The Persistence of Sentiment is a critical account of a group of artists in American popular music who have met with commercial success but also critical disdain. This book examines the specific musical features of some exemplary pop songs and draws attention to the social contexts that contributed to their popularity as well as their dismissal. The artists under consideration were all members of more or less disadvantaged social categories: members of racial or sexual minorities, victims of class and/or gender prejudices, and/or advocates of populations excluded from the “mainstream.” Perhaps ... More

The Persistence of Sentiment is a critical account of a group of artists in American popular music who have met with commercial success but also critical disdain. This book examines the specific musical features of some exemplary pop songs and draws attention to the social contexts that contributed to their popularity as well as their dismissal. The artists under consideration were all members of more or less disadvantaged social categories: members of racial or sexual minorities, victims of class and/or gender prejudices, and/or advocates of populations excluded from the “mainstream.” Perhaps unexpectedly, it was the complicated commercial efflorescence of pop music in the 1970s that allowed the greater promulgation of musical styles and idioms that spoke to and for exactly those stigmatized audiences. Furthermore, the additional layers of interpretation created by the “Seventies Revival,” which took place beginning in the early 1990s, allow not only a deeper understanding of these songs’ function when they were first popular but also an appreciation of how their significance has shifted for American listeners in the succeeding three decades.