ABSTRACT
It may seem perverse, in a ‘postmodern’ world, to approach musical meaning from the perspective of ‘authorship’. But if cultural studies no longer takes this romantic myth at face value, it is by no means clear that the popular music culture itself has followed suit. Journalistic criticism no less than fan discourse still very often speaks the language of ‘originality’, ‘self-expression’ and ‘authenticity’;2 and, as Frith (1992), Cohen (1991) and Finnegan (1989) all make clear, this ideology remains at the heart of rock production. Even in the supposedly postmodern sphere of sampling technology, romantic claims of authorship survive (Goodwin, 1990). There are good reasons, then, to interrogate these claims.
