Hearing Luxe Pop : glorification, glamour, and the middlebrow in American popular music

Howland, John 1964- (author.).

Summary: "Hearing Luxe Pop explores a deluxe-production aesthetic that has long thrived in American popular music. John Howland presents an alternative music history that centers on shifts in timbre and sound through innovative uses of media, orchestration, and arranging. He travels from symphonic jazz to the Great American Songbook; teenage symphonies of the Motown label and 1960s girl groups to the emerging "countrypolitan" sound of Nashville; the sunshine pop and baroque pop of the Beach Boys to the blending of soul and funk into 1970s disco; the hip-hop-with-orchestra events of Jay-Z and Kanye West to indie rock bands with the Brooklyn Philharmonic. The luxe aesthetic merges popular-music idioms with lush string orchestrations, big-band instrumentation, and symphonic instruments. This book attunes readers to hearing the discourses that gathered around the music and its associated images, and in turn examines pop's relations to aspirational consumer culture, spectacle, theatricality, glamour, sophistication, cosmopolitanism, and "classy" lifestyles"--

Record details

ISBN: 9780520300118
ISBN: 9780520300101
ISBN: 9780520971646
ISBN: 0520971647
Physical Description: 1 online resource (x, 381 pages).
remote
Computer data.
Publisher: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2021]
Copyright: �2021

Content descriptions

General Note:	CatMonthString:september.21 Multi-User.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Introduction : from Paul Whiteman, to Barry White, man -- Hearing Luxe Pop : Jay Z, Isaac Hayes, and the six degrees of symphonic soul -- The (symphonic) Jazz age, musical vaudeville, and "glorified" entertainments -- Jazz with strings : between Jazz and the great American songbook -- Defining populuxe : capitol records and the swinging early Hi-Fi era -- Phil Spector, early 1960s "teenage symphonies," and the fabulous lower middlebrow -- Mining AM (white) gold : the 1960s MOR-pop foundations of 1970s soft rock -- Isaac Hayes and Hot Buttered (Orchestral) Soul, from psychedelic to progressive -- From sophistisoul to disco : Barry White and the fall of Luxe Pop.
Type of Computer File or Data Note:	Text (HTML), electronic book.
System Details Note:	Mode of access: Internet.
Terms Governing Use and Reproduction Note:	Access requires VIU IP addresses and is restricted to VIU students, faculty and staff. Access restricted by subscription.
Issuing Body Note:	Made available online by JSTOR.
Source of Description Note:	Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on June 09, 2021).