Popular Music

    Read Brad Osborn’s “Subverting the Verse–Chorus Paradigm: Terminally Climactic Forms in Recent Rock Music.” Read Mark Spicer’s “Fragile, Emergent, and Absent Tonics in Pop and Rock Songs” (http://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.17.23.2/mto.17.23.2.spicer.html). The readings this week deal with the aspects of form and harmony in popular music. Note that I am also posting another article by John Covach (“Form in Rock Music: A Primer”) that gives a concise overview of formal designs relevant to rock and popular music if you need to review. You should be able to discuss the concepts of the articles in class with fluency and clarity. Topics for discussion include formal designs and harmonic progressions used in popular music, the subversion of these formal designs and harmonic progressions, the specific examples discussed by the authors, or similar examples that exemplify some of the discussed concepts.