Britney Spears barely survived 2007. She divorced her husband, lost custody of her kids, went to rehab, shaved her head and assaulted a paparazzo. In the midst of her public breakdown, she managed to record an album, Blackout. Critics thought it spelled the end for Britney Spears' career. But Blackout turned out to be one of the most influential albums of the aughts. It not only brought glitchy digital noise and dubstep into the Top 40, but also transformed Britney into a new kind of pop star, one who shrugged off mainstream ubiquity for the devotion of smaller groups of fans who worshipped her idiosyncratic sound. This book returns to the grimy clubs and paparazzi hangouts of LA in the 2000s as well as the blogs and forums of the early internet to show how Blackout was a crucial hinge between twentieth and twenty-first-century pop.

'[An] astute reckoning with modern celebrity' - The Times 'A wild read' - The Guardian 'A well-researched, measured account' - The Sun Part biography, part social history, Being Britney pieces together a collage of stories, interviews, legends and fan experiences to construct a definitive portrait of one of the biggest stars in recent history. In her unique narrative, acclaimed music author Jennifer Otter Bickerdike provides a sympathetic yet objective re-examination of Britney's trajectory from girl next door to woman trapped by fame. Being Britney is the compelling account of a talented, troubled and talked-about modern icon, whose life, work and individual significance will be recognised for many decades to come. 'After years of being framed as a victim, Britney deserves to be celebrated as the fighter, inspiration and enigma she truly is.' - Jennifer Otter Bickerdike

Musical Creativities in Practice explores the social and the cultural contexts in which creativity in music occurs. It begins by considering what constitutes creativity - taking a cross cultural view of music, while investigating creative processes far beyond just the classical music genre - including electronic media, popular music, and improvised music. In addition it looks at creativity in both writing and performing. The field of musical education is a key focus - examining why creativity is important within the educational environment, and looking at how schools might sometimes stifle creativity in their music teaching, rather than encourage it. The book is packed with case studies and real-life examples taken from studies across the world, providing a powerful corrective to myths and outmoded conceptions which privilege the creative practice of individual artists. Musical Creativity in Practice argues the need for conceptual expansion of musical creativities in line with vital contemporary real world practices. It explores how different types of musical creativities are recognised and communicated in the real world practices of a diversity of professional musicians. The book covers creative practice issues underlying composing, improvising, singer songwriting, originals bands, DJ cultures, live coding and interactive sound designing and the implications of creativity research for music education and for the assessment of creativities in industry and education. Musical Creativities in Practice will be valuable for those in fields of music psychology and music education, from advanced undergraduate level upwards.

The ninth entry in the acclaimed series celebrating the best writing on every style of music, from rock to hip-hop, R&B to jazz, pop to blues, and more. Best music writing is the definitive guide to the year in music writing, an annual feast of essays, missives, and musings on every musical style by critics, novelists, and musicians themselves. Culled from publications ranging from blogs to the New Yorker, the 2008 edition captures a year in music writing as diverse and riveting as the music it illuminates.

A former widower whose life was saved by writing about music spends a year waiting for his new wife to fly over from Toronto and join him in London. While he waits he observes that the world is subtly changing and that music has played a key part in these changes. A galaxy of characters, ranging from Marty Wilde to Jay-Z via Glenn Gould, Dorothy Squires, Britney Spears, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Patrick Cargill, Orson Welles and many forgotten others, conspire to alter his perspective, leading to a climax where he is finally united with his wife and the world chooses a new and better leader. The Blue in the Air is a gesture of defiance from a tiny but meaningful tugboat of resistance. At a time when we are repeatedly encouraged for reasons of demographic convenience to believe that music can change nothing and mean nothing, this writer demonstrates comprehensively that for those who stay awake, alert and alive, music still retains the power to change the fabric of the air we choose to breathe.

Red Hot + Blue is a meditation on music's capacity to find us, transform us, and help us make sense of our historical moment. Blending memoir and cultural history, Garrison recalls his coming out at the height of the AIDS crisis alongside the music industry's first major response to the epidemic. In 1990, a groundbreaking effort by musical artists sought to combat the silence and stigma about the disease. The resulting tribute album to legendary composer Cole Porter was evocatively titled Red Hot + Blue, capturing both the joy and melancholy that accompany love during turbulent times. It re-imagined those iconic songs - including “Don't Fence Me In,” “Every Time We Say Goodbye,” “Night and Day” - not just to celebrate the composer but also to offer a shared vision for survival. In this book, Garrison reflects on his own life story through the lens of Porter's life and music to illuminate the emotional landscape we all navigate in the search for love. Red Hot + Blue returns us to the early 1990s to reveal how the love songs of the past can be revived to speak to new audiences in times of need. The book is the portrait of an album, a pandemic, and a young gay man's coming of age in the era of both.

Can a bout of laziness or a digressive spell actually open up paths to creativity and unexpected insights? In Obstruction Nick Salvato suggests that for those engaged in scholarly pursuits laziness, digressiveness, and related experiences can be paradoxically generative. Rather than being dismissed as hindrances, these obstructions are to be embraced, clung to, and reoriented. Analyzing an eclectic range of texts and figures, from the Greek Cynics and Denis Diderot to Dean Martin and the Web series Drunk History, Salvato finds value in five obstructions: embarrassment, laziness, slowness, cynicism, and digressiveness. Whether listening to Tori Amos's music as a way to think about embarrassment, linking the MTV series Daria to using cynicism to negotiate higher education's corporatized climate, or examining the affect of slowness in Kelly Reichardt's films, Salvato expands our conceptions of each obstruction and shows ways to transform them into useful provocations. With a unique, literary, and self-reflexive voice, Salvato demonstrates the importance of these debased obstructions and shows how they may support alternative modes of intellectual activity. In doing so, he impels us to rethink the very meanings of thinking, work, and value.