Conveying Lived Experience through Rock and Pop Music Lyrics - (For the Record: Studies in Rock and Popular Music) by David C Wright Jr (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book explores rock and pop music lyrics of the last seventy years to elucidate a broad spectrum of themes about the collective human experience.

Book Synopsis

Conveying Lived Experience through Rock and Pop Music Lyrics explores seven decades of lyrics to elucidate themes about the human experience. The opening chapters discuss romantic relationships and break ups. Subsequent chapters consider lyrics describing nostalgia, as well as those about leaving home, going on the road, and returning home. Then, successive chapters examine the outsider in society, those experiencing mental illness, and alcohol and drug use. Next, songs of social and political critique are surveyed, followed by an examination of utopian and dystopian lyrics. The final chapters analyze songs using prophetic voices and those about the afterlife. This survey shows how lyrics convey the lived experience of people in contemporary society.

Review Quotes

Conveying Lived Experience offers a clear, concise, and comprehensive survey of popular songs from the 1960s to the present. Arranged along thematic lines that explore and reckon with the vagaries of love, personal and political commitments, the cherishing of the past, and hope and fear for the future, among other values, this book brings a judicious set of theoretical tools to bear on the life experience of multiple generations to reveal the kinds of concerns that popular songs consistently address. The author's breadth of knowledge about popular songs and his application of diverse methods of interpretation make this book a foundational contribution to the study of rock and popular music.

Wright's book displays an impressive, near encyclopedic, knowledge of rock and pop's history. Pulling lyrics from throughout the past seventy-plus years of popular music, Wright adeptly identifies recurrent themes that have remained central to music's lexicon. This book neatly combines a rich understanding of many of the key themes of rock and pop with an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music history to underscore how these common themes recur at multiple points in rock history. It is a book that will have you running to your record collection to re-listen to songs, while considering the revelations that Wright has offered here.

About the Author

David C. Wright, Jr. is professor emeritus of history and government at Misericordia University.