The Space Between the Notes examines a series of relationships central to sixties counter-culture: psychedelic coding and rock music, the Rolling Stones and Charles Manson, the Beatles and the Summers of love', Jimi Hendrix and hallucinogenics, Pink Floyd and space rock. Sheila Whiteley combines musicology and socio-cultural analysis to illuminate this terrain, illustrating her argument with key recordings of the time: Cream's She Walks Like a Bearded Rainbow, Hendrix's Hey Joe, Pink Floyd's Set the Controls For the Heat of the Sun, The Move's I Can...

Sexing the Groove discusses these issues and many more, bringing together leading music and cultural theorists to explore the relationships between popular music, gender and sexuality. The contributors, who include Mavis Beayton, Stella Bruzzi, Sara Cohen, Sean Cubitt, Keith Negus and Will Straw, debate how popular music performers, subcultures, fans and texts construct and deconstruct masculine' and feminine' identities. Using a wide range of case studies, from Mick Jagger to Riot Grrrls, they demonstrate that there is nothing natural', permanent or immovable about the...

Women and Popular Music explores the changing role of women musicians and the ways in which their songs resonate in popular culture. Sheila Whiteley begins by examining the counter-culture's reactionary attitudes to women through the lyrics of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. She explores the ways in which artists like Joplin and Joni Mitchell confronted issues of sexuality and freedom, redefining women's participation in the industry, and assesses the personal cost of their achievements. She considers how stars such as Annie Lennox, Madonna and k.d. lang have confronted issues of...

Too Much Too Young investigates how age and gender have shaped the careers and images of pop music stars, examining the role of youth and youthfulness in pop music through a series of themed case studies.Sheila Whiteley begins by investigating the exploitation of child stars such as Brenda Lee and Michael Jackson, offering a psychoanalytic reading of the relationship between child star and oppressive manager, and looks at the current glut of boy- and girl- bands and stars in the mould of Britney Spears to examine the continuing fatal attraction of stardom for adolescents.Whiteley then...

"Queering the Popular Pitch "is a new collection of 19 essays by leading scholars on popular music. Following Routledge's landmark 1994 collection, "Queering the Pitch," these scholars aim to situate queering within the discourse of sex and sexuality in relation to popular music. This investigation addresses the changing debates within gay, lesbian and queer discourse in relation to the dissemination of musical texts--performance, cultural production, sexual meaning--situating music within the broader patterns of culture that it both mirrors and actively reproduces.
The collection is...

How do we understand Christmas? What does it mean? This book is a lively introduction to the study of popular culture through one central case study. It explores the cultural, social and historical contexts of Christmas in the UK, USA and Australia, covering such topics as fiction, film, television, art, newspapers and magazines, war, popular music and carols. Chapters explore the ways in which the production of meaning is mediated by the social and cultural activities surrounding Christmas (watching Christmas films, television, listening or engaging with popular music and carols), its...