"In 2010--long before the release of Lemonade--Professor Allred created the university course 'Politicizing Beyoncé' to both wide acclaim and controversy. He outlines his pedagogical philosophy in Ain't I a diva?, exploring the process of teaching Beyoncé and what it means to use a superstar to blow up the canon. Examining the entertainer's career alongside the work of Black feminist thinkers, Allred shows how pop culture is so much more than a...

"How can art help us make sense--or nonsense--of the world? If wrong life cannot be lived rightly, as Theodor Adorno had it, what weapons and strategies for living wrongly can art provide? With the same intelligence that animates his poetry, Michael Robbins addresses this weighty question while contemplating the idea of how strange it is that we need art at all. Ranging from Prince to Def Leppard, Lucille Clifton to Frederick Seidel, Robbins's mastery...

In the 1990s, "alternative" was suddenly mainstream, and bands like Pearl Jam and Pavement, Nirvana and R.E.M.--bands that a year before would have been too weird for MTV--were MTV. The boundaries of American culture were exploding, and music was leading the way. It was also the 1990s when a shy music geek named Rob Sheffield met a hell-raising Appalachian punk-rock girl named Renée, who was way too cool for him but fell in love with him anyway....

"Fun, bright, and playful, Power Pop is a sometimes adored, sometimes maligned, often misunderstood genre of music. From its heyday in the '70s and '80s to its resurgence in the '90s and '00s, Power Pop has meant many things to many people. In Go Further, editors Paul Myers and S. W. Lauden have a whole new crop of writers going deep on what certain Power Pop bands and songs mean and have meant to them. Whether they love or hate it, Go Further is...

"The author of the 2016 smash hit Anatomy of a Song returns with 55 new oral histories and analyzes of iconic songs such as Creedence Clearwater Revival's 'Bad Moon Rising,' The Beach Boys' 'Good Vibrations' and Elton John's 'Rocket Man.'"--

“All I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when these other people don’t like them as much as I do.” —Nick Hornby, from Songbook

A wise and hilarious collection from the bestselling author of Dickens and Prince, Just Like You, Funny Girl and About a Boy.

Songs,

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