2. Keith Negus
Keith Negus, Popular Music in Theory (1996)
Negus challenges the connection between popular music and youth culture. He argues
that popular music is listened to and by an ageing demographic.
Punk rock finally challenged, deconstructed and exposed the mythologies of rock at the
very moment when the original teenagers and youth of the rock generation were
beginning to grow old and beginning to hear things in a different way: songs of
generational rebellion, sexual liberation and social concern were starting to be used to
advertise wine coolers, executive cars and personal insurance.
Keith Negus ‘Histories’, Popular Music in Theory (1996; Polity Press, Cambridge).
3. Is Negus right?
Negus falls into the classic Frankfurt School trap of seeing all commercial uses of popular
music art as problematic.
4. Andrew Goodwin
Goodwin identifies 5 key aspects of music videos that we the audience
should look out for which are:
1. Thought beats – Seeing the sound
2. Narrative and Performance
3. The Star Image
4. Relation of Visuals to Song
5. Technical Aspects of Music Video
5. Relation of visuals to songs
This is similar to
repeatability.
Meanings and
effects are
manipulated and
constantly shown
Music videos can through the video
use a set of and drummed into
images to our vision
illustrate the
meaning of lyrics
& genre, this is
the most
common This is where the
meaning of the
song is completely
ignored
