This book costs £100 in the UK and $175 in the USA.Footnote 1 We can glean from this that its target is not our students, but our libraries. In many ways its publication tells us more about the state of the publishing industry than it does about the state of Popular Music Studies (PMS). Perhaps the most significant fact for the latter is that such a collection is now deemed as a viable commercial product. Thus PMS has seemingly earned its place in the sun alongside other Sage Handbooks such as those on Qualitative Research, Architectural Theory and Intercultural Competence. Whether or not this is cause for celebration, it is certainly cause for reflection.
What readers get for their money is 35 chapters, plus the sort of erudite and informative introduction one might expect from its editors. The chapters divide into nine parts: Theory and Method (five chapters), The Business of Popular Music (four chapters), Popular Music History (three chapters), The Global and The Local (four chapters), The Star System (four chapters), Body and Identity (four chapters), Media (four chapters) Technology (three chapters) and Digital Economies (four chapters). Notably absent here is the Music of Popular Music, although part one includes Kevin Dawe's chapter on ‘The Many Worlds of Popular Music: Ethnomusicological Approaches' and Serge Lacasse's ‘(Re)generations of Popular Musicology’. However, the lack of musical notation throughout shows the domination of sociological and cultural studies approaches to PMS (given that some of the authors might resist such assignations).
All 35 chapters are specially commissioned, lending the volume its fresh fragrance. Eight of the 36 contributing authors are women (one chapter has two authors). Inevitably the demarcations between parts are not always clear cut. Thus, for example, Matt Brennan's chapter ‘Live Music History’ might well have fitted in the part on The Business of Popular Music, wherein a tendency to privilege the recording sector is apparent.
Such a wide range of topics will inevitably mean that few readers will engage with the whole of the book. This is a pity as, with the notable exception of popular musicology noted above, the book generally does a good job of covering the main aspects of contemporary PMS. However, readers will doubtless gravitate towards their own interests and reading lists across the globe will doubtless become filled with selected references from this text.
Limitations of space prevent even a mention of many of the chapters and thus I will limit myself to selecting what I consider to be some of the highlights, a process which will inevitably betray my own interests. Christine Feldman-Barrett's chapter on ‘Archival Research and The Expansion of Popular Music History’ illustrates the book's currency, as issues of archiving have received a great deal of attention within PMS in recent years. This chapter overlaps with Catherine Strong's on memory, another key aspect of PMS as the 1960s generation which founded PMS increasingly enters (semi) retirement. As a former band manager, I was disappointed that Devon Powers's chapter on Intermediaries omits them from her purview, but I was pleased to see Matt Stahl's contribution on Popular Musical Labour, as this is another theme which is attracting growing interest.
That theme is echoed in Keir Keightley's reflections on ‘Grinding Out Hits at the Song Factory’ which effectively acts as a rejoinder to any romantic ideas about the creative process. Refreshingly, he thinks that this has important implications for evaluating music, as well as analysing musical/industrial processes. The fact that I worked on the project from which much of Matt Brennan's chapter, noted above, is based will not, I'm afraid, prevent me from noting its importance in shifting the gaze away from the recording and other industries to the live arena where ‘we make sense of popular music as a social experience’ (p. 220).
It is good to see diverse genres such as rap (Tony Mitchell), EDM (Graham St John), Metal (Andy R. Brown) and Punk (Ross Haenfler), but the limited space available for each makes for an unsated appetite, while the choice of those genres naturally raises questions about those excluded, and this in a part, labelled The Global and the Local, effectively dominated by questions of genre.
Stardom is explored by genre (rock and pop), gender and race, with some overlap in the chapters. Reading the chapter by Sheila Whiteley on gender reminded me again of how much her work was informed by the feminist notion that the personal is political and, sadly, led me to reflect upon how much her untimely death in 2015 deprived PMS of a fine scholar and colleague.
Media are explored via music journalism, television, cinema and the Internet. The theme also resonates in the section on Technology, which has chapters on recording, amplification (Pete Doyle on his customarily fine form) and listening. Complexity is apparent in the part on digital economies which concludes the book and has perhaps the most important implications for future PMS scholars. Questions of the nature of the music industries, copying, authorship, ownership, distribution, cartels and copyright come to the fore here and help to end the book with something of a flourish as the reader is left with the clear feeling of a field well covered and contemporary issues addressed.
Overall, the standard here is high and the chapters are at the very least informative and generally thought provoking. If there is a frustration it is that the limited amount of words allocated to authors means that some of the chapters – especially those which attempt to lay out their field of study – tend to end before they have really got going. This is of course, not unique to this collection, and it is to be hoped that readers will seek out more work by those authors here whose chapters they admire.
I noted the price of this book at the start more in sorrow than anger. A reasonably priced paperback version of this book would be a real boost to PMS and to our students. The authors' efforts notwithstanding, it is Sage's quest for profits which means that, while several of the chapters might achieve the status of ‘must-read’, the book is unlikely to be recommended to students as ‘must-buy’.
