Reading Eldritch Priest’s Earworm and Event and preparing this review has provided more real intellectual fun than I have had in a very long time. Figuring out what it’s like to…think like Priest has re-braided my synapses, sending them in spirals rarely experienced. That said, I have to issue a warning to the reader. As someone who has published three books that are apparently read by others as being about something other than what I thought they were about, I must begin this review by stating clearly that Earworm and Event is not really about earworms. Or events, for that matter. Priest states it directly at the very beginning. This study “takes the earworm as a point of entry into thinking about broader theoretical concerns regarding the nature of thought and perception today” [EW 2].1 In this book, the earworm “offers insight into not only how human brains process...
Review: Earworm and Event: Music, Daydreaming, and Other Imaginary Refrains, by Eldritch Priest
Barry Shank is College of Arts and Sciences distinguished professor of comparative studies at Ohio State University, where he teaches courses in American studies, popular music studies, cultural theory and interdisciplinary methods. He is the author of The Political Force of Musical Beauty (Duke University Press, 2014), A Token of My Affection: Greeting Cards and American Business Culture (Columbia University Press, 2004), and Dissonant Identities: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Scene in Austin, Texas (Wesleyan University Press, 1994), and a co-editor of The Popular Music Studies Reader (Routledge, 2005), with Andy Bennett and Jason Toynbee), and American Studies: A New Anthology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), with Janice Radway, Kevin Gaines and Penny Von Eschen.
Barry Shank; Review: Earworm and Event: Music, Daydreaming, and Other Imaginary Refrains, by Eldritch Priest. Journal of Popular Music Studies 1 December 2024; 36 (4): 156–160. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2024.36.4.156
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