This article considers the historical rise of the high/low brow distinction in American culture since the late 19th century, and posits that the emergence of digital technology and the internet have created something more like a “flat world” in which the low/high distinction is transformed.

This essay considers the role of popular music in college music curricula.

The article discusses the author’s experience teaching MOOCs for Coursera.org.

This article outlines the “hippie aethetic” as a way of unifying rock music from the 1960s and 70s.

An examination of how the music of the Coasters, written by Leiber and Stoller, invert the rhetorical emphasis of the bridge section in AABA form.

An exploration of jazz-rock fusion in the 1970s.

An exploration of how the Beatles’ use of form can be used to indicate the emergence of an “artist” aesthetic in the band’s music in the 1960s.

A survey of song form in rock music, focusing on music from the 1955-1990 period.

An examination of new wave music in the late 1970s.

An examination of American progressive rock in the 1980s and 90s.

An essay addressing methods of analyzing rock music within the disciplinary context of popular music studies in the 1990s.

An essay considering the relationship between musical analysis and popular music studies in the disciplinary context of the mid 1990s.

A discussion of the relationship of popular music within the context of musical scholarship.

Analysis of songs from the film This is Spinal Tap, explored from the perspectives of stylistic competency and theories of humor.

Analysis of songs by the Rutles, explored from the perspectives of stylistic competency and theories of humor.

Analysis of title track from Yes’s Close to the Edge album.

Brad Osborn. 2010. “Beyond Verse and Chorus: Experimental Song Forms in Post-Millennial Rock Music.” PhD Dissertation, University of Washington.