Canadian Music and American Culture

Get Away From Me

Tristanne Connolly, Tomoyuki Iino, Tristanne Connolly, Tomoyuki Iino

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319500225
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319500232
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

This collection explores Canadian music's commentaries on American culture. 'American Woman, get away from me!' - one of the most resonant musical statements to come out of Canada - is a cry of love and hate for its neighbour. Canada's close, inescapable entanglement with the superpower to the south provides a unique yet representative case study of the benefits and detriments of the global American culture machine. Literature scholars apply textual and cultural analysis to a selection of Anglo-Canadian music – from Joni Mitchell to Peaches, via such artists as Neil Young, Rush, and the Tragically Hip – to explore the generic borrowings and social criticism, the desires and failures of Canada's musical relationship with the USA. This innovative volume will appeal to those interested in Music, Canadian Studies, and American Studies.

Table of contents

• Canadian Music and American Culture
• 1 Introduction: ‘Get Away From Me’: Anglo-Canadian Music and the Globalization of American Culture
• 2 ‘Something’s Lost but Something’s Gained’: Joni Mitchell and Postcolonial Lyric
• 3 The View from Outside: The Band Sing America
• 4 Neil Young: Some Complexities in His Songs
• 5 ‘The Usual Panic in Red, White and Blue’: Bruce Cockburn’s America
• 6 ‘Mean, Mean Pride’: Rush’s Critique of American Cool
• 7 The Max Webster Transfusion: A Little (Canadian) Blood for America’s Veins
• 8 ‘Outside Looking In’: Saga’s Progressive Protest
• 9 Tactical Electronic Bodies: Noise and Mutation in Canadian Industrial Music
• 10 Peace, Order and their Discontents: The Tragically Hip
• 11 ‘If I Can Make it There…’: Jann Arden’s American Dream
• 12 ‘Stick it to the Pimp’: Peaches’ Penetration of Postmodern America’s Mainstream
• Works Cited
• Index