UK Popular Musicologists' Colloquium

Hallelujah

Joe — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:54:24 +0000

Our discussion of authenticity (during meeting 5) in songs and the difference between song-as-composition and song-as-performance ended up at this interesting example. We listened to three versions of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, performed by Cohen himself, Jeff Buckley and the X Factor contestant Alexandra Burke. When we’d got past the inevitable cultural subjectivity (all right, derision!) that many of the group exhibited toward the Burke version, we found ourselves at a very interesting point – that for many, the ‘authentic’ version was the Buckley one, despite the fact that Buckley was recording on a major label, with an MTV-friendly video directed by a professional video director, performing a song written by someone else. Does this show the subjective nature of authenticity? Or the power of martyrdom?

YouTube playlist of all three versions of Hallelujah.

Link to meeting 5 session notes – ‘The X Factor as Shared Heritage‘.

Below is an embedded playlist featuring a selection of the X Factor performances we discussed.

Prince-When Doves Cry

Joe — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:24:47 +0000

Prince – When Doves Cry – original video. For background information and academic links, go to the Reading pages.

Here’s an interesting 1996 Timbaland-produced cover version by Ginuwine that uses a different underlying groove, taking a different approach from what Don Traut (2005) describes as “3-5″ accent hook (note the lack of syncopation in the drum loop compared to Prince’s original).

DON TRAUT (2005). ‘Simply Irresistible’: recurring accent patterns as hooks in mainstream 1980s music. Popular Music, 24 , pp 57-77
doi:DOI:10.1017/S0261143004000303

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3877594

Next meeting – June 10th

Joe — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 12:44:35 +0000

[Allan wrote]

Katharine Ellis has very kindly made available a room courtesy of the IMR, and we shall be meeting at 2.30pm on Wednesday, June 10^th, in Room ST274/5 (Stewart House/32 Russell Square). Past meetings have focused on matters of theory – what I’d like to do with this meeting is to focus on a specific track, namely Prince’s ‘When Doves Cry’, and ask participants to come along willing to talk about the methodology/ies they would apply to consideration of that track, and with what particular end in view. (I know there’s more than one issue of the recording available – choose whichever you will.)

If you are intending to come, I’d appreciate a quick email, just so that we get a sense of how many to expect. And, as ever, feel free to pass this on to colleagues who may like to attend.

View Larger Map

Introductions

Joe — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:04:25 +0000

“Come together, right now…”

Please add comments to this post introducing yourself. How about;

Who you are
Where you’re based and what you do
Your musicological and research interests
How you’re hoping this blog site will change your life

UKPMC welcome!

Joe — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 16:39:20 +0000

Hi all,

Here’s our first blog page – a little later than promised, but it’s here. We’re using the edublogs/Wordpress engine, which supports most of the standard blogging tools, and (most importantly) allows us to post of audio for discussion.

Over to you!

Joe (the mod).