a couple of years ago, jane music editor jeff johnson began soliciting and compiling what he called ‘sad song scenarios’, a celebration, if you could call it that, of moments when music undoubtedly made a grim day worse. ideally, the whole project unfolds in a powerpoint of strained saccharine and swift kicks in the imagination. but here's one example, courtesy of the novelist sam lipsyte:

this paper examines key moments from three pop songs – carole king's ‘a road to nowhere’ (1966), eminem's ‘stan’ (2000), and smokey robinson's ‘cruisin” (1979) – and considers the kinds of meanings and ‘un-meanings’ such brief musical snatches might contain or imply. the first is posited as a turning point in carole king's life and career, one bridging her early song-writing achievements and later solo persona; the second as a throwback in disguise, contemporary in voice and attitude but nonetheless invoking the unlikely example of the shangri-las; and the last as an instance of ‘un-meaning’, art which achieves itself not through articulation but through implication, which sensually ‘moves’ rather than intellectually ‘places’ its auditor. throughout the paper, the often radically subjective writings of walter pater are employed as a model of criticism which is open to the imaginative possibilities of intense artistic moments.

forgotten recordings – such as ‘have a little talk with jesus’, the 1952 sister rosetta tharpe–red foley duet documented in this essay – may reveal a more complex account of popular music history than that which can be compiled from recordings that are remembered and passed on. released as the b-side of a red foley and the sunshine boys 45, ‘have a little talk’ is the product of a then-unprecedented collaboration in nashville of a black woman and a white man, people who couldn't have broken bread in a restaurant in that city at the time. yet ‘have a little talk’ is neither a transcendent record nor the record of a transcendent moment. rather, it attests to the multifaceted story-beneath-the-story of the links between country and gospel artists at a time when the former was consolidating its racial identity as ‘white’ and when major labels like decca faced increasing threats from independents putting out rhythm-and-blues. this essay attests to the challenges of writing the ‘b-side of history’ in the absence of a traditional (i.e. written or published) archive. through self-conscious storytelling based largely on oral histories, it attempts to reconstruct the foley-tharpe collaboration as a ‘magical moment’ in us popular music.

perhaps the first digital sample to become well known within popular music was actually a piece of western art music, the fragment of stravinsky's firebird captured within the fairlight computer musical instrument, the first digital ‘sampler’, as ‘orch5’. this loud orchestral attack was made famous by bronx dj afrika bambaataa, who incorporated the sound into his seminal 1982 dance track, ‘planet rock’. analysis of kraftwerk's ‘trans europe express’, also sampled for ‘planet rock’, provides an interpretive context for bambaataa's use of orch5, as well as the hundreds of songs that deliberately sought to copy its sound. kraftwerk's concerns about the decadence of european culture and art music were not fully shared by users of orch5 in new york city; its sound first became part of an ongoing afro-futurist musical project, and by 1985 was fully naturalised within the hip-hop world, no more ‘classical’ than the sound of scratching vinyl. to trace the early popular history of orch5's distinctive effect, so crucial for early hip-hop, electro, and detroit techno, is to begin to tell the post-canonic story of western art music.

the phrase ‘this magic moment’ recurs throughout elvis costello's ‘it’s time' (1996). an allusion to pop history – the drifter's ‘this magic moment’ (1960) – is thus used in the service of a fatalistic narrative that manages to evoke both the ‘revenge and guilt’ famously associated with costello's early career and the early 1960's romanticism of brill building pop. the musical ‘magic moment’ of the song arrives in a ringing e major chord at the end of the chorus, played in open position on the electric guitar. the use of this e major chord references another line of pop music history, one that stretches back to the formation of ‘folk-rock’ in the mid-1960s. this paper serves as an example of how one song creates a series of magic moments that resonate densely with simultaneous histories.

there has been no greater tension within the tradition of black pop music than that associated with the performance of ‘black’ styles by white musicians and performers. in the past, it has been all too easy to identify many of these white artists under the rubric of ‘blue-eyed soul’ – a term that is as much a social construction of raced identities as it is a marketing ploy. using paul c. taylor's essay ‘funky white boys and honorary soul sisters’ as a reference, i'd like to argue that there are artists who transcend, to varying degrees, the kinds of ‘affective obstacles’ that make it difficult for some audiences to derive pleasures from so-called ‘white’ performances of black musical idioms.

