Vocal performance and the projection of emotional authenticity



Consuming Musical Bodies: Star Image and Song Personality in Vocal Performance.

Nicola Dibben

Keynote paper presented at The Musical Body: Gesture, Representation and Ergonomics in Performance, 22-24 April 2009, Senate House, in association with the Grove Forum, Royal College of Music.

Based on “Vocal Performance and the Projection of Emotional Authenticity” In Derek Scott (ed) Popular Musicology Companion (2009).

[NB: This is a working paper. A published version of some of the material presented here will appear in The Ashgate Companion to Popular Music, ed. Derek Scott.]

Performing Identities

One of the most important elements of pop music culture is the star, and one of the predominant ways in which vocal performances of contemporary popular music are understood is in terms of the communication of authentic emotion through that star. Belief in a singer’s authenticity reflects one of the most prevalent ideologies of music creation and reception and of the person in contemporary society – the idea that people have an inner, private core. We see it here in the reception of two contemporary singer-songwriters [SLIDE – shows reception ideology of song]. Public interest in the private lives of stars reveals a desire to go beyond the image of the star, and to the reality of a star’s private self: the mediated personas of stars are so ubiquitous, their images circulating in the public domain, and their private lives the subject of gossipy journalism, it can feel as though we know them intimately.[i]

But what or who is a singer communicating? Simon Frith summarizes the play of identities in pop performance as follows:

[SLIDE – Frith quote]

The star-image referred to by Frith is the amalgam of all the information and products pertaining to that star, including their music and other artistic products released in their name, and publicity material, interviews, public appearances, and media coverage.[ii] The star-image is central to the effective workings of the publicity machine within the music industry since it provides a single author image around which products and publicity can cohere. However, this also means there is a potential for dissociation between the star-image, which is never completely owned or managed by the star or their management, and the ‘real’ person.

One task for popular music research is to determine how performance communicates these various identities, and to what extent the way pop sounds is congruent with, and perhaps shaped by, its social and economic context. Previous research has focused of the musical constituents of authenticity, its economic ramifications, and lyrical and analytical analyses of the subjectivities afforded by pop[iii]. Rather than reiterate these theories, this chapter investigates the role of two relatively neglected attributes of pop: first, the virtual sound world of the recording (and amplified sound) and its role in creating what can be heard as psychologically revealing, intimate musical expression, and, second, the role of body movement in communicating performing identities. The reason for focusing on these two modes of expression is that they are important factors in the expression of authentic emotion: technological changes in music production and reception personalized the relationship between artist and public, and prioritized the personal and individual.[iv] This, together with the direct address of the audience, constructs pop performances as personal expressions for private consumption, even when a collective experience, as in live performance.

Performing Intimacy: Virtual Space in Recordings

The history of recording contains within it a chronicle of virtual space, some varieties of which may only ever have existed on the recording and could never be realized through other means. Researchers are beginning to explore the history of these practices and the sound worlds they create,[v] but for the purposes of this chapter there are three main points to be made. First, electrical amplification and recording allows forms of vocal expression which are intimate. Introduction of the microphone in the 1930s enabled amplification of the voice above other sound sources and gave rise to vocal styles which were softer, and more intimate than had previously been possible with the same size ensembles and venues. Second, this change in production coincided with changes in consumption: it was now possible to listen to music in the comfort and intimacy of one’s own home.[vi] Third, the normative arrangement of vocals within the mix placed the voice centrally, and louder than other sounds, creating what Tagg calls the ‘monocentric mix’.

[SLIDE – Tagg quote]

The effect of the voice at the front of the mix is a prioritization of attention on the artist and his/her identity, and that of the character performed by the artist.[vii] Running parallel with this mode of reception is a compositional ideology in which singers understand themselves to be expressing things about or from their own experience. These factors mean that the idea of emotional authenticity held by artists, engineers and audiences alike is manifested in the sound of recordings. In contemporary popular music recording techniques, such as reverb, delays, filters, and overdubbing, help ‘stage’ voices, which are, as Serge Lacasse terms it, the ‘aural index’ of the singer’s persona and represented emotions.[viii] However, whereas Lacasse reveals the narrative meanings staging gives rise to, it is possible to use this approach to investigate the creation of intimacy between singer and audience.

