Popular music is the soundtrack of our adolescence and young adulthood. It contextualizes our loves, our friendships, and our break ups, it animates our choices, and it helps us discover who we are. This vast collection of subgenres spans at least seventy years, thousands of artists, and countless perspectives on love, power, and the politics of gender, race, and class. And any given song can feel as personal to us as our own skin. 

This writing seminar dives into American popular music, going far beyond the lyrics. Participants build skills in “by ear” musical analysis of melody and harmony -- no note-reading required! – in order to better perceive and explore the ways the music itself constructs and communicates meaning. This loosely chronological study incorporates participants’ interests and draws on media such as documentary film, podcasts, and a variety of styles of writing. Students expand their capacity to listen deeply and, using a growing lexicon of technically precise language, discuss the music’s crucial contributions to a song’s meaning in a respectful, supportive seminar. Over the semester students write about music at several different registers, including succinct journalistic album reviews, creative personal essays (a la Nick Hornby) that sidle up to narrative while getting into how music accomplishes such subtle -- or enormous – emotional feats, and analytical essays (such as those by Lori Burns, Nadine Hubbs, and others) requiring the elegant presentation of carefully collected and interpreted evidence to make an argument. Students hone their writing skills with revisions based on detailed feedback from the professor and rigorous peer review.

Topics in popular music are sometimes sexual -- they don’t call it “sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll” for nothing -- and discussions will invariably address this and other sensitive issues. If you anticipate this causing you discomfort, the course may not be right for you.