin to sing ‘I Want Love’, including Reggie's mother, father and grandmother. This song is out of place chronologically as it was written by John and his writing partner, Bernie Taupin, in 2001, whereas the film scene is set in the early 1960s. However, film audiences understand the song as yet another cover version, simply used to express the relevant emotion for the scene. The heightened audiovisual aesthetics of Rocketman's numbers also mean that the film's titular track propels through images of John singing onstage to quite literally bursting into the atmosphere and landing mid-conversation with Taupin on a private jet. The songs direct the images and move the viewer through jumps in time and space; as the young Reggie performs ‘Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting’ he moves through the pub and the streets, ending up in a local fairground, dodging drunks and quarrelling couples, and then dancing with fairground goers who sing with him. While screensong has a long history, it is constantly being reshaped as new technologies, industrial structures and media formats and genres develop.