If you drive into any American city with the car stereo blasting, you'll undoubtedly find radio stations representing R&D/hip-hop, country, Top 40, adult contemporary, rock, and Latin, each playing hit after hit within that musical format. American music has created an array of rival mainstreams, complete with charts in multiple categories. Love it or hate it, the world that radio made has steered popular music and provided the soundtrack of American life for more than half a century. In Top 40 Democracy, Eric Weisbard ...
Read More
If you drive into any American city with the car stereo blasting, you'll undoubtedly find radio stations representing R&D/hip-hop, country, Top 40, adult contemporary, rock, and Latin, each playing hit after hit within that musical format. American music has created an array of rival mainstreams, complete with charts in multiple categories. Love it or hate it, the world that radio made has steered popular music and provided the soundtrack of American life for more than half a century. In Top 40 Democracy, Eric Weisbard studies the evolution of this multicentered pop landscape, along the way telling the stories of the Isley Brothers, Dolly Parton, A&M Records, and Elton John, among others. He sheds new light on the upheavals in the music industry over the past fifteen years and their implications for the audiences the industry has shaped. Weisbard focuses in particular on formats-constructed mainstreams designed to appeal to distinct populations-showing how taste became intertwined with class, race, gender, and region. While many historians and music critics have criticized the segmentation of pop radio, Weisbard finds that the creation of multiple formats allowed different subgroups to attain a kind of separate majority status - for example, even in its most mainstream form, the R&B of the Isley Brothers helped to create a sphere where black identity was nourished. Music formats became the one reliable place where different groups of Americans could listen to modern life unfold from their distinct perspectives. The centers of pop, it turns out, were as complicated, diverse, and surprising as the cultural margins. Weisbard's stimulating book is a tour de force, shaking up our ideas about the mainstream music industry in order to tease out the cultural importance of all performers and songs.
Read Less
Add this copy of Top 40 Democracy: the Rival Mainstreams of American to cart. $4.20, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Dallas rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2014 by University of Chicago Press.
Add this copy of Top 40 Democracy: the Rival Mainstreams of American to cart. $6.92, good condition, Sold by Midtown Scholar Bookstore rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Harrisburg, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2014 by University of Chicago Press.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good-Bumped and creased book with tears to the extremities, but not affecting the text block, may have remainder mark or previous owner's name-GOOD PAPERBACK Standard-sized.
Add this copy of Top 40 Democracy: the Rival Mainstreams of American to cart. $20.00, like new condition, Sold by Sequitur Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Boonsboro, MD, UNITED STATES, published 2014 by University of Chicago Press.
Add this copy of Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American to cart. $29.31, like new condition, Sold by GreatBookPrices rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Columbia, MD, UNITED STATES, published 2014 by University of Chicago Press.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Fine. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Add this copy of Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American to cart. $34.21, new condition, Sold by GreatBookPrices rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Columbia, MD, UNITED STATES, published 2014 by University of Chicago Press.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
New. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
