Insulting Music explores insult in and around music and demonstrates that insult is a key dimension of Western musical experience and practice. There is insult in the music we hear, how we express our musical preferences, as well as our reactions to settings and sites of music and music making. More than that, when music and insult overlap, the effects can both promote social justice or undermine it, foster connection or break it apart. The coming together of music and insult shapes our sense of self and view of other people, underlining and constructing difference, often in terms of race and gender. In the last decade, music’s power dynamics have become an increasingly important concern for music scholars, critics, and fans. Studying musicians such as Frank Zappa, Nickleback, Taylor Swift, and the Insane Clown Posse, and musical phenomena such as musician jokes, the use of music to torture people, and the playing of music in restaurants, this book shows the various and contradictory ways insults are used to negotiate those existing dynamics in and around music.
Table of Content
1. Defining the Lexicon.- Part I Insult in Music.- 2. Musical Insult.- 3. Chanting Cupcake.- 4. The Slants and Self-Insult in Music.- 5. Bullying and Protest.- 6. Frank Zappa’s Plastic People.- Part II Insult at Music.- 7. Awards Ceremonies.- 8. The Music We Hate and Love to Hate.- 9. “Nasty” Taylor Swift.- 10. Musician Jokes and the Soprano.- 11. Insane Clown Posse and the Provocation of Musical Taste.- Part III Insult in Terms of Music.- 12. ‘An Insult to Music’.- 13. Music at Restaurants.- 14. Musical Torture.- 15. Talking About Music.
About the author
Lily E. Hirsch is a musicologist and visiting scholar at California State University, Bakersfield, USA. She is the author of several books, including
Weird Al: Seriously (2020).
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