Pop When the World Falls Apart

This third installment of anthologized presentations given at the annual Experience Music Project (after This Is Pop and Listen Again, also edited by Weisbard) is as diverse in voice as the last two books, but the content is thematically darker. Though pieces concerning the fruitfulness of ghostwriting a musician's autobiography and critical contextualizing of Celine Dion's career bring levity to the text, the connection between popular music and destruction is explored by several authors. J. Martin Daughtry examines the ways in which popular music creates the rhythm of war in Iraq, and Eric Lott reassesses the destructive forces underlying Karen Carpenter's troubled life. Doleful topics notwithstanding, the range of contributors in this collected volume refreshingly breaks the cult of expertise often surrounding popular music discourse and refrains from burying the reader under a barrage of cultural theory verbiage.