Syntheses

Having read this far, it would be natural to have turned the previous page expecting to find those ‘complete analyses’ that usually act as the culmination to a book such as this. ¹ I cannot tell whether their absence here will be a cause of joy or frustration, but a few words on that absence cannot be avoided. My focus throughout has been on how, as a listener, you can discover meaning in the act of listening to the popular song you listen to. The reason for this approach is worth reiterating. Much detailed writing on music contents itself with sophisticated description, and analysis. This is a worthwhile activity in its own right, but it is also worth keeping an eye on pragmatic reality. As an academic, part of my responsibility is to produce the results of my work in a form that is usable by others. For my own peace of mind, if nothing else, I need to be able to answer the question that should follow all such enquiry: so what? The second part of this book is a series of direct attempts on this most difficult of questions. I have been publishing analytically informed work on popular song for nearly 20 years now, and have constantly worried about how well it passes what I call this so what? test, that is how well it moves from analysis to useful, and usable, interpretation. At first, I was content that the analysis of large areas of the repertory, if necessarily somewhat superficial because of its scope, brought important understandings in terms of common practices ² or ‘style’, helping to reinstate that concept as one worthy of consideration – indeed, I maintain that without an understanding of the style that organizes a particular performance, we cannot properly understand the details of that performance, hence my extended focus in Chapter 5. More recently, I discovered that other key questions, particularly for me those explored in Chapters 8 and 9, could be addressed by analytic means. But if the focus is on the means by which meaning is found, to present my own understandings of a range of songs would be to re-erect the results of such questioning as more important than the process of questioning, or at least as more important, more valid somehow, than yours. That will not do. If you are curious, then my little study of the Jethro Tull album Aqualung ³ will demonstrate how some of the essential features of this methodology work in relation to complete songs (and an entire album), but that is not the focus of this particular book. There is an additional reason for avoiding the presentation of complete songs, which is that I am suspicious of the (modernist) assumption of coherence, that is, the idea that a song represents a whole in itself, an entirety that can be interpreted consistently. One reason for restricting myself to commenting on parts of songs is that this is the approach that so many songs encourage. But that is a minor point and not one I shall develop here.