New work looking at authenticity, MTV and the aesthetics of new pop to appear in the forthcoming issue of The Soundtrack journal. Focusing on songs, music video and critical interpretations of Eurythmics the work outlines the contradiction of British versus American codes of rock ideology.
Abstract: This article looks at how the British pop culture of the 1980s changed the way authenticity was conceptualised in popular music. I will argue that ‘new pop’ and the televisual aesthetic of MTV challenged the division between British and American codes of authenticity. As a barometer of this, I will be focusing on the work of the British duo Eurythmics, whose creative output spanned the decade. I will suggest that the band’s propensity to bend genre as well as gender, positioned North American ‘rock’ as a contingent discourse: a free-floating signifier around which competing notions of authenticity coalesce. Emblematic of this paradox of authenticity is both the duality of Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox’s identity as Eurythmics and the diversity of their musical output. Encoded in this are some very specific strategies for listening, that draw upon the legacy of British Art schools in the 1950s and the Independent Group.
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