Has release conditions.
Must post first.
Throughout the course, you will be expected to read and respond to our supplemental text: Songbook by Nick Hornby. Each week, after reading the assigned Hornby chapters, you are to complete an initial discussion post as well as respond to posts by two of your classmates. Your initial post should be substantive (between 200-300 words in length) and should refer directly to the assigned chapters from Hornby’s text as you address the provided prompts.
Your two response posts should directly refer to the comments made by your classmates in their posts. As you create your response posts, imagine yourself engaged in a conversation that you want to keep going. What new ideas/questions/complications can you bring to the discussions that are already underway? Do not simply reiterate the content of your initial post or just praise your classmates for a post well done. You’re trying to advance a conversation, so think in terms of what you can add that’s new.
Week 3-Hornby’s Songbook
This week’s reading includes a really diverse group of artists (though some are barely mentioned): Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Ani DiFranco, Aimee Mann, Paul Westerberg, Suicide, and Teenage Fanclub (again). There’s much to unpack in what Hornby says about these songs, but some standout themes emerge and even overlap with some of the ideas presented in your primary textbook by Starr and Waterman. For instance, Hornby discusses the benefits of hearing Dylan or the Beatles for the first time when they first arrived on the musical scene, when their songs could be heard in the cultural moment in which they were written and recorded. This same idea is broached in Starr/Waterman’s discussion of blues music.
In your discussion posts this week, address the first prompt and at least one of the remaining prompts:
What elements or passages of Hornby’s chapters did you find most compelling (in either a positive or negative way) and which sections of his writing stood out to you as the most interesting and why?
What song or musical artist do you wish you could have heard in its/his/her/their heyday? How would a first listening in the original cultural context have changed your appreciation or enjoyment?
Hornby mentions the endurability of love as a lyrical theme for music. What love songs have stuck with you through the years? What makes them timeless? How have they avoided becoming cliche?
The chapter about Suicide’s song “Frankie Teardrop” argues that shock art is only appealing to those who have the security and comfort to “afford” it. In other words, the only people interested in listening to songs about violence are those whose lives are relatively free of violence. Agree or disagree? Provide specific examples to support your point of view.
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