Today I received the first printing of On Popular Music and Its Unruly Entanglements, published by Palgrave Macmillan at the very tail end of 2019. (Happy New Year!)

Edited by Nick Braae and Kai Arne Hansen, the book includes eleven essays that explore the myriad ways popular music is entwined within social, cultural, musical, historical, and media networks.

My chapter provides a ‘fresh take’ on the idea of empowerment, focusing on listening to rap music and investigating what goes on psychologically when we listen. I dig into the theory around this topic and apply it to music analysis of Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Backseat Freestyle’. You can read a preview of the chapter here (you’ll need to hit ‘Show next 8, then scroll to Chapter 9 and hit Preview). You’ll enjoy my transcription of the ‘Backseat Freestyle’ beat using emojis! ?

The book is available now from Palgrave Macmillan and the usual book suppliers. There are amazing chapters in this, discussing genres as varied as pop, rock, synthwave, video game music (Sonic The Hedgehog 3 to be precise, HT Megan Lavengood), amateur ukelele music, and audiovisual remixes. I’m grateful to the editors for their hard work on this groundbreaking collection. Grab a copy now!

I’m excited to announce that I’m joining the editorial advisory board of the Intellect journal Metal Music Studies. MMS is the official journal of the International Society of Metal Music Studies, and a wonderful hub of research activity spanning broad areas of metal music and culture.

More information can be found on the journal’s official site and the ISMMS site, which boasts the killer URL https://www.metalstudies.org/.

The official aims and scope of the journal are:

• To provide an intellectual hub for the International Society of Metal Music Studies and a vehicle to promote the development of metal music studies;
• To be the focus for research and theory in metal music studies – a multidisciplinary (and interdisciplinary) subject field that engages with a range of parent disciplines, including (but not limited to) sociology, musicology, humanities, cultural studies, geography, philosophy, psychology, history, natural sciences;
• To subject all journals to a double-blind peer-review and publish high-quality, world-class research, theory and shorter articles that cross over from the industry and the scene;
• To be a world leader in interdisciplinary studies and be a unique resource for metal music studies.

Some good news to share: I’ve been offered a contract by Routledge to write a research monograph. The book is provisionally titled How Music Empowers: Listening to Modern Rap and Metal, and it will be part of the Music and Change series. I aim to submit the manuscript around the end of 2019, so given typical publication time you can expect to read the book in 2021 or so.

This book will draw from my doctoral research to provide a new way of understanding how individuals are empowered by listening to music. I’m really excited to be working on it with Routledge! Full ‘elevator pitch’ below:

How Music Empowers suggests that power is the key to unlocking the long-standing mystery of how music moves us. Drawing upon cutting-edge studies in cognitive science, psychology, and cultural studies, the book provides a new way of understanding how music can offer listeners empowerment. The argument develops from our latest conceptions of what it is to be human and addresses why music listening is such a widespread cultural activity: the experiences of empowerment that music provides can increase individuals’ self-esteem, give them resilience, and encourage community formation.

Applying this theory to postmillennial rap and metal, the book uncovers why everyday listeners engage with music often dismissed as social ‘problems’. Taking a sympathetic, insider approach to these music cultures, numerous rap and metal tracks are analysed to suggest their empowering potential in the listening process. This culminates in an account of how individuals pursue their musical interests to creatively interact with communities dedicated to rap and metal, leading to a self-perpetuating process which keeps both music listeners and these thriving musical cultures alive and well.