The production of an intimate sound in a recording has a psychoacoustical basis in the amount of reflected sound, and the relative loudness of sounds within the mix. First, in the real-world (as opposed to the virtual world of recordings) the amount of reverb (reflected sound in which there is no discontinuous repeat of the original sound) differs according to the proximity of a sound source to reflective surfaces: the closer a sound source to reflective surfaces, the more continuous the reverb will sound; the further away a sound source from the reflective surface, the greater delay there will be between original and reflection, and the reflected sound will be heard as an echo rather than reverberation. The amount of sound coming direct from the sound source relative to reflected sound also differs according to the position of the listener in relation to the source of the sound: when the listener is close to the sound source he or she will hear a larger proportion of direct sound than reflected sound. Thus, sounds recorded close to a microphone contain more of the recorded signal direct from the source and less reflected sound (reverb), suggesting the listener is in close proximity to the sound source. Second, in the real-world the relative amplitude of sounds specifies their proximity to the listener: hence, sounds which are louder in the mix in a recording tend to be heard as being nearer the listener than sounds which are quieter. Thus, manipulation of these elements in the recording and production process can specify varieties of physical space (size and type), the position of the sound source within that space, and the proximity of the sound source to the listener. These factors have been encapsulated by Allan Moore in the notion of the “soundbox”, who together with Ruth Dockwray is mapping the history of instrument placement in rock recordings. [SLIDE – soundbox]. These in turn influence the affective character of a recording, because they specify a location and physical relationship between listener and sound source.

The production norm for amplification and recording of pop singers has two important effects: it creates intimacy between listener and singer, and communicates the ‘inner’ thoughts of the song character and/or performer.[ix] This convention is so normative that it is only when it is deliberately highlighted or disrupted during performance that we become aware it is there at all. For example, in Björk’s track ‘There’s more to life than this’ (1993) there is a sudden change of virtual space from the normative acoustic space of a dance track to the inside of toilets in a club: this sudden relocation, announced by the banging of a door, change in the prominence of the sounds of the ‘dance track’ in relation to Björk’s voice, and the heightened intimacy of Björk’s whisper, brings the disorienting realization that what had been experienced as a performance by Björk was in fact a performance within which she too was the audience, and the ‘real’ song (the expression of her thoughts and experiences for the listener) begins only with the move into the more intimate space of the toilets. [SLIDE – Björk sound example] The aural intimacy which is normative to pop production and performance is significant because it contributes to and is produced by the star system, within which the private life of a celebrity is an important part of their public persona, communicated by press coverage and prominent entertainment values in newspaper journalism.[x]

Performing Bodies: Body Movement and Gesture in Pop Performance

The example of the sudden perceived spatial and relational relocation in Björk’s track ‘There’s more to life than this’ highlights the second part of this consideration of pop performance: if pop is understood to be communicating authentic emotion in an intimate relationship with the listener, then whose emotions are these, and to what extent is intimacy maintained in live performance, where ‘private’ emotions are performed to a mass audience?

Approaches to popular performance have studied the development of popular performing style in rock, viewing it as the result of confluence between black performance style and the need to express the individuality of the performer.[xi] Analyses have also focused on the performance of gender and sexual identities, and the role of performance as ‘seduction’.[xii] Here my focus is on the performance of star persona, song personality, and the notion that there might be a ‘real’ person ‘behind’ the star image. One empirical approach to this topic is to study body movement in musical performance. Social psychological theory has posited the existence of a repertoire of body gestures, and facial expressions, which are an important source of non-verbal communication, and form part of the production and structuring of expression. Musical performers make movements superfluous to those required for the execution of musical sound, just as speakers make movement ‘unnecessary’ to speech production. Gesture in performance also shares similarities with the kinds of movements that accompany speech, particularly for singers who are also engaged in vocal performance and who may have no instrument to ‘get in the way’ of gestures.[xiii]

Jane Davidson’s analyses of performances by British pop stars Robbie Williams, Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics, and the Irish band the Corrs, analyse the performers’ and audiences’ gestures in terms of movement types, to show how particular gestures communicate ideas about the shaping of musical structure and expression, allow coordination between performers on stage, and create varieties of interaction with the audience.[xiv] She also uses her analyses to provide evidence of the distinction drawn by Simon Frith and others between the performer as narrator and performer as star: she uses her analysis of body movements to show how musical performance can communicate both a star persona with its associated showmanship and entertainment value (through what she terms ‘display’ movements), and reveal states which appear to be more intimate, personal and communicative of the ‘ordinary’ person (through the category of ‘adaptor’ movements – small movements of which one is often unaware, such as tossing the hair or scratching the face). For example, she argues that Williams’ own statements in interviews about his experience of flicking between a ‘stage persona’ and ‘intimate, shy self’ is manifested in performance in the kinds of body movements he makes.[xv]

Davidson’s argument that body movements can reveal something of the ‘inner’ emotional state of a performer depends on an interpretation of ‘adaptor’ movements as ‘emotional leakage’.[xvi] There is general agreement that adaptors satisfy physical or emotional needs, and, because the person making such movements is often unaware of them, they have been interpreted as revealing otherwise hidden emotional states and attitudes. An alternative interpretation is that self-adaptors are a form of attentional self-regulation which emerge when a speaker undergoes interference with attention or disorganized thought; in other words, self-adaptors allow speakers to maintain their performance when potentially distracted.[xvii] In either case viewers use the information from adaptors gestures to make judgements about the emotional and physical state of the speaker, and therefore offer a means to investigate non-verbal communication of performer identity.

In order to examine how star image and song character are kept in play during a performance, and the extent to which these express authentic emotion, I present two analyses. The classificatory scheme adopted here is derived from Rimé and Schiaratura[xviii] since this is equally adapted to textless music as well as music with lyrics, and allows classification of movement types at a greater level of detail than the competing model from Ekman and Friesen used by Jane Davidson[xix]. [SLIDE – classificatory scheme] I adopt three additional categories to provide a more complete analysis of the performance situation: Martin Clayton’s categories of ‘physical movements necessary to sound production’ and ‘manipulation of the body and immediate physical environment’ (which encompasses ‘adaptors’)[xx], and Jane Davidson’s notion of ‘display’ gestures. The method involves repeated viewing of the performances, transcription of musical and visual features, and thematic categorization of movements based on the classification system. The analyses explore the extent to which this theory of body movement and gesture can shed light on the performance of song and star identities.

Jarvis Cocker: Performing the Star Persona

The song ‘Common People’ by English band Pulp uses a standard rock structure and arrangement: it is tonal, in 4/4 time and has a verse-chorus structure with an instrumental section and coda. The song’s lyrics tell a first-person narrative reporting the meeting between the character sung by Jarvis and a fellow college student from a rich background who attempts to experience the life of the ‘common people’ with whom the singer and audience are identified.[xxi] The tone is scathing, mocking but also self-righteous as the rich-girl’s attempts to be ‘common’ are sent up, and the ‘common people’ are celebrated. The song was an anthem of the Britpop music scene in England in the 1990s.

Comparison of body movement in a pop promo video and a live performance of the same song allows investigation of the performed identities, and the extent to which these differ in different contexts of production and consumption. Two performances of ‘Common People’ are analysed here: the music video (dir. Pedro Romhanyi, 1995) intended for domestic consumption, and a recording of a live performance (Brixton Academy, London, 1996), which I treat here as a window onto the live performance rather than studying the video recording as a text. The pop promo is made for television viewing, and therefore includes close-ups on the facial expressions of performers, whereas the film of the live performance is constrained by the limitations of what can be captured in live performance and cut to film. The video, made to promote the single and album, is shorter in duration at 4:09 compared to 9:19 of the live performance, which includes two extra verses and an extended coda.

[SLIDE – play ‘common people’]

The music video keeps in play two identities: the first-person narrator song character, and Jarvis Cocker’s star persona. One of the primary means by which the video does this is through a literal presentation of the two performers; we see two Jarvis Cocker’s – the star, who is featured performing with the band on stage as if at a glitzy, retro, 1980s club, and a second Jarvis who acts as narrator [SLIDE – two Jarvises]. A second means by which these two identities are kept in play is through the use of stylized and slick body movements. The majority of body movements and gestures used by Cocker are gestures referring to the object of the lyrics (either by depicting or evoking the referent). The use of depictive gestures in particular is much higher than for other performers. Pantomimic gestures occur frequently: for example, on the lyrics ‘smoke some fags, and play some pool / pretend you never went to school’ (third verse), Cocker first sweeps his hand from his mouth as if discarding a cigarette, then swipes his hand at hip level as if miming the action of a pool cue, then wags his finger in the emblem of refusal on the word ‘never’. Gestures representing the object iconically, a second type of depictive gesture, are also common: for example, Cocker’s circling of his eye on the final word of ‘That’s where I, caught her eye’ is both deictic, and pictographic [SLIDE]; it provides a visual emphasis which supports the rhyme between ‘I’ and ‘eye’ and exaggerates the different meanings of the two words. Other examples of iconic gestures are placing his hands with palms together at the side of his head to indicate laying down placing a hand above his eyes to symbolize ‘looking’, and putting his hand to his forehead to indicate ‘thinking’. [SLIDE] Gestures which evoke the object of the lyrics are also frequent. Cocker uses symbolic gestures such as shaking his head or wagging his finger to indicate the negative, and pointing, a gesture which appears here when Cocker, the first person narrator of the song points to himself on ‘I’, and to the viewer (‘you’). [SLIDE] One of the few self-adaptors is Cocker’s picking of his fingers as the rich girl lip-synchs to his singing voice, suggesting a nonchalant attitude toward her. Unlike most adaptors, this gesture is performed self-consciously, in a deliberate enactment of the first person narrative. The high frequency of gestures depicting or evoking the lyrics gives the performance a knowing quality as it plays out the dual identities of Jarvis Cocker as star and Cocker as song character. It is these kinds of possibilities in video performance which lead Simon Frith to comment that ‘music videos are less interesting as mini-films, as visual narratives, than as ideal types of performance…’.[xxii]

In this example the authenticity of the star image resides in the knowingness of this dual performance, and in the enactment of the star image through display movements. An extreme example is the large jump and flailing limb-movements which occur at climactic structural moments, such as the end of the chorus into the third verse, the end of the third verse into the chorus, and at the end of the coda. [SLIDE - display gesture] These moments of display are in complete contrast to the expressionless, lethargic dancing of the ‘clubbers’ and serve to highlight Cocker’s presence as star performer, both within the diegesis of the video and in the real-world. Cocker’s performance of his body as the site for audience desire can be attributed to these moments of display: for example, the jump and large limb movements coinciding with the ‘bolt-of-electricity’ musical effect display an energy, fluency and (apparent) spontaneity at odds with the stylized and knowing gestures accompanying his lyrics. It is as though these display gestures arise from and are part of the musical sound, and its non-verbal communication, rather than the other gestures which are tied to verbalized meanings. Indeed, its possible to see Cocker’s movements as taking on the expressivity of the music, perhaps even giving rise to it, in an erotic enactment of power.[xxiii]

Compare this video performance with the live performance of the same song from a year later. [SLIDE – live performance] The two performances share many similarities in the use of types of gesture at certain locations, although the exact gesture used, and its size differs between performances. [SLIDE – comparison table] Gestures referring to the object of the lyrics occur in the same locations, but are sometimes different: for example, the self-reference in the first verse (‘that’s where I / caught her eye’) is indicated by a finger pointing to the head in the video, but in live performance is a larger gesture in which the back of the hand is drawn across the face. There are also many more ‘display’ movements in the live performance, as Cocker acts out his star image, and interacts with the audience. Both performances attempt to draw the audience in to the first-person narrative through direct address. In both cases Cocker approaches the audience, and whispers asides, inviting closeness and intimacy between performer and audience, or implicating the audience, but in the live performance Cocker points at the audience many more times, replacing the role of his gaze into the camera in the video performance with deictic gestures. These whispers and approaches to the audience allow the fake promise of private intimacy, which, as Frith remarks, is a listening fantasy in which we believe the offer to ‘know’ the star could be made ‘just for us’ – even if the ‘us’ in the context of public performance is experienced as a collective. The effect is simultaneously a self-conscious enactment of the song personality (the narrator), and the star image, as entertainer and site of desire.

Amy Winehouse: Performing the Private for Public Consumption

The example above illustrates a performance style in which the elision between star persona and song character is knowingly enacted. Furthermore, it is possible to understand the performance as revealing something of the person behind the persona – in this case a person dealing with a self-perceived mismatch between rock star persona and self-identity as a lanky, geeky, working class lad from Sheffield (self-conscious enactment of the star persona allows Cocker to be the song character, the site of audience desire, and ‘ordinary’ person). However, there are other cases where the enactment of star persona and song character become indistinguishable, and in which the public performance of the ‘private’ life of the star arguably becomes exploitative. A recent example of perceived identity between star image and song character is English singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse, whose rise to fame in 2006 was accompanied by notoriety for her misuse of alcohol and drugs, self-harm, a tempestuous relationship with her husband, and legal difficulties. Public and critical reception of her music draws on an ideology in which great artistry is perceived as arising from pain and tragedy, and in which, as Sheila Whiteley observes, death is seen as the ‘ultimate form of excess’[xxiv]: for example, one journalist remarked that if Winehouse’s real-life situation improved her music might suffer.[xxv] The critically acclaimed song ‘Rehab’ from her second album Back to Black (2006), written by Winehouse and produced by Mark Ronson, epitomizes the entanglement of Winehouse’s personal and public lives.[xxvi] Public reception, and Winehouse’s statements about the track make a direct association between her biography and the lyrics and video of the single, which recount her record company’s wish that she attend drug rehabilitation, her father’s opinion, her brief visit to a clinic, explanation of her state, and diagnosis, and refusal to attend rehabilitation (‘They tried to make me go to rehab, I said “no, no, no”’):

[SLIDE – Amy quote]

The song and early performances can be understood as a transformation of personal suffering into public performance, and display the control and musical skill necessary to such artistry. However, during 2008 Winehouse’s performances became increasingly chaotic, as the impact of her widely publicized drug and alcohol addictions affected her musical abilities. Amid media speculation as to whether she would be able to perform, she came out of rehabilitation in June 2008 to do two televised performances in England (a concert in honour of Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday in Hyde Park, London, and Glastonbury Festival), the first of which I analyse here.

[ADD CLIP OF REHAB PERFORMANCE]

‘Rehab’ consists of repeated chorus and verse structure, with a Motown inspired instrumental ensemble and harmonic structure. Winehouse’s rather shambolic performance is evident from the opening of the song as she first struggles with the microphone stand and then misses an entry as a member of stage crew adjusts it for her. By the end of the first chorus she has settled in to the performance, but the performance lacks polish: lyrics become slurred at the end of second verse, and the vocal improvisation and ornamentation at the end of the second chorus lacks melodic fluency and intonational accuracy.

Winehouse uses a very limited range of movement types, with few directed at communicating the ideas in the song: there are no gestures depicting or evoking the object of lyrics, nor engaging with the audience, nor referring to the underlying logic of the lyrics. The majority of movements are what might loosely be described as dance movements – a form of display which is normative for female pop performers. These movements are extremely restricted compared to those of her male backing singers, and physically constrained by her tight clothing and high-heeled shoes: her legs remain close together, and her steps are very small, demarcating a small personal space on-stage. Many of her display movements draw attention to her body as the site of desire: for example, the hip bounces and shifts in weight draw attention to her crotch and bottom, her arms raised to her chest with elbows out draw attention to her breasts, and her dancing posture of chest out, bottom out, and head tilted slightly back and up are sexually inviting. To some extent these movements can be understood as non-depictive gestures marking musical processes and structures, and therefore communicating her understanding of musical structure. For example, many of her dance movements mark different levels of musical pulse: her posture in the first verse is with hands on hips and small circular movements of her hips, in time with the pulse of the song; in the second chorus she introduces a small bouncing movement with the hips at the level of the quaver beat; and in verse two this shifting of weight switches to the crotchet level. Similarly, arm movements occasionally demarcate phrase structure. For example, in the first verse she raises her arms slowly above her head then lowers them again during the phrase ‘I didn’t get a lot in class, but I know we don’t come in a shot-glass’. In the corresponding position within the second verse she raises her arms again (‘I’m gonna, I’m gonna lose my baby’), but this time the gesture turns into a clichéd dance movement of alternate arms raised and dropped every minim beat, as though the arm movement has lost its original purpose half way through.

One type of movement in particular becomes increasingly extreme during the performance – she holds on to the bottom of her dress and raises it to reveal her thighs and crotch [SLIDE]. This action first appears in the first verse, and gradually becomes more frequent and exaggerated until the final verse when it becomes uncomfortably exposing. Holding onto the bottom of her skirt and raising it is a self-adaptor gesture: the action does not illustrate lyrics or music, and the skirt is already very short so raising it further seems superfluous to any need for display. These movements reveal the workings of a private ‘inner’ self as opposed to an enacted song character. Other elements of the performance also enact Winehouse’s private life for public consumption: the lyrics to her songs, and her comments about their biographical relevance in performance, her dedication of her songs in performance to her jailed husband, and the wearing of his name as a hair ornament, hold up her performance as a display of her troubled private life. In this context, the ‘emotional leakage’ or loss of attention indicated by her adaptor gestures can be read as evidence of the disturbed mental state of Winehouse the star, rather than a song character she is playing.

Consequences of the Ideology of Authentic Emotional Expression

This chapter has focused on two relatively neglected aspects of popular music to further understanding of the way in which pop performances offer identities for audiences to respond to, and the kind of engagement afforded. The chapter explored the correlation between the ‘closeness’ which characterizes celebrity culture and aural closeness afforded by amplified sound and recordings. The chapter showed how the virtual space of recorded performances contributes to expression of intimacy, and investigated the role of body movement in keeping in play the dual identities of star persona and song character in performance.

One aspect highlighted here is the uneasy balance between musicians’ desire to express themselves and the danger that it can entail public exposure and prurient interest. Pop musicians work within a compositional aesthetic of self-expression, in which their musical output is received as though it is the expression of biographical events and reveals the inner life of the performer. However, when things go wrong, whether caused by celebrity status (what Sheila Whiteley has termed ‘famed damage’[xxvii]), or writ large by it, the recorded sound of authentic emotional intimacy has social and cultural ramifications. The normative staging of pop voices provides aural intimacy with the star, and therefore contributes to the notion of access to a ‘real’ person behind the star image. This desire for access to the person behind the persona manifests in media pressure on celebrities to give ever more personal information in interviews, and to access the personal lives of stars and their families, and is implicated in the extreme reactions and obsessions exhibited by some fans.

Interviews with star performers reveal an awareness of the problems wrought by the idea of authenticity and the cultural construction of their work as emotional expression. In a documentary interview, Björk observed of her own motivations to make music:

[SLIDE]

What this quotation reveals for me is the entanglement of two things. On the one hand, it highlights the motivation an artist might have to express herself through music, which can be seen as produced by a cultural system within which music is a means for self-expression. On the other hand it embodies an ideology of psychological intimacy and access to the star, caused by the way in which artistic expression is co-opted by the culture industry.

Different artists have different ways of dealing with this situation. In the case of Jarvis Cocker, for instance, a distance is created between inner, private person and audience through a knowing enactment of star persona and song character in performance. A second type of response to the focus on a star persona is to diminish the salience of the star image by choosing not to present onself as the musical and visual focus. For example, although Icelandic alternative rock band Sigur Rós has a singer (Jonsi Birgisson), the music and visual aspects of performance minimize his position as attentional focus. Their tracks mix instrumental and vocal lines such that they are at an equal dynamic level and their music lacks easily decipherable lyrics, such that the voice becomes just another instrument. The aural equality between voice and ensemble is manifested visually in the on-stage relationship between singer and band: on-stage lighting is usually extremely low, with spot-lights used only occasionally. This performance strategy is also carried through to the bands’ publicity material: the cover art and music videos rarely feature members of the band, and for a long time the band avoided interviews. Sigur Rós present one strategy by which to minimize focus on the star persona of the individual artist, and the celebrity culture that accompanies it, although, operating within the music industry and habitual reception practices of audiences, it is impossible to avoid entirely.

This chapter demonstrates that if we are to understand why popular music is the way it is then we need to pay attention both to its material characteristics and their relationship to the social and economic circumstances of production and consumption. I have highlighted two areas deserving of more attention, and the techniques that exist for their analysis. However, these techniques need to be developed further; there is much more potential to use analyses of body movements to further understanding of communication in performance, and to employ new methods for the analysis of sound recordings to explore the different varieties of virtual sound world embodied in recorded sound. Analysing the body movements in performance can help us understand how identities are maintained and communicated through performance, how body movement contributes to the entertainment value of performance, and how performers manage the distance between performer and audience. How and to what extent performance contributes to perceptions of authentic emotion is an important component in understanding one of the most prevalent reception ideologies of contemporary pop.

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Discography

Amy Winehouse, ‘Rehab’, Back to Black, CD (Island, 2006).

