Canadian progressive rock band Rush was the voice of the suburban middle class. In this book, Chris McDonald assesses the band's impact on popular music and its legacy for legions of fans. McDonald explores the ways in which Rush's critique of suburban life—and its strategies for escape—reflected middle-class aspirations and anxieties, while its performances manifested the dialectic in prog rock between discipline and austerity, and the desire for spectacle and excess. The band's reception reflected the internal struggles of the middle class over cultural status. Critics cavalierly dismissed, or apologetically praised, Rush's music for its middlebrow leanings. McDonald's wide-ranging musical and cultural analysis sheds light on one of the most successful and enduring rock bands of the 1970s and 1980s.

Canadian progressive rock band Rush was the voice of the suburban middle class. In this book, Chris McDonald assesses the band's impact on popular music and its legacy for legions of fans. McDonald explores the ways in which Rush's critique of suburban life -- and its strategies for escape -- reflected middle-class aspirations and anxieties, while its performances manifested the dialectic in prog rock between discipline and austerity, and the desire for spectacle and excess. The band's reception reflected the internal struggles of the middle class over cultural status. Critics cavalierly dismissed, or apologetically praised, Rush's music for its middlebrow leanings. McDonald's wide-ranging musical and cultural analysis sheds light on one of the most successful and enduring rock bands of the 1970s and 1980s.

Rush is often referred to as a libertarian rock band, but really what the band is channeling is an Aristotelian individualism, a philosophy that strongly resonates with today's 40-somethings. This helps explain the band's resurgence in popularity, culminating in its 2013 induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Now in its fifth edition, this popular A–Z student reference book provides a comprehensive survey of key ideas and concepts in popular music culture, examining the social and cultural aspects of popular music. Fully revised with extended coverage of the music industries, sociological concepts and additional references to reading, listening and viewing throughout, the new edition expands on the foundations of popular music culture, tracing the impact of digital technology and changes in the way in which music is created, manufactured, marketed and consumed. The concept of metagenres remains a central part of the book: these are historically, socially, and geographically situated umbrella musical categories, each embracing a wide range of associated genres and subgenres. New or expanded entries include: Charts, Digital music culture, Country music, Education, Ethnicity, Race, Gender, Grime, Heritage, History, Indie, Synth pop, Policy, Punk rock and Streaming. Popular Music Culture: The Key Concepts is an essential reference tool for students studying the social and cultural dimensions of popular music.

Now in an updated fourth edition, this popular A-Z student handbook provides a comprehensive survey of key ideas and concepts in popular music culture. With new and expanded entries on genres and subgenres, the text comprehensively examines the social and cultural aspects of popular music, taking into account the digital music revolution and changes in the way that music is manufactured, marketed and delivered. New and updated entries include: Age and youth Black music Digital music culture K-Pop Mash-ups Philadelphia Soul Pub music Religion and spirituality Remix Southern Soul Streaming Vinyl With further reading and listening included throughout, Popular Music: The Key Concepts is an essential reference text for all students studying the social and cultural dimensions of popular music.

Rock and Romanticism: Blake, Wordsworth, and Rock from Dylan to U2 is an edited anthology that seeks to explain just how rock and roll is a Romantic phenomenon that sheds light, retrospectively, on what literary Romanticism was at its different points of origin and on what it has become in the present. This anthology allows Byron and Wollstonecraft to speak back to contemporary theories of Romanticism through Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. Relying on Löwy and Sayre’s Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity, it explores how hostility, loss, and longing for unity are particularly appropriate terms for classic rock as well as the origins of these emotions. In essays ranging from Bob Dylan to Blackberry Smoke, this work examines how rock and roll expands, interprets, restates, interrogates, and conflicts with literary Romanticism, all the while understanding that as a term “rock and roll” in reference to popular music from the late 1940s through the early 2000s is every bit as contradictory and difficult to define as the word Romanticism itself.

Now in an updated 3rd edition this popular A-Z student handbook provides a comprehensive survey of key ideas and concepts in popular music culture. With new and expanded entries on genres and sub-genres the text comprehensively examines the social and cultural aspects of popular music, taking into account the digital music revolution and changes in the way that music is manufactured, marketed and delivered. New and updated entries include: social networking peer to peer American Idol video gaming genres and subgenres of blues, jazz, country, and world music music retail formats goth rock and emo electronic dance music. With further reading and listening included throughout, Popular Music Culture: The Key Concepts is an essential reference text for all students studying the social and cultural dimensions of popular music.