In this essay, I present a methodology for analyzing style in pop and rock that confronts the issue of stylistic eclecticism, focusing on a body of work that offers a particularly interesting case study in this regard, namely the music of the Police. Formed in London in 1977, a particularly turbulent year in the history of British pop, this…[Read more]

In *Expression in Pop-Rock Music: Critical and Analytical Essays*, 2nd ed., ed. Walter Everett (Routledge, 2008).

This article examines a variety of compositional procedures that give rise to what the author defines as “accumulative” and “cumulative” forms in pop-rock music, formal processes which are directly linked to the rapid advances in recording technology that occurred mainly from the late 1960s to the 1980s. The article includes detailed…[Read more]

This chapter chronicles George Harrison’s songwriting during the Beatles years.

This afterword discusses the Beatles White Album and the essays contained in this volume.

This chapter posits models for musical texture and positional listening and analysis.

This chapter explores the history of the “cover,” distinguishing between covers and versions and focusing on the psychedelic symphonic cover version in the music of Vanilla Fudge and Yes.

This chapter explores the role of popular music in music curricula, considering it in terms of the flattening of the lowbrow/highbrow distinction in American culture and academic culture.

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.