This week sees the publication of my third book, The Late Voice: Time, Age and Experience in Popular Music. The book is being published by Bloomsbury Academic initially in a hardback edition. A cheaper paperback edition will be published at a later date.
From the book’s blurb: “Popular music artists, as performers in the public eye, offer a privileged site for the witnessing and analysis of ageing and its mediation. The Late Voice undertakes such an analysis by considering issues of time, age, memory, innocence and experience in modern popular song. At the heart of the study are six extended case studies of singers and songwriters – Ralph Stanley, Frank Sinatra, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell – whose work is discussed in relation to particular performance traditions and the articulation of lateness in various forms.”
I’ll be posting excerpts from the book on this site, along with additional material and links to audiovisual material related to the book’s main topics and case studies. In the meantime, more information and a preview of the book can be found here.
Late Voice 