Decline, Renewal and the City in Popular Music Culture: Beyond the Beatles

How is popular music culture connected with the life, image, and identity of a city? How, for example, did the Beatles emerge in Liverpool, come to be categorized as part of Liverpool culture and identity and used to develop and promote the city? This book explores the relationship between popular music and the city using Liverpool as a case study. It examines the impact of social and economic change on popular music culture, focusing on de-industrialization and economic restructuring during the 1980s and 1990s. It also considers the specificity of popular music culture and the ways in which it influences city life and informs the way that the city is thought about, valued and experienced.

Sara Cohen is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool, UK.

Contents: General editor's preface; Introduction; Music and the city: cultural diversity in a global cosmopolis; Music as a city sound: rock culture and the poetics of loss; Music as city heritage: decline and renewal in the Nashville of the North; Music as city business: trial, tribulation and place in a labour of love; Music as a city industry: haemorrhage, debt and the politics of music policy-making; Music and city tourism: respect, betrayal and the haunting of the Beatles; Music as a city quarter: brands, noises and regeneration; Conclusion; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.