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Reflecting on the Canonicity of Bob Dylan

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  The artist in rock and roll history who has the most literary significance, and perhaps the artist who is the most responsible for moving forward the boundaries of artistic expression in English-speaking culture in the rock and roll era, is Bob Dylan. He grew up in Minnesota and came to New York City in the early years of a cultural revolution and began integrating himself into a folk music tradition that was increasingly indebted to rock music as it pushed itself to the popular consciousness. His songwriting is potent and features an insistence on running back and forth between the interpersonal and the political. In that expressive space, he opened up a way for Americans to consider how their personal lives and their yearnings fit into a bigger picture in our changing landscape.   One other major feature in assessment of the canonicity of Bob Dylan as a primary figure in rock music history and rock influence is his enigmatic image. That is where he shows his greatest relationsh
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Reflecting on the Canonicity of The Beatles

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  Many lists of rock and roll’s most famous or greatest artists list The Beatles at the top, and the majority of those who don’t have Elvis Presley there put The Beatles in the number one spot. There seems to be major, wide agreement that they are either the most influential or the second most influential artist of rock and roll. I think that many critics and listeners would also argue that they are the most famous band out of the entire recording era (1890s-present).   There are five categories that I’ve been using in compiling this list and thinking about order: popularity, talent, influence, critical acclaim, and career longevity. And The Beatles are thought of as being close to the top ranking in all of these except career longevity. They were only active as a performing and recording unit for a bit longer than a decade, but even after their 1970 split one could argue that they remained in the public consciousness in a huge way—and throughout many countries—up to the present an
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Reflecting on the Canonicity of Elvis Presley

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  Introduction: In the upcoming series, I’m going to be writing reflections on the canonicity of the most important artists in the history of rock and roll. The series will cover a wide variety of attributes or parts of the artists’ legacies and their recorded outputs, including popularity, awards, critical acclaim, longevity, influence, etc. It will be a lengthy series, if I manage to be consistent about writing it, but I think it will also be an interesting read for readers who have any interest in rock and roll as an art form, and the future of it at the current time (2022). It works as an outgrowth of my recent Twitter polling about this (The Top 2000 Most Important Artists in the History of Rock and Roll Re-ranking Project at www.twitter.com/ArtOfTheComment ).   I’m planning on beginning from the top of the list with Elvis Presley and working my way to #2000 and perhaps beyond that. The entry for an artist will begin from a freewheeling reflection on that artist’s canonicity i
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Jill Scott, "The Way"

Jill Scott, “The Way”             Jill Scott has had a lot more commercial success than a lot of her peers in the neo-soul genre. Her single “The Way” from her 2000 album Who Is Jill Scott?: Words and Sounds, Vol. 1 is a representative track from the early part of her career and also shows the links between neo-soul and earlier soul music subgenres. I’ve always found this song calming. It features a fairly slow “walk” tempo with a few minor chords in the verses and the chorus. While it is a fairly simple song in structure and instrumentation, it also captures a blissed-out feeling of love and relationship happiness well while introducing a lot of listeners to Jill Scott’s emotional and poetic songwriting style. (Scott co-wrote this song with her producer Andre Harris, of Dre and Vidal.)             The song features an introduction that establishes the slow tempo, and that chord progression shows up again in the chorus, adding a sense of the familiar to the song and remin
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The 2000 Most Important Artists in Rock and Roll: Re-ranking Project and Compiling Project

I want to use this blog for other types of writing about music, too. I have a lot of opinions about music that are general, and particularly about canonicity. I also thought this blog would be a good place for me to launch a project where I will either count up or down on a long list that I am still working on compiling. The list (one that is borne out of my own opinion and analysis) will be entitled The 2000 Most Important Artists in Rock and Roll. I am really looking forward to the project and would like to reach out in a few ways for help or readers’ input along the way of the project. In this blog entry, I just want to outline how I’m conceiving of it and what parts I want to feature or include in the project.             I have been long fascinated by the concept of canonicity within popular culture, particularly within popular music. I have been very fascinated over many years with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and have written a lot on Twitter about their induction proce
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"Lonely People," America

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I remember having a box of 45s as a little kid. I had asked my parents to buy some of them, and others had been given to me and were from before I was born. I was born in 1980, so I belong to the last generation who remembers buying vinyl records before more modern formats came along. There are a lot of people my age who started out with CDs and who never bought vinyl, but I got into music from a very early age and had parents who were nice enough to allow me to pick out a record or two at the store. One of my 45s was for “Lonely People” by America, released in 1974 from the album Holiday . I remember the cover of it vividly: forest green and with a cartoon of the three guys in the band on it. I think that 45 cover is one of the reasons that I have always associated the color of forest green with 70s pop culture.             America was comprised back then of three members: Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell, and Dan Peek. The latter member co-wrote “Lonely People” with his wife E
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Introduction

Introduction             I can’t think at this point in my life of any type of writing that would be more personal than popular music analysis. Getting deeply into the inner workings of a popular song, exploring how it works on the listener’s ear, considering how it has managed to move us (or at least me) in the way that it has: these acts all feel deeply creative and fulfilling for me as a writer right now. It’s hard to explain why. Why would anyone want to read this blog? That’s another question—and a good one. I want to start, though, by clearing up a few other things before we really get started with this blog.             I teach first-year writing at colleges, and one of the assignments that I have been giving over the past few years is called the Film/Song Analysis Project. The students have to choose a film or song and write a two-to-three-page analysis of it. I think it’s a useful assignment for a lot of my students because they have little understanding of what
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