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“Biography of a Song” Worksheet

Due date: by end of April

In this unit we are taking a close, contextualized look at some important songs. The central question we will be asking here has to do with how much history can we learn by organizing an interdisciplinary study of one popular song—especially one which garnered a fair bit of attention in the moment of its original release and for years afterwards. For this assignment you will select a song for which you will do an in-depth historically-informed reading. The first step of this project is to find an appropriate popular song to study: to help you with this we will spend some time in class brainstorming a list of possible songs to study which seem like they can bear the weight of this type of scrutiny. It should either be an American song, or a song which created a considerable amount of discussion in the United States. Next you will research the song as much you can, using print and internet sources and oral history (i.e. talk to people you know) if relevant and accessible. Then answer these questions. You do not have to provide citations, but your answers should make it clear that you have done sufficient research. One thing I want to be clear about is that this is not a project that you can do simply by finding a song that has a Wikipedia entry. You need to find reviews, interviews, blogs, memoirs, whatever you can, to find data on how the song “traveled” in the culture. Most of your answers should be at least a solid paragraph or so.

Name of the song:

Date of original release :

Other important dates in its “life”:

Original artist (or artists):

1. Give a brief overview of why you think this song is worth the kind of close scrutiny you are giving it. What kind of controversy (or at least interesting cultural conversation) grew around it? Why did your song become an object of attention—positive or negative—when it first circulated?

2. Who are the major “stakeholders” in the story of this song becoming an important historical text? Who got involved in discussions surrounding this song? Explain why these various constituencies seemed to care so much about this song.

3. What are the major political or cultural paths along which the song created discussion? Were the attendant conversations mostly about sexuality? Or racial identity? Gender role or class status? Work or leisure? Morals or proper behavior? Language use? Explain how the context surrounding your song’s cultural life was defined by some of these categories and how it came to have so much social presence.

4. Think about the claims we encountered for how “Dancing in the Street” and “Despacito” came to have cultural meanings beyond the most obvious reading of the song. What happened in the world around your song to cause it to take on more cultural weight than it might have had otherwise?

5. How has your song continued to “live”? Are there important cover versions we should know about? Has it appeared in advertisements or video games or film soundtracks (or elsewhere)?

6. If you had to boil down the legacy of your song to one sentence, what would it be?

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