One-Track Mind

Capitalism, Technology, and the Art of the Pop Song

Asif Siddiqi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780367553739
• eBook ISBN: 9781000640250
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

The song remains the most basic unit of modern pop music. Shaped into being by historical forces—cultural, aesthetic, and technical—the song provides both performer and audience with a world marked off by a short, discrete, and temporally demarcated experience. One-Track Mind: Capitalism, Technology, and the Art of the Pop Song brings together 16 writers to weigh in on 16 iconic tracks from the history of modern popular music. Arranged chronologically in order of release of the tracks, and spanning nearly five decades, these essays zigzag across the cultural landscape to present one possible history of pop music. There are detours through psychedelic rock, Afro-pop, Latin pop, glam rock, heavy metal, punk, postpunk, adult contemporary rock, techno, hip-hop, and electro-pop here. More than just deep histories of individual songs, these essays all expand far beyond the track itself to offer exciting and often counterintuitive histories of transformative moments in popular culture. Collectively, they show the undiminished power of the individual pop song, both as distillations of important flashpoints and, in their afterlives, as ghostly echoes that persist undiminished but transform for succeeding generations. Capitalism and its principal good, capital, help us frame these stories, a fact that should surprise no one given the inextricable relationship between art and capitalism established in the twentieth century. At the root, readers will find here a history of pop with unexpected plot twists, colorful protagonists, and fitting denouements.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• One-Track Mind: An Introduction
• 1 Le Grand Kallé and African Jazz—“Indépendance Cha Cha” (1960)
• 2 Gerald Wilson—“Viva Tirado” (1962)
• 3 Moby Grape—“Omaha” (1967)
• 4 Led Zeppelin—“Immigrant Song” (1970)
• 5 David Bowie—“Rebel Rebel” (1974)
• 6 Donna Summer—“I Feel Love” (1977)
• 7 X-Ray Spex—“Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” (1977)
• 8 Prince—“When You Were Mine” (1980)
• 9 Neil Young—“Transformer Man” (1982)
• 10 The Replacements—“Unsatisfied” (1984)
• 11 NWA—“F- tha Police” (1988)
• 12 Salt-N-Pepa—“Shoop” (1993)
• 13 Hanson—“Mmmbop” (1997)
• 14 Elton John—“Candle in the Wind 1997” (1997)
• 15 LCD Soundsystem—“All My Friends” (2007)
• 16 MIA—“Paper Planes” (2007)
• Index