Léo Ferré exemplifies what is now widely regarded in France as the golden era of la chanson française during the 1950s and 1960s. This article examines how one singer-songwriter attempted to deal in his own, highly idiosyncratic way with the contraints of working within the record industry, and focuses on the development of his ambivalent relationship with the record label owner and producer, Eddie Barclay. Although sympathetic to Ferré's cause, Barclay also adopted a pragmatic approach, particularly where questions of censorship were concerned, as he attempted to balance commercial necessity, legal requirements as well as the creative demands of the artist. The discussion also explores how Ferré has contributed to contemporary intellectual debates relating to the significance of popular music within a French context. Ferré showed marked resistance to North American influence and middle-of-the-road pop music, particularly la chanson yéyé, but he was by no means not-influenced by the arrival of rock in France.

This paper explores some forms of rock/rap hybridity and a historically related shift toward a greater eclecticism in consumption practices in popular music in the United States in the late 1990s, a period marked by the decline of rock as the dominant mode of popular music. This decline has repercussions not simply for a musical style, but additionally for the privileged subjects who are both the producers and consumers of that music: predominantly white, middle-class males. A number of different strategies have emerged which attempt to develop new positions for these white suburbanites to occupy in the contemporary music-cultural terrain in order to re-assert their hegemony as both producers and consumers. On the producers' side, the most common strategy has been to develop hybrid forms which combine rock with styles of its musical competitors – most notably, of hip hop music and culture. On the consumer side, the response has been the emergence of a ‘neo-eclectic’ form of listening where a number of formerly disparate or even hostile musical forms are consumed by a single (white suburban) individual.

Joni Mitchell has recently been critically received and marketed as a ‘classic’ songwriter. Yet the existing literature has hardly begun to explore the sophistication of her technical achievement. One of her most distinctive contributions is in the realm of harmonic innovation. Through a comprehensive survey of her work, I have found that Mitchell's songs fall under five categories of harmonic organisation: modal, polymodal, chromatic, polytonal, and pedal point. I examine these categories in detail, choosing a variety of examples from the early years of her career (1966–1972). My analyses are intended to contribute to a more knowledgeable appreciation of Mitchell's intellectual stature as a composer. While many songwriters have been inventive within traditional tonal harmony, Mitchell's work is impressive for its extended exploration of alternatives to single key structures and the major/minor system.

Traditional genres, modern popular music, ‘classical’ concert music and other styles of music-making in Japan can be viewed as diverse elements framed within a musical culture. Bourdieu's concept of habitus, and Williams' of dominant, residual and emergent traditions, are helpful in formulating an inclusive approach, in contrast to the prevailing demarcation between traditional and popular music research. Koizumi Fumio first challenged the disciplinary separation of research on historical ‘Japanese music’ and modern hybrid music around 1980, and the influence of his work is reflected in a small number of subsequent writings. In Japanese popular music, evidence for musical habitus and residual traits of past practice can be sought not only in characteristics typical of musicological analysis; modal, harmonic and rhythmic structures; but also in aspects of the music's organisation, presentation, conceptualisation and reception. Among these are vocal tone and production techniques, technical and evaluative discourse, and contextual features such as staging, performer-audience interaction, the agency of individual musicians, the structure of corporate music-production, and the use of songs as vehicles for subjectivity. Such an inclusive approach to new and old musical practices in Japan enables demonstration of ways in which popular music is both part of Japanese musical culture and an authentic vehicle for contemporary Japanese identity.

This article argues for the prematurity of any dismissal of the notion of authenticity as meaningful within popular music discourse. It synthesises a range of views as to how authenticity is constructed, and offers a tri-partite typology dependent on asking who, rather than what, is being authenticated. It focuses on rock and folk genres, but also argues that the generic nature of the typology makes it applicable to any other genre wherein listeners are concerned to ask whether a musical utterance can be construed as sincere.

Against theories of cultural hybridity and disembodied flows of recorded media, this article argues for the continued relevance of the concept of regional musical scenes. It takes as examples contemporary punk as it exists in four cities and shows that there are different local accents in Washington D.C., Austin, Texas, Toronto and Mexico City. The conclusion describes some aspects of the social organisation of cultural contacts between these scenes. The article is part of a larger project of multi-site ethnography of youth subculture and resistance to globalisation.