Conveying Lived Experience through Rock and Pop Music Lyrics

By: David C. Wright Jr.

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Hardcover | 15 September 2024

At a Glance

Hardcover
142 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 1.27

Hardcover

RRP $172.00

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Conveying Lived Experience through Rock and Pop Music Lyrics explores rock and pop music lyrics of the last seventy years to elucidate a broad spectrum of themes about the collective human experience. The opening chapters discuss personal topics, with a first chapter about developing a romantic relationship and a second chapter about breaking up. Subsequently, lyrics describing nostalgia, that is, the longing for the past, as well as those about leaving home, going on the road, and returning home are considered. More social topics are treated in chapters devoted to lyrics about the outsider in society, those experiencing mental illness, and alcohol and drug use. Next, songs of social and political critique are surveyed, followed by an examination of utopian and dystopian lyrics. Finally, rock and pop songs about religious topics are considered, first with a chapter on the use of the prophetic voice, and then with a description of lyrics about hell and the devil, as well as heaven, angels, and God. This broad survey of several hundred songs, using a close reading approach, shows how rock and pop lyrics convey the lived experience of people in contemporary society.

Industry Reviews

Conveying Lived Experience offers a clear, concise, and comprehensive survey of popular songs from the 1960s to the present. Arranged along thematic lines that explore and reckon with the vagaries of love, personal and political commitments, the cherishing of the past, and hope and fear for the future, among other values, this book brings a judicious set of theoretical tools to bear on the life experience of multiple generations to reveal the kinds of concerns that popular songs consistently address. The author's breadth of knowledge about popular songs and his application of diverse methods of interpretation make this book a foundational contribution to the study of rock and popular music.

--Theodore Louis Trost, author of Enduring Violence in America: Two Essays

Wright's book displays an impressive, near encyclopedic, knowledge of rock and pop's history. Pulling lyrics from throughout the past seventy-plus years of popular music, Wright adeptly identifies recurrent themes that have remained central to music's lexicon. This book neatly combines a rich understanding of many of the key themes of rock and pop with an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music history to underscore how these common themes recur at multiple points in rock history. It is a book that will have you running to your record collection to re-listen to songs, while considering the revelations that Wright has offered here.

--Scott Henderson, Trent University

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