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The fourth audience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2008

Charles Hamm
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Extract

Billy Joel's song ‘It's Still Rock and Roll to Me’, which rose to the top of Billboard magazine's ‘Hot 100’ chart in July of 1980, was intended as entertainment, not criticism. But it makes a more accurate statement about the present state of rock music in the USA than have the writings of certain journalists and critics over the past decade. Against a stripped-down instrumental accompaniment, parodying the ‘minimalism’ of much new wave music, Joel sings,

Everybody's talking about the new sound; funny, But it's still rock and roll to me.

Type
Research Article
Information
Popular Music , Volume 1 , January 1981 , pp. 123 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

Hamm, Charles, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America (New York, 1979).Google Scholar
Nugent, Stephen, and Charles, Gillett, Rock Almanac: Top Twenty American and British Singles and Albums of the '50s, '60s and '70s (Garden City, 1978).Google Scholar
Wilder, Alec, American Popular Song: the Great Innovators, 1900–1950 (New York, 1972).Google Scholar