This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| Journal of Popular Music Studies | |
|---|---|
| Title | Journal of Popular Music Studies |
| Discipline | Popular music studies |
| Abbreviation | J. Pop. Music Stud. |
| Publisher | University of Illinois Press |
| Country | United States |
| Frequency | Quarterly |
| History | 1989–present |
| Issn | 0899-7612 |
| Eissn | 1752-5295 |
Journal of Popular Music Studies is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering research in popular music, popular culture, and related interdisciplinary approaches. Founded in 1989, the journal publishes scholarship that engages with historical, ethnographic, theoretical, and musicological methods to analyze popular music practices, industries, and communities. Contributors include scholars who study artists, genres, media industries, performance networks, festivals, and technologies related to public music-making and reception.
The journal emerged amid scholarly interest generated by work on The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince that intersected with developments at institutions such as New York University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, and Indiana University Bloomington. Early issues featured studies of popular music scenes in cities like Detroit, Liverpool, New Orleans, Nashville and Seattle, and on movements including punk rock, disco, hip hop, heavy metal, soul, and country music. Editorial shifts over the 1990s and 2000s paralleled the rise of digital music platforms associated with Napster, iTunes, Spotify, and scholarly engagement with media events such as the Woodstock archives, the Live Aid concerts, and the legacy of the Monterey Pop Festival.
The journal seeks to publish work that advances understanding of artists such as Stevie Wonder, Patti Smith, Kurt Cobain, Beyoncé Knowles, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald, as well as industry institutions like Motown Records, Atlantic Records, Columbia Records, Island Records, and Sub Pop Records. It foregrounds analyses of phenomena including radio networks like BBC Radio 1, TV programs such as Top of the Pops, festivals exemplified by Glastonbury Festival, and archives like the Smithsonian Institution collections. The aims emphasize interdisciplinary methodologies linking scholars at centers such as Goldsmiths, University of London, University of California, Berkeley, University of Toronto, McGill University, and Rutgers University. The journal encourages studies that intersect with cultural moments like Civil Rights Movement, the Stonewall riots, Vietnam War protests, and award events such as the Grammy Awards.
Published quarterly by the University of Illinois Press, the journal has had editors affiliated with institutions including Ohio State University, University of Michigan, Rutgers University, Boston University, and University of Edinburgh. It accepts original research articles, review essays, and special thematic issues on topics such as gender studies involving figures like Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell, queer studies involving Freddie Mercury and Sylvester, race studies involving James Brown and Nina Simone, and transnational studies centered on scenes in Rio de Janeiro, Seoul, Tokyo, and Lagos. Production formats have evolved from print to include digital distribution aligned with platforms used by organizations such as the Library of Congress and university libraries at Columbia University and Harvard University.
The journal is indexed in major services and bibliographies serving humanities and social sciences collections, commonly consulted alongside resources like JSTOR, Project MUSE, Scopus, Web of Science, and the Modern Language Association bibliography. Libraries at institutions such as Yale University, Princeton University, University of California system and Cornell University list the journal in their serials, and it appears in citation databases that track scholarship on artists such as The Rolling Stones, U2, Radiohead, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen.
Notable contributions have examined topics like the commodification of hip hop through case studies on Public Enemy, N.W.A, and Run-DMC, gendered labor in touring involving Cher and Taylor Swift, archival recoveries of marginalized artists including Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Blind Lemon Jefferson, and analyses of technology-driven distribution shifts tied to MP3 adoption and streaming services. Special issues have addressed diasporic musics originating from Jamaica and Haiti, global pop industries in South Korea with BTS and K-pop, and the role of online communities around TikTok and YouTube. The journal's articles have been cited in monographs and textbooks used in courses at University of Southern California, New York University, and King's College London, influencing music curricula and public-facing exhibitions at museums such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Scholarly reception notes the journal's contribution to legitimizing popular music as a field of study alongside debates around canon formation involving figures like Leonard Bernstein and Igor Stravinsky. Critics have called for greater geographic diversification beyond coverage of scenes in London, Los Angeles, and New York City toward underrepresented regions such as parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America while urging stronger engagement with non-English sources from publishers like Universidade de São Paulo and research institutes such as the Australian National University. Responses have also discussed editorial balance between musicological analysis of notation and sound and culturally oriented approaches referencing events like the Feminist movement and labor histories tied to touring unions and festival organizers.
Category:Music journals Category:Quarterly journals Category:Academic journals established in 1989