Nothing Has Been Done Before

Is there such a thing today as music that's meaningfully new? In our contemporary era of remixing and retro styles, cynics and romantics alike cry "It's all been done before" while record labels and media outlets proclaim that everything is new. Coded into our daily conversations about popular music, newness as an artistic and cultural value is too often taken for granted. Nothing Has Been Done Before instigates a fresh debate about newness in American pop, rock 'n' roll, rap, folk, and R&B made since the turn of the millennium. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach that combines music criticism, philosophy, and the literary essay, Robert Loss follows the stories of a diverse cast of musicians who seek the new by wrestling with the past, navigating the market, and speaking politically. The transgressions of Bob Dylan's "Love and Theft". The pop spectacle of Katy Perry's 2015 Super Bowl halftime show. Protest songs against the war in Iraq. Nothing Has Been Done Before argues that performance heard in a historical context always creates a possibility for newness, whether it's Kendrick Lamar's multi-layered To Pimp a Butterfly, the Afrofuturist visions of Janelle Monáe, or even a Guided By Voices tribute concert in a local dive bar. Provocative and engaging, Nothing Has Been Done Before challenges nothing less than how we hear and think about popular music-its power and its potential.

Robert Loss is Assistant Professor in English and Philosophy at Columbus College of Art and Design, USA. His music criticism and journalism have been published in PopMatters, Public Books, Ghettoblaster, Bookslut, and the Los Angeles Review of Books (forthcoming). His articles about comics in The Comics Journal, The Comics Grid, and the International Journal of Comic Art.

Prologue: Nothing Has Been Done Before Part 1: The Past in the Present Revivals Are Revisions: New Millennial Folk Music Rolls the Dice "Love and Theft": Transgression and the Cultural Archive The Problem of Knowing Too Much: Meta-Rock and the Anxiety of Influence Sounds Before Our Time: Replicating the Old to Make the New Part 2: The American Wow Spectaglam! Katy Perry and the American Wow The New Digital Empire: Consumerism, Technology, and the New We Can Flux: Prince Queers Democracy and the New Kanye's Night at the Museum: The Iconoclast Goes to Work Power Up: Persona and Anonymity Trouble the American Wow Part 3: Shouting at the Hard of Hearing On the Good Side: Anti-War Music in the 2000s Shouting at the Hard of Hearing: Springsteen Finds a New Audience Living in the Interval: Political Hip Hop, Rap, Revolution, and To Pimp a Butterfly Bodies in the River: Tradition and "The Body Electric" Epilogue: Nothing Has Been Done Before, Again Notes Bibliography Acknowledgments and Permissions Index