Category Archives: Music History

Two Grudges in Search of a Category: Resentment Attributed to Howard Jones and Resentment Attributed to His Reviewers, Toward a General Typology

Posted on August 11, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract Two accusations circulate around the mid-1980s reception of Howard Jones, and each is an accusation of resentment. The first is made by reviewers about the music: beneath the synthesizer optimism sits a scolding, aggrieved posture toward audiences, institutions, and … Continue reading →

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The Rhinestone and the Reed: Reputation, Craft, and the Unwritten Session History of Kenneth Gorelick: A White Paper on the Gap Between Kenny G’s Popular Image and His Documented Standing as an R&B Sideman, With a Proposed Program for a Complete Session History

Posted on July 6, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract Few American instrumentalists occupy a stranger position in public memory than Kenneth Bruce Gorelick, known since the early 1980s as Kenny G. To the general listener and to a large part of the critical establishment, the name functions as … Continue reading →

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The Afterlife of a Lingua Franca: Tracing the Survival of Mobilian Jargon in Later Languages and Cultural Artifacts

Posted on June 14, 2026 by nathanalbright

Introduction When a contact language falls silent, it rarely vanishes without remainder. The question of “survival” is more delicate than the binary of living versus dead language suggests, because a pidgin can perish as a functioning medium of communication while … Continue reading →

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Living In Danger: A White Paper on Ace of Base’s 1994 Single and Its Interpretive Field

Posted on June 9, 2026 by nathanalbright

1. The text and its provenance “Living in Danger” was written by Jonas Berggren and Ulf Ekberg and released in October 1994 as the final single from the group’s debut album (issued in North America as The Sign). It peaked … Continue reading →

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Rodeo Culture in Country and Western Music: The Tension Between Cautionary Tale and Cultural Allure

Posted on May 6, 2026 by nathanalbright

Introduction Country music has carried rodeo as one of its central narrative subjects for nearly a century, and the relationship is genuinely complex. On one hand, country songs about rodeo have repeatedly functioned as cautionary tales — warning against the … Continue reading →

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Feeling Everything in Public: Gender, Emotional Vulnerability, and the Asymmetric Costs of Sincerity in Contemporary Pop: A White Paper on the Female Confessional Tradition, Its Male Absence, and the Risks of Arrested Emotional Development

Posted on April 17, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract The contemporary pop landscape is dominated, at the level of both commercial achievement and cultural conversation, by a cohort of female artists whose defining characteristic is the public performance of emotional vulnerability without ironic qualification. Taylor Swift, Adele, Olivia … Continue reading →

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The Architecture of Longing: Yearning, Popular Success, and Critical Dismissal in the Songwriting of Diane Warren: A White Paper on Sincerity, Commerce, and the Cultural Politics of the Ballad

Posted on April 17, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract Diane Warren is, by most measurable standards, the most successful songwriter of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: more than thirty-two number-one hits across multiple genres, thirteen Grammy nominations, fourteen Academy Award nominations across consecutive decades without a … Continue reading →

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Yearning Without Armor: Emotional Sincerity, Vulnerability, and the Power Pop Condition: A White Paper on the Affective Structure of Power Pop and Its Human Costs

Posted on April 17, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract Power pop occupies a peculiar position in the sociology of popular music. It is a genre defined by formal sophistication — tightly constructed melodies, layered harmonies, compressed song architecture, and meticulous production — yet its emotional content operates almost … Continue reading →

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Deep Catalog Exploration: How Streaming Handles (or Fails to Handle) Album-Oriented Listening

Posted on April 13, 2026 by nathanalbright

White Paper 5 of the Beyond the Playlist Series Abstract The album is the primary artistic unit of recorded music for most of the twentieth century’s serious musical output. It is the form in which composers, bandleaders, and recording artists … Continue reading →

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The Radio Analogy: What Broadcast Radio Got Right (and Wrong) About Discovery

Posted on April 13, 2026 by nathanalbright

White Paper 4 of the Beyond the Playlist Series Abstract Broadcast radio preceded streaming by decades and was, for most of the twentieth century, the primary infrastructure through which ordinary listeners encountered music they had not chosen and had not … Continue reading →

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