This article examines the development of rock criticism in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland in the light of the Bourdieuian theory of cultural fields. We establish that fields with distinct autonomous poles do develop in each country between 1965 and 1980 but that it is not possible to talk about a common, Nordic field. Instead, each national field has to a large extent followed the general developments in the British or American fields (e.g. postmodern lifestyle criticism, consumer guidance, described in Lindberg et al. 2005) and taken in at least some of the specific characteristics of Anglo-American rock criticism while at the same time relating to and challenging, among other things, local literary and political traditions. One main difference, though, is that Nordic criticism to a large extent has been developed in daily newspapers and less so in specialized magazines. In a centre-periphery perspective
The approach of this article complements those of previous critics that account for the rise of the 'mature' style of Tin Pan Alley chiefly in terms of the internal logic of the field of American popular music. It suggests that the so-called golden age of the Alley (ca. 1920Alley (ca. -1940 should be considered in broader cultural terms, provided by modernisation and especially the growth of a 'cool', urban sensibility, representing a crucial reassessment of Victorian emotional style. In their contributions to this reassessment, the Alley greats stretched the conventions of popular song-writing in a number of ways, usually described vaguely in terms of 'wit', 'sophistication' and the like. Qualifying these concepts by lyrical analysis, the article suggests that the self-reflexive use of irony, linguistic play and 'realist' imperatives makes a number of songs approach contemporary 'high' literature in such a way that it makes sense to speak of a popular modernism.
a Associate professor, musicologist and youth culture researcher on the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication , Stockholm University , Sweden b Teacher and researcher in literature and pedagogics , Lund, Sweden c Sociologist studying social work ,
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.