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  1. Home
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  3. The Ballad in American Popular Music
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
September 2017
Print publication year:
2017
Online ISBN:
9781316676400
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316676400
Subjects:
Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Music, Music, Music Criticism
Information

Book description

While ballads have been a cornerstone of popular music for decades, this is the first book to explore the history and appeal of these treasured songs. David Metzer investigates how and why the styles of ballads have changed over a period of more than seventy years, offering a definition of the genre and discussing the influences of celebrated performers including Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, and Whitney Houston. The emotional power of the ballad is strongly linked to the popular mood of the time, and consequently songs can tell us much about how events and emotions were felt and understood in wider culture at specific moments of recent American history. Tracing both the emotional and stylistic developments of the genre from the 1950s to the present day, this lively and engaging volume is as much a musical history as it is a history of emotional life in America.

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Contents

Contents
References

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