Easy listening? An analysis of infidelity in top pop, hip-hop, and country song lyrics over 25 years

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 795-807 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra Alexopoulos ◽  
Laramie D. Taylor

Although it has been established that sexual content is common in popular music, the extent to which this content references cheating behaviors is unclear. Given the prevalence of infidelity among Americans, it is important to examine how infidelity is portrayed in media targeted to young adult listeners. To explore these portrayals, we conducted a content analysis of the 1,500 most popular pop, hip-hop, and country songs in the United States over a 25-year period examining the frequency and nature of infidelity in music. Findings revealed that infidelity was discussed in approximately 15% of popular music, and was most frequently discussed in hip-hop songs. Both negative and positive consequences to infidelity were depicted, and were most often accompanied by a nonchalant emotional tone. Gender portrayals of song characters were consistent with previous research. Implications for young listeners in the context of social relationships are discussed.

2013 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Mantie

The purpose of this study was to interrogate discourses of “popular music pedagogy” in order to better understand music education practices generally and specifically those in the United States. Employing a conceptual framework based on the work of Jan Blommaert (2005), a content analysis was conducted on a sample of 81 articles related to popular music and music education according to the variables of journal and nationality. Results suggest that international differences in discourse existed. American-based authors focused on issues of legitimacy and quality (repertoire and teaching), whereas non-American-based authors focused on matters of utility and efficacy, with an emphasis on the quality of learning and pedagogical relationship. The lack of awareness (national and international) of discourse features and functions may be limiting the effectiveness of both communication and practice.


Author(s):  
Crag Hill ◽  
Janine J. Darragh

<p>This article describes the findings of a qualitative critical multicultural content analysis of 71 young adult (YA) novels depicting poverty and published between 1996 when the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was signed into law by President Bill Clinton and 2013. The study answers three research questions: In what ways does YA literature published after the PRWORA portray poverty? How do those representations compare to current statistics regarding poverty in the United States? What do these depictions mean for teachers of English? The authors urge that instructors who use novels that depict poverty in preservice and/or graduate courses in young adult literature help build awareness of the complexity of poverty. </p>


Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Tony Carrizales

Public Service, in popular culture, can be viewed through many artistic lenses. Although there has been a consistent negative portrayal of government through art forms such as film and television, this research looks to review how government institutions in the United States have used art to provide a positive portrayal of public service. Eight forms of public service art are outlined through a content analysis of the holdings at the Virtual Museum of Public Service. The findings show that government and public entities have historically and continually engaged in promoting public service through art. Many of these public art examples are accessible year round, without limitations, such as buildings, statues, and public structures.


Author(s):  
Robert H. Woody ◽  
Mark C. Adams

This chapter discusses the innate differences between vernacular music-making cultures and those oriented in Western classical traditions, and suggests students in traditional school music education programs in the United States are not typically afforded opportunities to learn skills used in vernacular and popular music-making cultures. The chapter emphasizes a need to diversify music-making experiences in schools and describes how vernacular musicianship may benefit students’ musical development. It suggests that, in order for substantive change to occur in music education in the United States, teachers will need to advance beyond simply considering how to integrate popular music into their traditional large ensembles—and how preservice music teacher education programs may be the key to help better prepare teachers to be more versatile and philosophically open to teaching a more musically diverse experience in their future classrooms.


2021 ◽  
pp. 204361062110007
Author(s):  
Mariana Lima Becker ◽  
Gabrielle Oliveira ◽  
Virginia Alex

Drawing from a 3-year ethnographic project in one elementary school in the United States, this article examines how a group of 43 first graders perceived and constructed Brazil and the U.S. during a drawing and writing activity in their bilingual (Portuguese-English) classroom. The majority of the participating children (81.4%) either migrated from Brazil to the U.S. or were born in the U.S. of Brazilian parents. Data analysis reveals that Brazil was frequently portrayed as an idyllic landscape that included several relatives and friends and a range of activities with loved ones, while the U.S. involved immediate family members, material goods, and places for leisure. Grounded in a relational understanding of place and placemaking, we argue that the children engaged in a range of place-based moves to construct Brazil and the United States during the activity. These acts of placemaking included evocations of transnational memories, ongoing activities and aspirations, social relationships, and local institutional expectations, particularly the school curriculum and teachers’ discourse about Brazil. The findings suggest that immigrant children’s construction of place is multifaceted, dynamic, and situated.


Aschkenas ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joachim Schlör

AbstractThe idea to create and stage a play called »Heimat im Koffer« – »A home in the suitcase« – emerged, I presume, in Vienna shortly before Austria became part of National Socialist Germany in 1938: the plot involved the magical translocation of a typical Viennese coffeehouse, with all its inhabitants and with the songs they sang, to New York; their confrontation with American everyday life and musical traditions would create the humorous situations the authors hoped for. Since 1933, Robert Gilbert (Robert David Winterfeld, 1899–1978), the son of a famous Jewish musician and himself a most successful writer of popular music for film and operetta in Weimar Germany, found himself in exile in Vienna where he cooperated with the journalist Rudolf Weys (1898–1978) and the piano artist Hermann Leopoldi (1888–1959). Whereas Gilbert and Leopoldi emigrated to the United States and became a part of the German-Jewish and Austrian-Jewish emigré community of New York – summarizing their experience in a song about the difficulty to acquire the new language, »Da wär’s halt gut, wenn man Englisch könnt« (1943) – Weys survived the war years in Vienna. After 1945, Gilbert and Weys renewed their contact and discussed – in letters kept today within the collection of the Viennese Rathausbibliothek – the possibility to finally put »Heimat im Koffer« on stage. The experiences of exile, it turned out, proved to be too strong, and maybe too serious, for the harmless play to be realized, but the letters do give a fascinating insight into everyday-life during emigration, including the need to learn English properly, and into the impossibility to reconnect to the former life and art.


2018 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 71-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Vaughn ◽  
Christopher P. Salas-Wright ◽  
David Cordova ◽  
Erik J. Nelson ◽  
Lisa Jaegers

2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Beasley

I tend to associate the word “crossover” with popular music. I think of crossovers as being those artists whose music has successfully crossed over from a smaller market to a bigger one, like Mexican musicians making it big in the United States, or black musicians making it big with white audiences. And I frankly love the idea that I, as a librarian, might be able to make a curatorial crossover into a bigger market, much as Ricky Martin or Otis Redding made a musical crossover. Of course, I would have to address the two most common criticisms that are made . . .


1988 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary C. Gilly

In the past, research has found that the portrayal of sex roles in advertising has not reflected equality or reality. Further, studies typically have examined only U.S. advertising, leaving open the question of cultural influence on advertising's sex role portrayals. The author offers a new analysis of sex roles in advertising and compares content analysis findings for U.S., Australian, and Mexican television advertisements. Results reveal differences in the portrayal of the sexes in U.S. advertisements. Australian advertisements show somewhat fewer sex role differences and Mexican advertisements show slightly more sex role differences than U.S. advertisements. Stereotypes are found in the advertising of all three countries, but are manifested in different ways.


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