The Journal of Beatles Studies

Liverpool University Press is delighted to announce a call for contributions for the fourth issue of The Journal of Beatles Studies. The aims of the journal are to provide a voice to new and emerging research locating the Beatles in new contexts, groups and communities from within and beyond academic institutions; to inaugurate, innovate, interrogate and challenge narrative, cultural historical and musicological tropes about the Beatles as both subject and object of study; to publish original and critical research from Beatles scholars around the globe and across disciplines.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popular Music Songwriting as Cultural, Creative, and Economic Practice

Yearbook ‘Lied und Populäre Kultur / Song and Popular Culture’ of the Centre for Popular Culture and Music, Vol. 69 (2024), ed. by Michael Ahlers, Jan-Peter Herbst, and Knut Holtsträter.

This yearbook aims to shed light on the historical development and the current state of popular music songwriting in all its aspects. Possible topics and approaches include (but are not limited to):

• Concepts of the relationship between mainstream and marginalized music cultures in the 21st century;
• Influences of standardization, platformisation, and propertisation on songwriting processes or products;
• Singer-songwriters and the folk narrative (contemporary and historical practices);
• Songwriter/composer/producer: terminology and understanding of their roles;
• Literacy and orality in songwriting;
• Historical and current songwriting centres and collaborations (e.g., Music Hall, Tin Pan Alley, Brill Building, Motown, Nashville’s Music Row, London’s Denmark Street, PWL, Stock/Aitken/Waterman, Xenomania, Cheiron Studios, Prescription Songs);
• Business of songwriting and publishing;
• Songwriting as profession and labour;
• Teaching songwriting in and outside music pedagogy;
• Legal and ethical issues of songwriting;
• Contemporary songwriting practices, techniques, or arrangements (e.g., Svengali collaboration between pop artists and backroom songwriters, songwriting camps);
• Production as a part of songwriting, songwriting as a part of production;
• Genre-specifics in songwriting;
• Instruments and tools of songwriting
• Creativity myths and (self-)exploitation of artists;
• Computer-assisted songwriting and artificial intelligence.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bad Religion: Punk Politics, Philosophy, and Pedagogy

Call for Chapters

Editors:

• Ellen Bernhard, Assistant Professor of Digital Communication, Georgian Court University, US
• Paul Fields, Senior Lecturer in Music, Buckinghamshire New University, UK

Contact: [email protected]

Deadline for Submissions: 31 July 2023

With over 40 years of experience, 17 studio albums, and an extensive (and continuing) touring schedule, Bad Religion’s impact on music and culture is one worth investigating. The purpose of this edited volume will be to explore the impact of Bad Religion as a steadfast entity in a music genre notorious for its ephemeral tendencies. Because of this, we are interested in pursuing multidisciplinary perspectives on the subject of Bad Religion, seeking academic contributions that will examine different elements of the band’s decades-long tenure in order to demonstrate how Bad Religion’s role in punk rock’s history remains relevant today.

Read the rest of this entry »

Unheard Melodies: Towards A Global Musicology of boys love Media

What implications does the study of music, broadly defined, have for boys love media in Asia and beyond? The potential for comprehensive engagement appears vast in theory, but practical exploration remains somewhat limited. This prospective collection of essays aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice by delving into an otherwise relatively unexplored terrain. By examining the intricate dynamics between music and boys love media, encompassing visual, textual, audiovisual elements, and more, our mission is to shed light on the profound influence music exerts on narrative, aesthetics, and emotional expressions. While the amalgamation of music and popular media in the Asian context offers fertile ground for scholarly inquiry, the specific realm of boys love media remains noticeably absent from existing musicological scholarship. Through thoughtful research and an interdisciplinary approach, we warmly invite scholars, researchers, and experts to contribute studies that unravel the intricate connections between music and boys love media. Expanding on themes such as the narrative functions of music, portrayals of musical performances, the symbolic and metaphorical dimensions of music, and the affective and expressive currents in auditory, sonic, and queer contexts, this collection aspires to establish a robust foundation for exploring musicology within the diverse manifestations of boys love media across the expansive Asian landscape and beyond.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is Me: Interrogating the Female Pop Star Documentary

From Lady Gaga’s Five Foot Two (2017) to BlackPink’s Light Up the Sky (2020), Billie Eilish’s The World’s A Little Blurry (2021), Love, Lizzo (2022) and many more, documentaries on female pop stars have been released with increased frequency in the past decade. Many of the world’s most famous female artists both in (and beyond) the pop genre have allowed fragments of their onstage and offstage lives to be filmed and released for public consumption as part of the bolstering of their brand.

