The song remains the most basic unit of modern pop music. Shaped into
being by historical forces-cultural, aesthetic, and technical-the song
provides both performer and audience with a world marked off by a short,
discrete, and temporally demarcated experience. One-Track Mind:
Capitalism, Technology, and the Art of the Pop Song brings together 16
writers to weigh in on 16 iconic tracks from the history of modern
popular music. Arranged chronologically in order of release of the
tracks, and spanning nearly five decades, these essays zigzag across the
cultural landscape to present one possible history of pop music. There
are detours through psychedelic rock, Afro-pop, Latin pop, glam rock,
heavy metal, punk, postpunk, adult contemporary rock, techno, hip-hop,
and electro-pop here. More than just deep histories of individual songs,
these essays all expand far beyond the track itself to offer exciting
and often counterintuitive histories of transformative moments in
popular culture. Collectively, they show the undiminished power of the
individual pop song, both as distillations of important flashpoints and,
in their afterlives, as ghostly echoes that persist undiminished but
transform for succeeding generations. Capitalism and its principal good,
capital, help us frame these stories, a fact that should surprise no one
given the inextricable relationship between art and capitalism
established in the twentieth century. At the root, readers will find
here a history of pop with unexpected plot twists, colorful
protagonists, and fitting denouements.
