Popular Music in America: The Beat Goes on

by Michael Campbell

Michael Campbell's best-selling POPULAR MUSIC IN AMERICA, now in its fourth edition, remains the industry standard in breadth of coverage, readability, and musical focus. The text provides a rich account of the evolution of popular music from the mid-19th century to the present. Discussions highlight connections, contrasts, and patterns of influence among artists, styles, and eras. Coverage of listening skills allows students to place music of their choice in context. The Fourth Edition expands the coverage of country, Latin, world, and late 20th century music to give instructors more options to teach the course as they choose to. A major reorganization replaces long chapters with units broken into small chapters to make the material easier for students to read and master. Units are clearly defined by style and timeframe, and chapters feature narrowly focused objectives. This edition features a vibrant, richly illustrated, magazine-like design, plus numerous online resources. Almost all listening examples are available on iTunes via dedicated playlists; instructors who adopt the text will also receives copies of the "heritage 3-CD set" from the 3rd edition for personal, library, and class use.

Genres: Music, History

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 9, 1996

Reviews

[Acenith Claassen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed the journey through music and time. The only critique I would offer is to the authors fascination and fixation on certain things and therefore his attribution to them for all that is music. This fixation, perhaps inadvertently works to detract from the contributions of certain factions in popular music, and lay the lions share of its development over the decades.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

The content was interesting, but the text was quite dry, even for a textbook. It also omitted a lot of important content (how can you overlook the impact Johnny Cash had on music at the time?)

Overall it was a good book, but the professor made the class fun, not the textbook.

[Skylar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, comprehensive read on history of music that is quite educational. Some sections too brief for my liking, and there seemed to be a bias between which musicians to reference their controversies. Still, learned far mire than I would have thought I would.