Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan
Book cover

The Value of Popular Music

An Approach from Post-Kantian Aesthetics

  • Book
  • © 2016

Overview

Authors:
  1. Alison Stone

    1. Lancaster University , Lancaster, United Kingdom

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Winner of the Outstanding Publication Award from the Popular Music Interest Group of the Society for Music Theory, 2017.
  • Brings a philosophical perspective to debates in popular music studies.
  • Provides a new defence of the aesthetic value of popular music.
  • Develops a unique philosophical approach to popular music which is informed by post-Kantian continental philosophy.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 34.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 44.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxxvi
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Evaluation, Aesthetics, and the Unity of Popular Music

    • Alison Stone
    Pages 1-33

  3. Tracking Popular Music History with an Aesthetic Map

    • Alison Stone
    Pages 35-67

  4. Adorno and Popular Music

    • Alison Stone
    Pages 69-108

  5. Matter and Form in Popular Music

    • Alison Stone
    Pages 109-139

  6. Rhythm, Energy, and the Body

    • Alison Stone
    Pages 141-171

  7. Meaning and Affect in Popular Music

    • Alison Stone
    Pages 173-211

  8. Meaning in Sounds and Words

    • Alison Stone
    Pages 213-247

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 249-294
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

In this book, Alison Stone argues that popular music since rock-‘n’-roll is a unified form of music which has positive value. That value is that popular music affirms the importance of materiality and the body, challenging the long-standing Western elevation of the intellect above all things corporeal. Stone also argues that popular music’s stress on materiality gives it aesthetic value, drawing on ideas from the post-Kantian tradition in aesthetics by Hegel, Adorno, and others. She shows that popular music gives importance to materiality in its typical structure: in how music of this type handles the relations between matter and form, the relations between sounds and words, and in how it deals with rhythm, meaning, and emotional expression. Extensive use is made of musical examples from a wide range of popular music genres. This book is distinctive in that it defends popular music on philosophical grounds, particularly informed by the continental tradition in philosophy.

Reviews

“Alison Stone has written an engaging and well-informed book about the artistic value of contemporary popular music. It is a thoughtful and useful addition to the small handful of philosophical monographs about that topic. … Stone’s book is an admirable engagement with the topic of popular music.” (Theodore Gracyk, The British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 59 (4), October, 2019)

“This book outlines a persuasive esthetic of popular music rooted in the post-Kantian tradition, re-tools Adorno in order to allow his critique of popular music to be understood in relation to his wider authorship, and, most importantly, from the point of view of popular music scholarship, grounds that esthetic in an understanding of popular music … .” (Stan Erraught, Popular Music and Society, Vol. 42 (4), 2019)

“This book stands as a powerful, and articulate, rejoinder to any lingering suspicion among philosophers that popular music lacks sophistication, beauty, or expressive power.” (Michael Gallope, Popular Music, Vol. 38 (3) October, 2019)



Authors and Affiliations

  • Lancaster University , Lancaster, United Kingdom

    Alison Stone

About the author

Alison Stone is Professor of European Philosophy at Lancaster University, UK. She is the author of books on Hegel’s philosophy of nature, Luce Irigaray, feminist philosophy, and motherhood, and numerous articles on topics in continental philosophy. She edited the Edinburgh Critical History of Nineteenth Century Philosophy and is co-editing the Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Value of Popular Music

  • Book Subtitle: An Approach from Post-Kantian Aesthetics

  • Authors: Alison Stone

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46544-9

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-83539-6Published: 12 July 2018

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-46544-9Published: 17 December 2016

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXXVI, 294

  • Number of Illustrations: 33 b/w illustrations, 2 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Aesthetics, Music, Critical Theory

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation