Product Description

In a tour de force of lyrical theory, Joshua Clover boldly reimagines how we understand both pop music and its social context in a vibrant exploration of a year famously described as 'the end of history'. Amid the historic overturnings of 1989, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, pop music also experienced striking changes. Vividly conjuring cultural sensations and events, Clover tracks the emergence of seemingly disconnected phenomena - from grunge to acid house to gangsta rap - asking if 'perhaps pop had been biding its time until 1989 came along to make sense of its sensibility'. His analysis deftly moves among varied artists and genres including Public Enemy, N.W.A., Dr. Dre, De La Soul, The KLF, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, U2, Jesus Jones, the Scorpions, George Michael, Madonna, Roxette, and others. This elegantly written work, deliberately mirroring history as dialectical and ongoing, summons forth a new understanding of how 'history had come out to meet pop as something more than a fairytale, or something less. A truth, a way of being'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #256488 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 198 pages

Review
"[An] extraordinary work of political aesthetics... Clover is a gifted music writer, and his descriptions are vivid, surprising and politically sharp without ever being moralistic."--New Statesman "Astute ... [A] vivid snapshot of a tumultuous moment in pop and history."--Foreword Magazine

About the Author
Joshua Clover, Associate Professor at the University of California at Davis, is author of The Totality of Kids (UC Press), The Matrix, and Madonna anno domini.