Song and System: The Making of American Pop Music

by Harvey Rachlin

From the first Tin Pan Alley tunes to today’s million-view streaming hits, pop songs have been supported and influenced by an increasingly complex industry that feeds audience demand for its ever-evolving supply of hits. Harvey Rachlin investigates how music entered American homes and established a cultural institution that would expand throughout the decades to become a multibillion dollar industry, weaving a history of the evolution of pop music in tandem with the music business. Exploding in the 1950s and ’60s with pop stars like Elvis and the Beatles, the music industry used new technologies like television to promote live shows and record releases. More recently, the development of online streaming services has forced the music industry to cultivate new promotion, distribution, copyright, and profit strategies. Pop music and its business have defined our shared cultural history. Song and The Making of American Pop Music not only charts the music that we all know and love but also reveals our active participation in its development throughout generations.

Genres: Music

328 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 27, 2020

Reviews

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book at the beginning. Rachlin looks at the history of pop music from its inception both in the creation of music and the systems that surround it like copyright. He started out covering it in a chronological order, which made sense but at some point he just seemed to start throwing things at the wall and not really keep to any kind of order. It would have been a much better book if he had just continued down the path he started. Also, at the end of the book there was just weirdly a list of popular songs from every year with one lyric from each song. Like why? Was he required to meet some page count that he was way under and this is how he filled it out? There was some interesting stuff here, but unfortunately I don't think that the book completely held together.

[Ryan Fischer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good history, but has a tendency to descend into long lists of songs - more direct connection between these songs and the technical and business aspects would've gone further to achieving the book's supposed goals.