Song means: analysing and interpreting recorded popular song

Abstract

Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song by asking "what meanings can experiencing a song have and how does it create those meanings?"(1).Answering these questions is at the heart of Moore's text, through a discourse on how we can analyze and subjectively create meaningful relationships with popular music songs.Moore treats analysis and meaning as dichotomous discussions.Throughout Song Means, the role of the listener is acknowledged in the construction of meaning, which is guided by subjective experiences.The role of analysis is approached from a more formalist methodology, in an effort to survey the relationship between instruments, chord progressions, timbres, genre expectations and lyrics.Overall, Song Means provides what will, no doubt, become a seminal text within popular music studies.Moore has taken on the huge task of synthesizing, not only twenty years of his own academic writings, but also that of key figures within the field, including Richard Middleton (1990; 2000) Simon Frith (1983;1998), and Philip Tagg (2000).While popular music studies can seem quite diffuse from a layman's perspective, Song Means is an attempt to bridge that gap and bring a much needed cohesive factor to the field.In order to ascertain the how of song meaning, the first half of the book explores the mechanics of popular music song.In the introductory methodologies chapter, it is noted that Moore's approach, which primarily focuses on songs from the late 1950s through 1960s, could theoretically be applied to any style and decade of popular song.I would have to question this, as the analysis seems to only centre on genres which lend themselves to transcription in Western notation.While sampling-based genres are mentioned briefly, how this methodology might be applied to more electronic based styles, such as EDM, or even rap music, is not explored.Song Means focuses on recorded music and, as such, is dependent on repeat listening, so it would be interesting to see if the methodology could be extended to live performances as they remain an integral aspect of music consumption.Even given these points, as a musicologist, I believe Moore's foundational methodology has merit and credibility for elucidating song meaning and interpretation across the genres.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Choice Reviews Online, 2012 · DOI ↗