ABSTRACT
Looking back at Simon Frith’s 40 years in the business of making sense of popular music one can’t avoid being struck by the man’s versatility. He has become respected both as a professor of popular music and as a critic. Frith the academic has combined sociology, cultural studies and media studies into an art of writing that easily shifts from micro to macro reflections, from close readings to analyses of the material foundations of music-making. Frith the critic has been a transatlantic messenger explaining things British to North Americans with a keen eye to the relationship between artist and audience. Appearing in an impressive number of publications, he has often gone against the grain, critical of the alleged authenticity of the rock tradition, attentive to the qualities of disparaged music, always curious about what’s new. On a close look, less than one might think distinguishes the scholar from the critic. Frith is simply an extremely mobile thinker.
