The Exhaustively Detailed Music Analysis Blog

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 hav...

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 ...

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...