Providing a thorough overview of popular music and social class, this edited collection is a welcome addition to the field of Popular Music Studies because it examines the topic in great depth, covering an impressive array of genres and methodologies as well as a variety of musical cultures from around the world. While the chapters provide readers with a helpful literature review in relation to class and different popular music genres, the authors also move beyond that review of the field to proffer original arguments and interventions in important scholarly debates. The volume also traces out the vital history of how popular music marketing categories were shaped in reference to race and class categories, and how those categories, as well as larger industry practices and hierarchies, have continued to have an impact on popular music as both discourse and industry.
The volume is at its strongest when it is arguing for the importance of intersectional analyses, underscoring the importance of analysing class not in isolation but rather as fully embedded in socio-historical contexts, in relation to other relevant categories such as race, gender and sexuality. Kirsten Zemke's chapter illustrates the strength of an intersectional approach, detailing three queer musical movements from women-identified artists and how they examine categories of subordination. Zemke also explicates the negotiations between structure and agency that cut across class and sexuality and impact LGBTQIA+ artists and audiences.
As he lays out such theoretical paradigms in his introduction, Ian Peddie provides a cogent overview of key theories of class, paying particular attention to Pierre Bourdieu's theories of taste hierarchies and cultural capital, and Beverly Skeggs's more recent theories of class and symbolic (p. 33). Those two theorists in particular provide an apt through-line for many essays in the volume. Subsequent chapters helpfully synthesise and apply these paradigms, as when Morten Michaelson examines the concept of taste in his methodological chapter that tackles ideas of ‘middlebrow’. Several authors use Bourdieu's theory of habitus, such as Sean McCloud, who assesses how different religious groups are classed in relation to popular music categories, and Sudiipta Shamalii Dowsett's exploration of hip-hop in working-class neighbourhoods in Cape Town and the idea of embodied sociality.
The volume's organisation works well, with three sections on methodology, self and subjectivities, and key musical genres in relation to class. This organisation is effective in building added layers of debate. Chapters addressing genres, including blues, jazz, R&B, soul, hip-hop, punk, country, rock, folk, disco, easy listening, electronic dance music and reggae build productively on chapters focusing on methodology. The range of methodological approaches includes musicology, ethnography, reception studies, media studies, music industry history and textual analysis. The collection also considers teaching pedagogy, which is a particularly helpful inclusion, as in Alison Butler and Ruth Wright's discussion of the dominance of Western Art music and their consideration of alternative approaches.
Another real strength of the collection is its critical engagement with a long history of ideas of authenticity in relation to class and popular music. As scholars such as David Jones detail here, changing, subjective constructions of authenticity have long reflected the socio-historical contexts for the music and the social beliefs the music both shapes and reflects. In order to unpack what the projection of social class means for media images and the staging of authenticity in popular music, it is necessary to draw out how class has been a central category in the evolution and performance of popular music genres. For example, Jones demonstrates how post-war R&B and soul involved complex performances of authenticity and African American cultural traditions; building on Skeggs, Jones applies the idea of community cultural wealth to R&B and soul.
One key distinction that the selections help to make is between the material conditions and lived experience of social class vs. popular music's projections of class identity and themes. As Travis Stimeling argues in his chapter on class and country music, ‘country music's lived class identity is often at odds with its projected class identity’ (p. 718). He notes that analysis of the genre that only accounts for class will miss key components of musical culture and reception, since audiences engage with the popular music genre in a variety of ways, from different identity positions such as gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity. Stimeling also demonstrates how concepts of respectability in relation to class and popular music have been used to stigmatise and marginalise groups defined by class (p. 720).
Finally, the collection offers a valuable contribution to the discussion of streaming platforms and digital technology, showing how interactive digital media are changing the relationships between producers and consumers. As Matthew Ord argues in his chapter on streaming platforms, the freedoms offered by digital platforms are also limited by inequalities of access, as those platforms can reinforce hierarchies in globalised consumption and a consumer's sense of self as a classed subject.
Ultimately, the collection as a whole fills an important need in the field, moving skilfully between debates about how to define class in Popular Music Studies to discussions of effective methodologies. It takes into account key histories, industrial formations, and legal and economic concerns, while it also delves insightfully into issues of representation, ranging from lyrics to stage personae to musical performance. It tackles recurring concerns, such as ideas of authenticity, ‘selling out’, respectability and censorship, while it also speaks to the vibrant history of individual artists and listeners as they build a sense of self, in part by drawing on these long-running musical cultures that engage with ideas of class.
