An Examination of Contemporary Christian Music Success Within Mainstream Rock and Country Billboard Charts

Ranging from inspirational songs void of theological language to worship music imbued with overt religious messages, Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) has a long history of being ill-defined. Due to the genre’s flexible nature, many Christian artists over the years have used vague imagery and secular lyrical content to find favor among mainstream outlets. This study examined the most recent ten-year period of CCM to determine its ability to cross over into the mainstream music scene, while also assessing the impact of its lyrical content and genre on the probability of reaching such mainstream success. For the years 2008-2018, Billboard data were collected for every Christian song on the Hot 100, Hot Rock Songs, or Hot Country Songs in order to detect any noticeable trend regarding the rise or fall of CCM; each song then was coded for theological language. No obvious trend emerged regarding the mainstream success of CCM as a whole, but the genre of Rock was found to possess the greatest degree of mainstream success. Rock also, however, was shown to have a very low tolerance for theological language, contrasted with the high tolerance of Country. As such, it is reasonable to question whether Mainstream Christian Rock is even really Christian at all.

We’re So Bored With London, Wayne Daly in conversation with Russell Bestley, Parts 1 & 2

Interview discussion with Wayne Daly on the subject of UK punk singles

Irish republican music and (post)colonial schizophrenia

Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom, yet its postcolonial position is subject to fierce debate among British loyalists and Irish republicans. Using Tommy Skelly’s 1972 “Go on Home British Soldiers” as its central focus, this article unpicks the various (post)colonial narratives played out through republican music in the North of Ireland, challenging the parameters of the postcolonial, and demonstrating how Irish rebel songs continue to function as a form of political engagement and cultural resistance within and against the British state

Chant down tha System \u27till Babylon Falls: The Political Dimensions of Urban Grooves and Underground Hip Hop in Zimbabwe

This article, first published in the Journal of Pan African Studies (2013, Volume 6, Issue 3), is a shortened version of the author\u27s M.A. thesis in which she traces the trajectories and ideologies of two separate, but intertwined, youth movements in Harare, Zimbabwe: Urban Grooves and Underground Hip Hop

Spartan Daily, March 26, 1984

Volume 82, Issue 39https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/7157/thumbnail.jp

Jazz Fest 2008

Guest artists: Byron Stripling (trumpet), Eric Marienthal (saxophone)https://digitalcommons.morris.umn.edu/jazzfest/1028/thumbnail.jp

"Does it threaten the status quo?" Elite responses to british punk, 1976–78

The emergence of punk in Britain (1976-78) is recalled and documented as a moment of rebellion, one in which youth culture was seen to challenge accepted values and forms of behaviour, and to set in motion a new kind of cultural politics. In this article we do two things. First, we ask how far punk’s challenge extended. Did it penetrate those political, cultural and social elites against which it set itself? And second, we reflect on the problem of recovering the history and politics of moments such as punk, and on the value of archives to such exercises in recuperation. In pursuit of both tasks, we make use of a wide range of historical sources, relying on these rather than on retrospective oral or autobiographical accounts. We set our findings against the narratives offered both by subcultural and mainstream histories of punk. We show how punk’s impact on elites can be detected in the rhetoric of the popular media, and in aspects of the practice of local government and the police. Its impact on other elites (e.g. central government or the monarchy) is much harder to discern. These insights are important both for enriching our understanding of the political significance of punk and for how we approach the historical record left by popular music

Purposefully Feminizing Masculinity: Femininity in Male Rock and Metal Stars 1950s - 1980s

Traditionally in Western culture, men have had the privilege of promoting rebellion while women have had to be submissive and socially desirable. This expectation applied to all women but especially women in the rock ‘n’ roll scene. The overwhelming loudness of rock and the typical message of rebellion was connected to the power that men held within society.1 The combination of loud and fast paced music with the electronic nature of the instruments is what sets rock ‘n’ roll and metal apart from other genres. The attention that rock ‘n’ roll music demands, both from the challenging nature of the music’s messages and the difficulty in ignoring the volume was not rare in the mid-twentieth century in the Western world. Despite already holding power, some men wanted to gain more popularity or wealth by utilizing traditionally feminine presentations. Some artists who participated in establishing the genres of rock ‘n’ roll, glam rock, and hair metal blurred the lines between masculinity and femininity for their own personal gain. To identify how male artists in the 1950s - 1980s walked the line between masculine and feminine, this essay will look at traditionally feminine features, such as hairstyle and gender based physical presentation, as well as specific musical aspects, to show how masculine artists employed traditional feminine presentations

Rock'n'Roll: The Sounds of Rebellion?

The fifties were the scene of a 'virtual revolution' in popular music. Around 1954 rock'n'roll surfaced and took America by surprise; the young were excited and the adults shocked. The paper deals with two questions. First, how could rock'n'roll develop into an autonomous popular music style? This means that the music became more than notes and sounds. Second , how did the signification as being rebellious come about? The answer is that music does not have meaning of its own but acquires meaning through interactions between artists, record producers, media, and audiences. The paper shows how America's postwar transformations shaped the conditions for rock'n'roll's emergence and how it was socially constructed into an autonomous music style which acquired the meaning of rebelliousness