Read the rest of this entry »

K-pop and the West: Media, Fandom, and Transnational Politics

The Asia Research Institute, University at Buffalo (UB), the State University of New York October 27-28, 2023

The University at Buffalo’s Asia Research Institute will host its second annual Korean studies symposium, “K-pop and the West: Media, Fandom, and Transnational Politics,” on October 27- 28, 2023. The symposium aims at creating an opportunity to think about research, pedagogy, and methodologies in our critical study of K-pop in the West. There has been some debate about whether K-pop’s popularity in the U.S. market represents its status as a mainstream—as compared to an ethnic—pop genre. Some would argue that the current success of K-pop be viewed as a collective achievement of K-pop fans. In this view, American fans have, in particular, “fought against” the U.S. media industry’s commercial devaluation of K-pop and their racially discriminatory practices that adversely affect K-pop artists.

Read the rest of this entry »

International Conference on Media Industries

16-19 April 2024
Hosted by the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London

Paper, panel, and roundtable proposals are now invited for the 2024 ‘Media Industries’ conference (‘MI2024’).

After the success in 2018 of the inaugural conference ‘Media Industries: Current Debates and Future Directions’, unfortunately the planned 2020 conference had to be cancelled due to Covid lockdowns. We are therefore very pleased to announce the conference will return next year.

A key aim of MI2024 is to maintain an open intellectual agenda and provide a meeting ground for all forms of media industries research.

To this end, the conference invites proposals for papers, panels, and roundtables presenting research from across the full breadth of the media industries.

To energize interdisciplinary discussions, we welcome proposals presenting research from all intellectual and methodological traditions in media industries scholarship.

Additionally, to recognize the full scope and diversity of media industries, proposals may address industries in contemporary or historical contexts, and at global, transnational, national, or sub-national levels of analysis.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rhythm Changes: Jazz Encounters

The eighth Rhythm Changes Conference, Jazz Encounters, will take place at the Institute for Jazz Research (University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz, Austria) from 3 to 6 April 2024. This conference is organised in conjunction with the fourteenth International Jazz Research Conference.

Keynotes
Keynote: Prof. George McKay (University of East Anglia, UK)
Keynote: Maite Hontelé (trumpet player, the Netherlands)
Closing address: Stephanie Vos (Stellenbosch University, South Africa)

We invite submissions for Jazz Encounters, a four-day multidisciplinary conference bringing together researchers, writers, musicians, critics, and others interested in jazz studies. The event will feature academic papers and panels.

Read the rest of this entry »

Retrofuturism 2.0 Symposium

The post-pandemic internet has seen a boom of micro-genres on platforms such as Tumblr and TikTok. Music, text, and images are combined to create audiovisual imaginaries with a look towards particular (pop)cultural niches at once nostalgic and utopian. Subcultures emerging during the 2010s have been joined by trends such as cottagecore and dark academia.

Following last year’s symposium on musical retrofuturism (https://musicalretrofuturism.wordpress.com), this online symposium widens our focus to encompass contemporary ‘nostalgiacore’ in music and audiovisual media. We use this term to refer to an aesthetic emerging from the archival, escapist, and remediating capacities of the internet. We are interested not only in memory, but also the intersections of media and imagination—the ways in which nostalgia and desire can be cultivated for an era that was not experienced directly.

Read the rest of this entry »

Punk Symposium in Berlin

22 September 2023
In cooperation with the international Punk Scholars Network

PANK! – (German) language in zines, punk art and punk rock

„Haste ’ne Macke?!“ (Engl. „you nuts?!“) – That is how Nina Hagen begins her song “Pank”, which she recorded in 1978, self-ironically written the way Germans usually pronounce the English word “Punk”. Youth slang, everyday language, humor, and directness characterize early German punk songs in the late 1970s—a departure from internationalized and slick mainstream pop lines à la ABBA. Political communication was also further radicalized in German punk rock. When the Hamburg band Slime loudly postulated in 1980 that they didn’t want any „Bullenschweine“ (Engl. “bull pigs”) and thus polemically commented on the constant confrontation between law enforcement and punks from their point of view, the 10-year-old slogans of radical left-wing bands like Ton Steine Scherben seemed almost well-behaved. Back to the concrete, back to reality, namely the low, grim, and dreary reality—but this reality is then, in turn, violently and solemnly torn apart. A graphic equivalent of this frenzy of expression can be found in the fanzines of the time—Do It Yourself (DIY) magazines in self-publication, made possible by the spread of the photocopier—which also turn the tables with ironic wit, chaotic layout, and humorous appropriation of the narrow-mindedness in contemporary German advertising.

Read the rest of this entry »