2022/23 Undergraduate Module Catalogue

MUSS1825 Talking About Pop Music: Discourse and Debates in Popular Music

20 creditsClass Size: 49

Module manager: Dr Stan Erraught
Email: s.erraught@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable

Year running 2022/23

Pre-requisite qualifications

None

Module replaces

MUSS1811 Popular Music and the Press

This module is approved as a discovery module

Module summary

Popular music is talked and written about in many different registers. From fan forums to mass market print and online journalism and into academic journals, overlapping and often conflicting discourses concerning the value of particular music are aired, with little enough agreement on terms or criteria. This module will not aim to construct a global aesthetic for popular music: instead, it will unpick the assumptions that ground the ways in which it is discussed across the spectrum. We will look at concrete examples of writing about pop from a wide variety of sources and trace the influence and currency of notions such as authenticity, commercialism, originality, and innovation and will look at how the construction of the canon, particularly in rock music, has been a function of the growing influence of the critic from the 1960s onwards.We will examine how assumptions about gender, race and class play into the generation of critical categories within popular music and how music is coded as ‘female’ or ‘black’. We will look closely at how genre is conceived with popular music and how genre-specific language functions to reinforce the identity of a style of music.

Objectives

This module introduces students to a range of critical resources within popular music culture. It equips them to understand the assumptions that inform debate about popular music styles, and the criteria that underpin judgements of taste within the field. Reading examples of criticism from the informal (fan forums, social media) to the more formal (academic articles and books), students will learn to write critical pieces of their own and to critique each other’s work with a confident grasp of what is at stake when we talk and write about popular music.

Learning outcomes
On completion of this module, students will
1. Understand the history and development of writing about popular music, the relation of such practices to the music industry more generally, and where and how critical commentary on popular music both constructs and reflects discourses around race, gender, and class.
2. Understand the background to their own taste and judgements about popular music.
3. Be able to write confidently about popular music recordings and performances in both informal and formal ways.
4. Understand how different popular genres develop distinctive critical languages, how these translate across genre, and incorporate issues around canonicity and marginalisation.
5. Be able to discuss how popular music discourse can inform wider debates about culture and politics.

Skills outcomes
An ability to assess critically writing about popular music across a variety of platforms.

Syllabus

Topics covered may include:
• The history of writing about popular music in both the commercial press and within academia.
• The promotion of ‘authenticity’ (or ‘keeping it real’) as a positive value within various popular music fields.
• The influence of race, gender and class on the way in which particular forms of popular music are understood and reflected.
• How genre distinctions are constructed and reflected in writing about popular music.
• How technological shifts in the means of production and reproduction of music have been reflected in the ways in which music is written about.
• How the shift from print to digital has changed the form and content of music journalism.

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Lecture	14	1.00	14.00
Seminar	6	1.00	6.00
Private study hours			180.00
Total Contact hours			20.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			200.00

Private study

Preparation for lectures, including reading of examples provided: 54 hrs.
Working on blog entries and design: 50 hrs.
Seminar preparation: 12 hrs.
Research and writing of term essay: 64 hrs.

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

In-class plenary feedback on the blog posts will be given in seminars.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Essay	1,800-2,200 word essay	70.00
Written Work	Three blog posts of 150-200 words each	30.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

Assignment 1 – the blog posts – will be available for resit as an alternative short critical piece of writing.

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 29/04/2022 15:26:00

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