records often include accidents. i suggest this tells us something about the flexibility of musical practices and the limits of theories. musical ‘hooks’ provide useful test-cases because the hook is normally considered the least accidental part of a song. we imagine it emerging fully formed in a moment of inspiration – the catchy phrase that comes into a songwriter's head – or at least of calculation: ‘i’ll see your vibraphone and raise you a mellotron'. but hooks sometimes incorporate accidents or happen accidentally. if hooks are less than completely determinate, then every aspect of the popular record must be subject to contingency. i argue for theories – and views of musical practices – which begin with the recognition that accidents happen.

popular music performance raises important questions about music-making as process. these questions are addressed through dealing with a further issue: the difference between music journalism and academic discourse on music. a dialogic structure is adopted. first, in a short paper, tim quirk examines film of the who playing at the isle of wight in 1970. he shows how pete townshend's performance moves through a cycle, from incompetence to the extraordinary: paradoxically, formulaic performance prompts sincerity (and so an extraordinary performance) on the part of townshend. jason toynbee responds by arguing that quirk's writing is able to open up, as journalism, an approach to performance not available to academics. what is at stake is the foregrounding of subjectivity in the writer (quirk) and, through this, the inter-subjectivity of performer and audience. quirk's own response follows, and there is then a second round of responses which develops these issues.

by focusing on brief examples from four writers – journalists anthony decurtis and lester bangs, academics sheila whiteley and susan mcclary – this piece is designed to inspire and/or shame readers into paying closer attention to how they use language when they describe or analyse music. an effort was made to keep the tone of the critiques informal and conversational, thus approximating the mood of the kind of session the author has found effective in more than thirty years of editing at the village voice, and many years of teaching writing to ambitious undergraduates as well as a class full of journalism grad students. in such sessions, the intention is always to better enable the writer to say what he or she wants to say as convincingly as possible. if ideas are called into question, that is because the editor believes them to be overly familiar, inconsistent, or already discarded by the writer's audience. what is at issue is the writing, not the writer. this is not to deny, unfortunately, that sometimes hurt feelings ensue.

it should be added that the references to magic initially addressed the conference theme ‘this magic moment’. given the essay's nuts-and-bolts attitude, however, they retain a more general relevance.

the critical karaoke project was a specific response to the endless parade of polls, lists and casual questions about ‘the greatest songs of all time’ – particularly to how that measure seems mismatched to pop, which bets everything on transitory pleasures, intensities, its own evanescence. a number of critics, scholars, poets and musicians were invited to the experience music project's annual pop conference in seattle, in the spring of 2004, to talk about any one song of their choosing, without making a case for its lasting worth, or cultural importance, truth, beauty, or any of the other high art values. they just had to take a song they had believed, once, for a minute or a decade, was the greatest song ever … and give an account of why they thought that, or how it felt to believe. one of the dreams was to ask for criticism under the sign of the top 40, not the canon. the other was to hear talented writers tell stories about songs, as they appeared in their daily lives. the trick was that all the participants were asked to tell their story in the span of time it took to listen to the song they had chosen – with the song playing behind them.

as a life-long music lover, i've always been fascinated by ‘cover tunes’ – versions of songs recorded by artists other than the composer. sometimes the original can't be improved; in other instances a cover tune can transcend the original and become the best-known version. one of the better-known ‘cover’ stories involves otis redding and aretha franklin. redding had written the pulsating ‘respect’ and recorded it in 1965. but when redding heard franklin's searing version, recorded two years later, he was said to have remarked: ‘i just lost my song. that girl took it away from me.’

sometimes i fall asleep right away. even before the orchestra turns the first page of music, i lean my head into my hand, propped up by the armrest, and let my eyelids fall. at first, though, the closing of my eyes comes as something of a shock. i would have just started watching the bows go up and down across the violins and violas and back and forth across the cellos and basses in a grand unison; i would have just started watching the conductor's arms and backside jerk and sway, not precisely with the music but in the slightest anticipation; i would have just started watching the musicians, their eyes fixed onto the papers in front of them, their movements nothing more than those required by the music. upon closing my eyes all this is gone. it is replaced by a dark, reddish-grey curtain, with a large block of faint light in the middle – the ghost image of the stage. my eyes at first search my eyelids with the same focus they used to watch the orchestra, and this large, abstract shape, because of its sudden closeness, makes my eyelids snap back open. upon opening, however, the shock of sudden darkness is replaced by a dull recognition: i immediately see the orchestra, and realise that nothing has changed and nothing is likely to change. the violinists are still sawing away, the conductor still has on his black coat, and the rows of heads in front of me are exactly as i had left them.