Memento Mori, the 2023 album by synth-pop titans Depeche Mode, centralizes the topics of death and the transience of life. To delineate how the album distinguishes itself from other works in the tradition of "mortality music," this article begins by tracing Depeche Mode's decades-long meditations on mortality and examining its thematic presence in prior albums. Next, the author argues that Memento Mori gains affective power and artistic relevance in functioning as musical vanitas-a centuries-old form of still life art-and analyzes four songs through structural and contextual analyses to elucidate how the music interacts with the text and visuals to generate meaning and embody the vanitas aesthetic. The author draws on philosopher Martin Heidegger's ideas on death as a lens through which to interpret how Memento Mori elicits a transformative existential experience for both artist and listener through a sonic journey of individuation.
As digital streaming became the dominant mode of music consumption, the New Brunswick, New Jersey, music scene of the 1990s served as a pocket of resistance to the decline of vinyl records. This article uses a case study approach to examine how localized practices sustained vinyl culture through community-based production and distribution. Drawing on theories of diffusion of innovation, communities of practice, and the social construction of technology, this article explores how this scene's attachment to analog formats helped lay the groundwork for vinyl's cultural persistence and its broader resurgence in the 21st century.
Rub & eacute;n Blades has been acknowledged as a storyteller through song. His themes frequently involve commentary on social topics, particularly those affecting latino communities, whether at the homeland or in diaspora. I examine how "Pedro Navaja" marks the beginning of Blades's consistent use of a social storytelling strategy in his songwriting. Through analysis of text, music, and arrangement in the context of storytelling theory and of Blades's production environment I show that "Pedro Navaja" is a turning point in the songwriter's output. I argue that Blades's social commentary through storytelling facilitates both musical and cultural crossovers.
Literary scholars have considered whether fiction is a species of philosophic thought experiment. Similarly, a contention in film theory asks whether film is a kind of philosophy or can only illustratively contribute to philosophic lines of inquiry. This article asks: What about song? What resources does song have that can be considered, of themselves, experiments in thought and feeling, intended to convey subjective insights to shared, contemplative ends? Working from an extended study in the oeuvre of singer-songwriter Peter Blegvad, I show how several features of song can surface subjective experiences that are useful resources to bring to rational argumentation-I call this "phenomenology as evidence." Blegvad's songs experimentally think and feel across the domains that make up contemporary philosophy.
Through analyzing Zimbabwean musician, Oliver Mtukudzi's lyrics, we explore the Shona community's concept of death as a culturally codified rite of passage. Through a discursive analysis of Mtukudzi's songs, the paper explores approaches to psycho-social support for the grieving that occurs within Shona cosmology and cultural praxis. It shows that healing is a multi-factorial process that is contextualized within community cultural and ethical values, with the Shona being an ubuntu-inspired community that believes in collectivity and inter-relatedness. Music educates, counsels, and facilitates a degree of acceptance in a broad spectrum of interventions that constitute healing at multiple levels.
Though Paul McCartney spent more time plotting and designing Wings' 1975 album Venus and Mars than almost any other album in his career, it has long been regarded as a lightweight follow-up to the critically acclaimed Band on the Run, often seen as their magnum opus. A closer investigation of the musical, lyrical, and thematic structure of Venus and Mars, however, reveals many layers of depth. McCartney sets up the two planets as opposed entities operating within a Yin and Yang relationship. When seen through this lens, Venus and Mars serve as metaphors for dualities that emerge at a variety of levels, from lyrical passages and themes to harmonic progressions and tonal areas. This paper will explore the album's musical and thematic content with the aim of offering a fresh perspective on an often-overlooked gem in McCartney's oeuvre.
In this introduction to this special issue we make the case for a domestic turn in popular music studies, a programmatic invitation for a direct pivot to the home in all its variable forms and complexity. We point to the lack of concerted treatment of the home in popular music studies while identifying its centrality to debates about creative labor, the changing nature of music, and gendered inequalities in musical practices. We follow this with a brief summary of some historical work by feminist scholars on popular music and society and then move to a thematic summary of the collection.
This article applies polymedia theory to music and everyday life, with particular attention to musical engagement within families and the home, and to commuting and workspace environments. We focus on three issues: the role of music polymedia in managing multiscreen, intergenerational households, including their use as remote offices; listening practices while traveling and commuting as extensions of the home, and the influence of work schedules on musical experience; and the adoption of streaming in workspaces and the blurring of boundaries between home and work, and between professional and personal engagements with music.
This article explores the #Boredinthehouse TikTok trend as sonic and visual mediation of domestic boredom during COVID-19 lockdowns. Employing Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis, it examines how the viral sound facilitated collective expressions of boredom while exposing socioeconomic disparities through performative depictions of domestic life. Analyzing more than 4000 TikTok comments, this research focuses on how features like pools and mansions became symbols of class visibility. The findings highlight how TikTok's music ecologies and platform conventions shaped affective responses, framing boredom as a digitally mediated critique of privilege, productivity, and domestic normality.
