ABSTRACT
Genre is a controversial and ambiguous concept that plays an important role in the ways in which popular music is produced and perceived. Genre is not only part of a text and its context; it also shapes the meaning that is created within and through the text during the process of production and interpretation. There are considerable differences between genre structures — and hence genre theories — in music, literature, and film studies. A look at genre theories outside the fields of musicology and popular music studies shows that a discussion of popular music genre benefits from cross-disciplinary perspectives. The rapidly increasing interest in genre studies amongst popular music scholars has led to new and multi-dimensional concepts of genre that enable diversity and transgression. Musicians are inevitably linked to their musical output and consequently to particular genres. An awareness of the individualistic and artist-centric nature of popular music genre is crucial for comparing it to other types of genre.
