Lori Burns’s research while affiliated with University of Ottawa and other places

This article examines the critical pedagogy of Lupe Fiasco’s music video ‘Bitch Bad’ (2012). Situating Fiasco’s work as an instance of hip hop teaching, we propose an analytic model to facilitate the interpretation of genre conventions evident in the multimodal music video text. We place genre theory into dialogue with critical discourse analysis in order to bring forward the ideologies, social values and cultural norms invoked in Fiasco’s portrayal of hip hop video actors and spectators. The analysis reveals Lupe Fiasco’s and videographer Gil Green’s critique of racist and misogynist stereotypes perpetuated in the music industry. Fiasco and Green present the hip hop performer as a labourer who is asked to portray specific conventions of gender, race and class. They explore the impact of the genre conventions upon children who grow up in the context of these cultural norms; they situate Fiasco as a cultural critic and teacher; and they demonstrate the potential of the music video to function as a pedagogical text.

An earlier study published in Popular Music and Society examined the gender-related trends on the Billboard Hot 100 music charts between 1997 and 2007 (Lafrance, Worcester, and Burns). Taking frequency distributions as indicators of gender equality, the authors found that male hits on both the sales and the airplay charts outnumbered female hits by a wide margin. More specifically, their findings demonstrated that male artists had more extreme highs and less extreme lows than female artists; men’s worst showings of the decade were often just a few hits away from women’s best showings, and most gender-related trends were not consistent across the sales and airplay charts. Using the same data sets, this paper extends the earlier study by combining the variable of race with the variable of gender. In doing so, it describes the race-related trends on the charts in question while considering them within the context of the gender-related trends reported by Lafrance, Worcester, and Burns. Our key findings indicate that black artists chart more often than white artists; black male artists have more chart success than both black and white female artists; most race-related trends are consistent across the sales and airplay charts, and musical genre must be taken into account in order to understand fully the relationship between race and chart success. In addition to providing a critical assessment of our findings, the paper presents a reflection on two unexpected methodological issues encountered over the course of our research: first, the conceptual complexities of coding for race, and, second, the problems associated with taking frequency distributions as indicators of equality.

This paper presents an interpretive approach to music video analysis that engages with critical scholarship in the areas of popular music studies, gender studies and cultural studies. Two key examples-Pink's pop video "Try" and Rihanna's electropop video "We Found Love"-allow us to examine representations of complex human relationality and the paradoxical challenges of heterosexuality in late modernity. We explore Zygmunt Bauman's notion of "liquid love" in connection with the selected videos. A model for the analysis of lyrics, music, and images according to cross-domain parameters (thematic, spatial & temporal, relational, and gestural) facilitates the interpretation of the expressive content we consider. Our model has the potential to be applied to musical texts from the full range of musical genres and to shed light on a variety of social and cultural contexts at both the micro and macro levels.

In the context of the new millennial industry of popular music, rock bands and major pop stars rely heavily upon current technologies and social media platforms to develop elaborate promotional strategies, thus expanding the idea of the concept album to the concert tour, music videos, books, and a range of supplementary materials. Adopting the perspective that the meaning of a concept album emerges in and through a potentially complex network of materials, we can receive and understand concept album storytelling to operate according to multimedial, intermedial and transmedial contexts. This study examines the transmedial storyworld of Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto concept spectacle as it is developed in and through the material content of the original album, the Coldplay: Live 2012 concert film, as well as the paraphonographic materials that extend Mylo Xyloto into a variety of media.

Numerous scholars have identified hip-hop as rooted in the practice of storytelling. Nelson George describes rap ‘as a showcase for the art of verbal dexterity and storytelling’, while Tricia Rose has discussed its ‘ability to use the powerful tradition of black oration and storytelling to render stylistically compelling music’. We hope to contribute to an understanding of the hip-hop singer-songwriter by revealing Kanye West’s lyrical and musical strategies as aligned with the characteristics of the singer-songwriter genre: hence, we consider how he communicates about life experiences and delivers social commentaries; we trace numerous social themes and concerns at the core of his lyrical expression throughout his work; we examine how he creates an intimate space through his musical expression and recording practices; and we discuss how he uses technology as his instrument in order to develop innovative vocal and sonic expressive strategies. Throughout his career, West has consistently engaged with the themes of fame and celebrity, the music industry, consumerism, class and race. Some tracks develop these themes in a ‘braggadocio’ style (e.g., ‘Good Life’), while others reveal his struggle with the negative consequences of fame (e.g., ‘Everything I Am’). Our aim is to examine how West communicates his social messages with a sense of immediacy by means of innovative musical strategies and technologies. We also aim to illustrate how West extends and deepens his cultural critique of fame, consumer culture, race and class through these same strategies and technologies. More specifically, our analysis focuses on his much-acclaimed work in the domain of sampling and production where we see him connecting closely and intimately with the process. West’s work has been widely received as innovative in terms of how it expands the conventions of hip-hop production. In what follows, we concentrate on his selection of samples as well as their manipulation in the context of his song structure, design, and expression. After gaining success as a producer (notably on Jay-Z’s 2001 album The Blueprint), West became a rapper in 2002. Damon Dash, the CEO of Roc-A-Fella, found it hard to imagine marketing West as a rapper. In addition to his style of dress, his middle-class upbringing set him apart from many MCs. As Jay-Z states, ‘We all grew up street guys who had to do whatever we had to do to get by.

Lady Gaga's work is noted for her references to the work of other artists and is often criticized for borrowed content that is perceived as exceeding mere generic norms. In this study, we engage closely with the musical and lyrical content of two songs from her extended play release, The Fame Monster (2009), with the goal of identifying and interpreting the intertextual pathways that led to these works. Relying upon theories of intertextuality, we unearth a network of texts invoked in each of her songs and consider these connections to comprise a musical genealogy, invoking Foucault's conception of genealogy as the process of revealing historical knowledge.

P!nk's Funhouse Tour concert film (2009) is produced to capture and enhance the effects of the musical performance, the stage composition and design, and the choreography of the artist with her musicians and dancers. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the concert spectacle, this article examines the multidimensional content of the concert film as it is constituted by a range of expressive and aesthetic parameters. The analytic model developed for this study systematically elucidates the elements of a live song performance to enable a coherent interpretation of lyrics, music, staging, and film mediation according to crosscutting analytic concepts. The analytic parameters draw upon theories from theatre performance studies (Pavis, Stanislavsky, De Marinis), literary criticism and linguistics (Bakhtin, Austin), and film theory (Bordwell and Thompson, Sikov, Vernallis). Analyzing expressive content, structure, and design, we consider how these textual layers intersect to communicate cultural messages and emotional narratives.