2009
First Published
3.74
Average Rating
198
Number of Pages
In a tour de force of lyrical theory, Joshua Clover boldly reimagines how we understand both pop music and its social context in a vibrant exploration of a year famously described as “the end of history.” Amid the historic overturnings of 1989, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, pop music also experienced striking changes. Vividly conjuring cultural sensations and events, Clover tracks the emergence of seemingly disconnected phenomena—from grunge to acid house to gangsta rap—asking if ”perhaps pop had been biding its time until 1989 came along to make sense of its sensibility.” His analysis deftly moves among varied artists and genres including Public Enemy, N.W.A., Dr. Dre, De La Soul, The KLF, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, U2, Jesus Jones, the Scorpions, George Michael, Madonna, Roxette, and others. This elegantly written work, deliberately mirroring history as dialectical and ongoing, summons forth a new understanding of how “history had come out to meet pop as something more than a fairytale, or something less. A truth, a way of being.”
Avg Rating
3.74
Number of Ratings
114
5 STARS
29%
4 STARS
33%
3 STARS
25%
2 STARS
9%
1 STARS
4%
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Author
Joshua Clover
Author · 8 books
Joshua Clover is a professor at the University of California Davis. He is a published poet, scholar, critic, and journalist.
