Popular Music and the Myths of Madness
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1960s counterculture
A01=Nicola Spelman
Anti-psychiatric Ideas
anti-psychiatry
Author_Nicola Spelman
Bates's Character
Bates’s Character
Bowie's Character
Bowie’s Character
Category=AVLP
Chord Vi
Contemporary Society
Country Music
cultural studies
Dark Side
death
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
family
Fool Identity
gesture
Histoire De La Folie
Involuntary Confinement
La La La
Leonard Frank
lou
mental health stigma
Mental Illness
musical
musicology
non-harmony
Non-harmony Tones
Pitch Fork
Pop Star
Protagonist's Parents
Protagonist’s Parents
Psychiatric Confinement
reed
representations of madness in music
social deviance
Social Judgement Theory
Sociopathic Personality Disturbance
Spoken Vocal
Surgical Lobotomy
szasz
thomas
tones
Tonic Major Chord
Vice Versa
Young Men
Product details
- ISBN 9781138256859
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 19 Oct 2016
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Studies of opera, film, television, and literature have demonstrated how constructions of madness may be referenced in order to stigmatise but also liberate protagonists in ways that reinforce or challenge contemporaneous notions of normality. But to date very little research has been conducted on how madness is represented in popular music. In an effort to redress this imbalance, Nicola Spelman identifies links between the anti-psychiatry movement and representations of madness in popular music of the 1960s and 1970s, analysing the various ways in which ideas critical of institutional psychiatry are embodied both verbally and musically in specific songs by David Bowie, Lou Reed, Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, The Beatles, and Elton John. She concentrates on meanings that may be made at the point of reception as a consequence of ideas about madness that were circulating at the time. These ideas are then linked to contemporary conventions of musical expression in order to illustrate certain interpretative possibilities. Supporting evidence comes from popular musicological analysis - incorporating discourse analysis and social semiotics - and investigation of socio-historical context. The uniqueness of the period in question is demonstrated by means of a more generalised overview of songs drawn from a variety of styles and eras that engage with the topic of madness in diverse and often conflicting ways. The conclusions drawn reveal the extent to which anti-psychiatric ideas filtered through into popular culture, offering insights into popular music's ability to question general suppositions about madness alongside its potential to bring issues of men's madness into the public arena as an often neglected topic for discussion.
Nicola Spelman is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Salford where she teaches popular music composition and musicology. Her research interests surround issues of representation within popular music and she is currently working on her second book, this time exploring women musicians and their challenge to the 'myths of madness'.
