Description: Allan Moore presents a study of recorded popular song, from the recordings of the 1920s through to the present day. Analysis and interpretation are treated as separable but interdependent approaches to song. Analytical theory is revisited, covering conventional domains such as harmony, melody and rhythm, but does not privilege these at the expense of domains such as texture, the soundbox, vocal tone, lyrics. Moore continues by developing a range of hermeneutic strategies largely drawn from outside the field (in the most part, within psychology and philosophy) but still deeply relevant to the experience of song.
Review Quotes: A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2012 'Moore's methodology is clear and easy to follow... [His] discussion of how listeners react to recordings is just as strong as his discussion of melodic modes. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.' Choice 'Song Means is an astonishing achievement, and an exceptionally important book. Drawing on more than 20 years of his own writing on popular music, but synthesising and developing it in a quite remarkable way, Allan Moore accomplishes what seems almost impossible: a completely engaging, beautifully clear, authoritative, and undogmatic account of musical meaning across a huge range of pop songs. Written in direct, accessible and uncomplicated language, but tackling fundamental questions of musical meaning and the nature of musical materials, the book is rooted in Moore's own encyclopaedic knowledge of popular music set in a sophisticated conceptual framework. This is a landmark in the musicology of pop, and a book that will have a profound impact on how people think about, and understand, the most globally pervasive form of music of our times: the pop song.' Eric F. Clarke FBA, Heather Professor of Music, St Aldate's, University of Oxford, UK 'Song Means is firmly recommended for academic music libraries and any collections with an orientation toward popular music, theory, or analysis.' ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections) '... for anyone interested in the academic analysis of a field of music that has profoundly influenced - some might say defined - whole generations, this book sets a benchmark that [...] will last for a long time.' Journal on the Art of Record Production '...Song Means is a worthy and important addition to the popular music scholarship canon.' Music Theory On-Line