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Björk ‘There’s more to life than this’ Debut, CD (One Little Indian, 1993).

Gestsdóttir, Ragnheidur (dir.) Björk: Miniscule, DVD (Wellhardt/One Little Indian, 2001).

Pulp ‘Common People’, (dir. Pedro Romhanyi 1995), Pulp Hits, DVD (Island, 2002).

Pulp ‘Common People’ Ultimate Live: F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.I.V.E., DVD (Island, 2005).

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[i] CUT MATERIAL: The fascination with stars in general is at least partly attributable to the way they hold up for us ways to make sense of the experience of being a person.[ii]

[iii] Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society.

[iv] For an example of musicological analysis of authenticity see Allan Moore, ‘Authenticity as authentication’, Popular Music, 21/2 (2002): 209–23; for discussion of the economic implications of the ideology of authenticity see Lee Marshall, Bootlegging: Romanticism and Copyright in the Music Industry, (London, 2005); for an analysis of emotional authenticity conveyed in pop recordings see Nicola Dibben ‘Subjectivity and the construction of emotion in the music of Björk,’ Music Analysis, 25/1–2 (2006): 171–97.

[v] P. David Marshall, Celebrity and Power, (Minneapolis, 1997).

[vi] For work on the history of the virtual sound space of recording see: Peter Doyle Echo and Reverb: Fabricating Space in Popular Music Recording, 1900–1960, (Middletown, CT., 2005); Serge Lacasse, ‘Listen to My Voice’: The Evocative Power of Vocal Staging in Recorded Rock Music and other Forms of Vocal Expression (PhD diss., University of Liverpool, 2000), (accessed 28 May 2008); Allan Moore, ‘The Establishment of the Virtual Performance Space in Rock’, Twentieth Century Music (forthcoming).

[vii] Richard Middleton, Studying Popular Music, (Milton Keynes, 1990), p. 85.

[viii] In the natural world humans show an orienting response to sound events, i.e. they turn the body and head centrally towards the sound source thereby placing it in the centre of the perceptual field. Placement of the voice centrally within a stereophonic mix therefore affords attentional focus on the voice.

[ix] Serge Lacasse, ‘Persona, emotions and technology: the phonographic staging of the popular music voice’, CHARM Symposium 2: Towards a musicology of production (part of The Art of Record Production conference), 17–18 Sep. 2005, , (accessed 28 May 2008). See also Lacasse, ‘Listen to My Voice’, (accessed 28 May 2008).

[x] A detailed analysis of aural intimacy manifested in a pop track can be found in Nicola Dibben, Björk (London, forthcoming).

[xi] DeCordova traces the association between stars and interest in their private lives to the emergence of the film star system in America in the twentieth century: the increase in information about film stars’ lives outside the roles they played in films occurred because only by knowing something about the ‘private’ lives of stars could the star persona exist separate from the different roles the star played in film (Richard DeCordova, Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America [Chicago, 1991]). In cinema, the star persona was supported by material aspects of production, just as in pop music different technological factors facilitated emergence of the star image: whereas in cinema film close-up camera shots allow a close view of the actor’s face and draws the spectator’s attention to the actors’ looks rather than their role, the microphone creates intimacy between listener and musician.

[xii] P. David Marshall argues that the transitional figure in the development of the contemporary performing style was Johnnie Ray. P. David Marshall, Celebrity and Power (Minneapolis, 1997).

[xiii] Simon Frith Performing Rites; Sheila Whiteley, ‘Little Red Rooster vs. the Honky Tonk Woman: Mick Jagger, Sexuality, Style and Image’, in Sheila Whiteley (ed.), Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender (London, 1997), pp. 67–99.

[xiv] There is currently no agreed framework for analyzing body movements, therefore applications to music have tended to adopt different models of non-verbal communication: whereas Jane Davidson has analyzed performances by classical and pop singers using a classificatory scheme proposed by P. Ekman and W.V. Freisen (‘The repertoire of nonverbal behaviour: categories, origins, usage and coding’, Semiotica, 1 [1969]: 49–98), Martin Clayton has analysed Raga performance using a later classificatory scheme for speech relted hand gestures proposed by Bernard Rimé and Loris Schiaratura (‘Gesture and Speech’ in Robert S. Feldman and Bernard Rimé (eds), Fundamentals of Nonverbal Behaviour [Cambridge, 1991], pp. 239–81). Adopting a model from speech may inadvertently mask types of behaviour particular to musical performance. Therefore one of the priorities for research into body movement in pop performance is to critically assess the application of models from speech and gesture to music. For example, gestures which accompany the ideational flow of speech have been interpreted in musical contexts as indicating a performer’s understanding of the flow of musical structure, but empirical evidence is relatively scarce.

