ABSTRACT
Textual analysis is concerned with identifying and ‘unpacking’ the formal qualities of texts. It is an approach focused on the underpinning structures of texts and their constituent characteristics; as such, it has become closely associated with semiotic analysis, often linked to psychoanytical concepts. In the case of rock music, this means examining the musical components of songs, and their lyrics, in their various recorded formats. The study of the formal properties of music qua music is termed musicology: ‘the whole body of systematized knowledge about music which results from the application of a scientific method of investigation or research, or of philosophical speculation and rational systematization to the facts, the processes and development of musical art, and to the relation of man in general to that art’ (Harvard Dictionary of Music; cited Middleton, 1990:103). As we shall see, however, the application of musicology to rock has proved difficult and contentious.
