1989: Bob Dylan Didn’t Have This to Sing AboutIn a tour de force of lyrical theory, Joshua Clover boldly reimagines how we understand both pop music and its social context in a vibrant exploration of a year famously described as "the end of history." Amid the historic overturnings of 1989, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, pop music also experienced striking changes. Vividly conjuring cultural sensations and events, Clover tracks the emergence of seemingly disconnected phenomena--from grunge to acid house to gangsta rap--asking if "perhaps pop had been biding its time until 1989 came along to make sense of its sensibility." His analysis deftly moves among varied artists and genres including Public Enemy, N.W.A., Dr. Dre, De La Soul, The KLF, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, U2, Jesus Jones, the Scorpions, George Michael, Madonna, Roxette, and others. This elegantly written work, deliberately mirroring history as dialectical and ongoing, summons forth a new understanding of how "history had come out to meet pop as something more than a fairytale, or something less. A truth, a way of being." |
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acid house acid house’s aesthetic album ambivalent antagonism band band’s become belle époque Berlin Wall Billboard Black Nationalist Black Power black-on-black violence blind spot Bomb Squad chapter charts chorus club Cobain confrontation cultural dance music Deee-Lite dominant dynamic Ecstasy effect emergence end of history exactly Fall feeling figure formal Freedom 90 Fukuyama gangsta gangsta rap genre genre’s global grunge grunge’s Happy Mondays hip-hop ideological image-event increasingly irony Jameson Jesus Jones logic London matter narrative Nation Negative Creep Nirvana Nonetheless one’s Orbital phrase political pop music pop song pop’s popular Power and Black Press Public Enemy punk punk’s rap’s rave rave’s released revolution rhetoric rock S’Express sampling Second Summer seems sense shift single social song’s sonic Sonic Youth sound Stop Won’t Stop story Straight Outta Compton structure style Summer of Love teenpop things tion turn unification unity York