Table of Contents

Contents: Introduction; Oh so dandy! The force of peculiarity; Pop subjectivities: poise and spectacle; Virtual insanity or the 'real thing'?; With a twist of the straight: dandyism and gender revolt; Singing the body fantastic: corporeality and the voice; Jack-a-Dandy: masking, virtuosity, and mannerism; Conclusion: 'let the boys all sing and the boys all shout...'; Discography; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author

Stan Hawkins is professor at the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo, and adjunct professor at the University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway,

Reviews

'In this analytic tour de force, Stan Hawkins uses the historical figure of the dandy to open up a remarkable range of insights into the aesthetics of popular music. Necessary reading for anyone who's ever wondered what made British pop so, well, British!' Simon Frith, University of Edinburgh, UK ’[Hawkins's] subject is relevant and fascinating, providing a means by which masculine display and subjectivity might be understood ... Hawkins provides a range of identities and strategies of identity that say much not only about the British pop dandy, but about Anglo-American pop culture itself, and provides a means of theorising identity that is only becoming ever-more relevant to the field.’ International Association for the Study of Popular Music ’As part of Ashgate's commendable Popular and Folk Music series, Stan Hawkins' The British Pop Dandy is a study of a wide-ranging number of British male pop artists from the late 1960s to the present, including acts as varied as David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Robert Smith and Robert Palmer, who have donned the dandy persona as an important part of their public and performative identity. ... Hawkins provides a stimulating and detailed analysis of the way recent British male pop stars' identities have been constructed and read...’ Musicology Australia ’As with so many other books on popular music that appear only to treat very particular subjects, this one simultaneously offers much in the way of general methodological approaches and so deserves to be read even if one’s scholarly interest in popular music is not gender, or ’pop’ music (as opposed to ’rock’). ... a complex and sophisticated treatment of the subject.... It is precisely studies such as this, ones which move away from discussing gender and sexuality in broad strokes towards a more nuanced categorisation that cuts across conventional gender binaries, that are needed in popular music studies.’ Popular Music ’... The British Pop Dandy is an impr