ABSTRACT
The first systematic analyst of pop song words, J. G. Peatman, was influenced by Adorno's strictures on 'radio music' and so stressed pop's lyrical standardisation: all successful pop songs were about romantic love. All could be classified under one of three headings, namely, the 'happy in love' song, the 'frustrated in love' song, and the 'novelty song with sex interest'. Most mass cultural critiques of pop songs words derive from 1930s Leavisite arguments. Love and romance, the central pop themes, are the 'sentimental ideology' of capitalist society. For Leavisites, the evil of mass culture is that it corrupts real feelings. Wilfrid Mellers notes that pop songs 'do insidiously correspond with feelings we have all had in adolescence'. Love and romance, the central pop themes, are the 'sentimental ideology' of capitalist society. Like Lee, Harker stresses the importance of pop romance for marriage it is thus that songs work for the reproduction of social relations.