[xv] Jane W. Davidson, ‘The Role of the Body in the Production and Perception of Solo Vocal Performance: A Case Study of Annie Lennox’, Musicae Scientiae, 5/2 (2001): 235–56; ‘“She's the one”: Multiple Functions of Body Movement in a Stage Performance by Robbie Williams’, in Anthony Gritten and Elaine King (eds), Music and Gesture (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 208–25; Kaori Kurosawa and Jane W. Davidson, ‘Nonverbal Behaviours in Popular Music Performance: A case Study of the Corrs’, Musicae Scientiae, 9 (2005): 111–37.

[xvi] Davidson, ‘“She's the one”’, p. 213.

[xvii] ‘Adaptors’ have been classified by Ekman and Friesen into three types: self-adaptors, in which one part of the body manipulates another, such as rubbing the nose, biting the lip or holding the forehead; object-adaptors, in which an external object is repeatedly manipulated or brought into contact with the body but not to perform a task, such as twirling a pencil, scratching an ear with a pen, or repeatedly adjusting cutlery on a table; and alter-adaptor, in which movements are in relation to or make contact with another person, such as restless movements of the legs, or movements towards or away from another person.

[xviii] Evidence that body-focused movements are a form of attention regulation comes from studies by Freedman in the late 1970s. Cited in Jinni Harrigan, ‘Proxemics, Kinesics and Gaze’, in Jinni Harrigan, Robert Rosenthal and Klaus R. Scherer (eds), The New Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behaviour (New York, 2005), pp. 137–98.

[xix] Bernard Rimé and Loris Schiaratura, ‘Gesture and Speech’.

[xx] P. Ekman and W.V. Freisen ‘The Repertoire of Nonverbal Behaviour: Categories, Origins, Usage and Coding’.

[xxi] Martin Clayton ‘Communication in Raga performance’ in Dorothy Miell, Raymond

MacDonald and David J. Hargreaves (eds), Musical Communication (New York, 2005), pp. 361–81.

[xxii] The biographical salience of the song would not have been lost on its audience who would have been aware of Jarvis Cocker’s own background as a student of St Martin’s College of Art in London.

[xxiii] Simon Frith, Performing Rites, p. 224.

[xxiv] This is a different explanation of music’s association with sex than offered elsewhere. Simon Frith argues that music’s association with sex is sociological rather than musicological: he argues that we hear rock as sexual due to the cultural ideology that African-derived musics (such as rock) are more ‘natural’ and therefore more directly in touch with the body (Simon Frith, Performing Rites, p. 127), and that rhythm is sexual because it provides an easy way for the unskilled to enter into the music, and experience the body and experience a sense of presence in time (p. 144). Frith suggests that the listening fantasy ‘is that we control the music (the sexual exchange) when, in fact, the performer does’ (p. 215). I suggest that part of the erotic power of popular music performance comes from participating in the musical unfolding which is perceived as though it is controlled by or emanating from the performer, and thereby experienced as power and control enacted by the performer on the listener. Which of these interpretations is true can perhaps only be decided by empirical research into experience of pop.

[xxv] Sheila Whiteley, ‘The Killing Fields of Popular Music’, in Sue Holmes and Sean Redmond (eds), Framing Celebrity: New Directions in Celebrity Culture (New York, 2006), pp. 329–42.

[xxvi] Joan Anderman, ‘Of course she should go to rehab: But like the troubled talents who came before her, Amy Winehouse made her pain part of her artistry’, Boston Globe, 16 Dec. 2007.

[xxvii] ‘Rehab’ won numerous awards including the Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song in 2007, and three Grammy Awards in 2008: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

[xxviii] Sheila Whiteley, ‘The Killing Fields of Popular Music’, p. 330. Whiteley’s claim that ‘it is the intimacies of an individual’s personal life that exerts such a fatal fascination’ (p. 329) implies that some of the psychological breakdowns and deaths of star musicians can be attributed to their celebrity status.

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