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Living in a box
This man will not appear in my blog very often. Just a quick post today from the phone, to try out the excellent wordpress for iPhone app. I had a meeting on Wednesday in London at the Institute of...
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Take me down like I’m a four-chord loop
I’ve been analysing the PPL’s list of the top 10 most played pop songs of 2012, and discussing it today on BBC Radio Ulster with music journalist Chris Jones....
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IASPM 2013 – Gijòn, Spain – with Abbey Road and some Japanese Prog
I’m here at the 2013 IASPM (International Society for the Study of Popular Music) biennial conference. I’m one of about 20 British popular musicologists and there are several hundred of us from all...
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PopMAC 2013 – introduction
I’m here (with fellow Bath Spa popular music scholars Jim Dickinson and Richard Parfitt) at the PopMAC conference at the University of Liverpool – see http://www.popmac.org.uk/. Our opening ceremony,...
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PopMAC day 1: Incredible Regularity & Fast Evolution in the Beatles’ Harmonic...
PopMAC day 1: Incredible Regularity & Fast Evolution in the Beatles’ Harmonic Progressions. Philippe Cathé, Sorbonne. [abstract] Does pop music really display its complexity in timbre and texture...
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PopMAC day 1: The Matrix & Cultural Diagnostic Concepts in Analyzing...
Using the Matrix & Cultural Diagnostic Concepts in Analyzing Recordings of the Beatles & Others. Craig Morrison, Concordia University [abstract] Peter Van der Merwe defines the matrix as a unit...
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Top 10 songs of 2013 – analysis
Daft Punk, getting lucky with a great chord loop – Bm, D, F#m and E. In my recent research I’ve become increasingly interested in the way mainstream songs behave like a Darwinist ecosystem (this is the...
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Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey To The End of Taste
Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On (1997) is the song used by Carl Wilson to frame an in-depth discussion of musical taste in his 2007 book ‘Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love’. Today I’ve been at the...
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Did Sam Smith copy ‘Earth Song’ in ‘Writing’s On The Wall’?
I was interviewed this week by the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper about the alleged similarities between Sam Smith’s new James Bond movie theme song ‘Writing’s On The Wall’ and Michael Jackson’s Earth...
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