College of Creative Studies

Current Course Offerings
Spring 2007

STUDENT COLLOQUIUM

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - Elvis Costello

Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? - Nick Hornby

Pop music infuses most of our lives, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. We tend to use it as a means to understand, encapsulate, ease, or enhance our emotions and our experiences. Even if we're not obsessive "music geeks," or compulsive listeners, the most rote pop has the power to short-circuit logic and reason and hit us directly in the heart (or other places). Yet there's still an art to taking this emotional shorthand and communicating it through pure language - an art of approximation, but an art nonetheless, from which an entirely different hybrid can emerge.

This course will explore the possibilities that emerge from writing on pop music, starting with the review and ending with the free-form personal essay. There will be weekly writing assignments of varying lengths and with varying emphases. Classes will alternate between discussing the reading and work-shopping the writing assignments, with an eye towards getting them into publishable form. Hopefully, the class will also feature a guest speaker who works in the music journalism industry.

Along with the texts, there will be photocopies of current published reviews, and one required CD purchase. (Note that the reading has a bias towards rock music, but aficionados of all genres are encouraged to enroll. Good writing should always supersede individual taste.)