From Disco Divas to the material girls: Who's ruling the charts?

Schlattmann, Tim

doi:10.1080/03007769108591451

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Others have used analyses of the charts in order to map certain trends (e.g. Fitzgerald, 1997;Harrison, 2007;Myer and Kleck, 2007;Phillips and Schlattmann, 1990;Schlattmann, 1991;Schurk et al, 2007). 3 Australian fans of chart information now have an online home, at the Australian Charts website (n.d.).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making time stand still

Huber

2010

International Journal of Cultural Studies

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It’s hard to keep up with the Top 40. Popular songs quickly lose their contemporaneity, become ‘past hits’, and are replaced by the next thing … and them by the next. With its high-velocity temporality and multi-mediation, Top 40 culture is hard to ‘fix’: its content is always changing, and thus is difficult to capture for critique. Top 40 culture ‘disappears’ easily, with only selected elements being retained in cultural memory, or preserved in academic analytic discourse. Much of Top 40’s content is forgotten. This article argues that the constant supersession of the texts of Top 40 poses a challenge to academic inquiry, when such writing about them threatens to become obsolete (just like singles themselves) once the songs are no longer popular. It introduces the activities of some collectors of Top 40 data who collate and publish chart information in book form. Their practices seem to succeed in ‘fixing’ the Top 40’s transience by finding ways of keeping pace with the ever-changing charts. Their success in apprehending the momentum of Top 40 provides one way of thinking beyond the anxiety of disappearance, and suggests new possibilities for research methodology in this area of popular cultural studies.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making time stand still

Huber

2010

International Journal of Cultural Studies

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“…How does this brief review of the Diva complex relate to women in business, and thus, entrepreneurship in its widest sense? The study of Schlattmann (1991) set in the music industry appreciated the rise of a group of woman singers known as the "Disco Divas" from being singers to "Material Girls" who choreographed their own careers thereby increasing their earning power. The Diva construct has now been extended to cover women in business -for example, Carlassare andSeybold (2001), Harrington (2001) and Forson and Ozbiglin (2002) all make reference to Dot.Com Divas.…”

Section: What the Literature Tells Usmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Diva storyline: an alternative social construction of female entrepreneurship

Smith

2009

International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship

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PurposeMany “Divas” despite possessing destructive character traits ironically become successful entrepreneurs thus illustrating an alternative “storied” social construction of entrepreneurship. This influences how female entrepreneurs are perceived in the popular press and can be manipulated as an alternative entrepreneurial reality. The purpose of this paper is to build upon research into entrepreneurial identity introducing the “Diva” concept.Design/methodology/approachThe qualitative methodological approach involves an analysis of biographies of famous Diva's to identify common themes; and an internet trawl to identify supplementary micro‐biographies and newspaper articles on “Divas”. This tripartite approach allows rich data to be collected permitting a comparative analysis.FindingsThis empirical paper presents the socially constructed nature of entrepreneurial narrative and the “Diva storyline” demonstrating the influence of journalistic licence upon how successful women are portrayed. The paper adds incremental credence to power of male‐dominated journalistic practices to vilify enterprising behaviour to sell newspapers.Research limitations/implicationsAn obvious limitation to the work is that the sample of articles and biographies selected were chosen via search parameters which mention the word “Diva”. Nevertheless, there is scope for further “more detailed” research into the phenomenon to flesh out the model built in this preliminary paper.Practical implicationsAn important implication for scholars and journalists is the need to reconsider how we tell and decode entrepreneur stories. As researchers, we need to recognise that there are other avenues for women to become entrepreneurs than to become businesswomen and that it is alright for women to reject the “entrepreneur” label.Originality/valueThis paper informs our understanding of the socially constructed nature of how we tell, understand and appreciate entrepreneur stories. It thus makes a unique contribution by illustrating that the storylines which constitute the “Diva cycle” are constructed from the same storylines that we associate with entrepreneur stories but narrated in a different order. It provides another heuristic device for understanding the social construction of gendered entrepreneurial identities making it of interest to feminist scholars of entrepreneurship and to social constructionists alike.

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“…One reason that the charts are taken for granted is that we imagine them as a mere reflection of the music business. Scholars have used the charts as indicators of the impact of MTV on the number of award winning records (Phillips and Schattmann 1990), of women in the business (Hesbacher et ah 1977;Cooper 1985;Wells 1986Wells , 1991Schlattmann 1991), and of new music charts on established charts (Ennis 1992). No one, however, has analysed the structural meanings of the charts per se.…”

Section: Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Counting down to number one: the evolution of the meaning of popular music charts

Hakanen¹

1998

Pop. Mus.

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Every weekday evening on Columbia Broadcasting's (CBS) Late Show, host David Letterman delivers his tongue-in-cheek top ten lists. The lists have become one of the most recognisable symbols of American popular culture. Part of the humour lies in the pithy ranked statements about current events. However, much of the fun resides in Letterman's mockery of our obsession with rankings – rankings of everything from automobiles to college football teams to human attractiveness. The humour is sustained from night to night, week to week, year to year because of our uneasiness with rankings as a very powerful and enduring value-organising tool.

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From Disco Divas to the material girls: Who's ruling the charts?

Cited by 5 publications

References 8 publications

Making time stand still

Making time stand still

The Diva storyline: an alternative social construction of female entrepreneurship

Counting down to number one: the evolution of the meaning of popular music charts

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