Drawing on methodologies and approaches from media and cultural studies, sociology, social history and the study of popular music, this book outlines the development of the study of men and masculinities, and explores the role of cultural texts in bringing about social change. It is against this backdrop that The Beatles, as a cultural phenomenon, are set, and their four live action films, spanning the years 1964-1970, are examined as texts through which to read changing representations of men and masculinity in 'the Sixties'. Dr Martin King considers ideas about a male revolt predating second-wave feminism, The Beatles as inheritors of the possibilities of the 1950s and The Beatles' emergence as men of ideas: a global cultural phenomenon that transgressed boundaries and changed expectations about the role of popular artists in society. King further explores the chosen Beatle texts to examine discourses of masculinity at work within them. What emerges is the discovery of discourses around resistance, non-conformity, feminized appearance, pre-metrosexuality, the male star as object of desire, and the emergence of The Beatles themselves as a text that reflected the radical diversity of a period of rapid social change. King draws valuable conclusions about the legacy of these discourses and their impact in subsequent decades.

More than 50 years after their breakup, the Beatles are still attracting fans from various generations, all while retaining their original fan base from the 1960s. Why have those first-generation fans continued following the Beatles and are now introducing their grandchildren to the group? Why are current teens affected by the band's music? And perhaps most importantly, how and why do the Beatles continue to resonate with successive generations? Unlike other bands of their era, the Beatles seem permanently frozen in time, having never descended into "nostalgia act" territory. Instead, even after the announcement of the band's breakup in 1970, the group has maintained its cultural and musical relevance. Their timeless quality appeals to younger generations while maintaining the loyalty of older fans. While the Beatles indeed represent a specific time period, their music and words address issues as meaningful today as they were during the Summer of Love: politics, war, sex, drugs, art, and creative liberation. As the first anthology to assess the nature of fan response and the band's enduring appeal, Fandom and the Beatles: The Act You've Known for All These Years defines and explores these unique qualities and the key ways in which this particular pop fusion has inspired such loyalty and multigenerational popularity.

Gender performativity, its variances depending on their historical, social and cultural contexts, and the rituals, representations and institutions involved in gender performances are some of the issues the authors addressed in this collection. Gender under Construction takes a non-essentialist view of gender and provides illustrative examples of gender constructive processes by pursuing them in various contexts and by means of diverse methodologies. In so doing, the book demonstrates that it is unfeasible to consider gender as a fixed biological trait. Instead, the authors propose to look at gender performance as ongoing processes in which femininities and masculinities enter multiple and dynamic intersections with a myriad of categories, including those of nationality, ethnicity, class, sexuality and age. Contributors are Iqbal Akthar, Renata Ćuk, Ewa Glapka, Deirdre Hynes, Borja Ibaseta, Martin King, Ana Cristina Moreira Lima, Mervi Patosalmi, Marcia Bastos de Sá, Andréa Costa da Silva, Vera Helena Ferraz de Siqueira, Christi van der Westhuizen and Isabelle V. Zinn.

Winner of the 2022 Open Publication Prize by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-ANZ) A Women's History of the Beatles is the first book to offer a detailed presentation of the band's social and cultural impact as understood through the experiences and lives of women. Drawing on a mix of interviews, archival research, textual analysis, and autoethnography, this scholarly work depicts how the Beatles have profoundly shaped and enriched the lives of women, while also reexamining key, influential female figures within the group's history. Organized topically based on key themes important to the Beatles story, each chapter uncovers the varied and multifaceted relationships women have had with the band, whether face-to-face and intimately or parasocially through mediated, popular culture. Set within a socio-historical context that charts changing gender norms since the early 1960s, these narratives consider how the Beatles have affected women's lives across three generations. Providing a fresh perspective of a well-known tale, this is a cultural history that moves far beyond the screams of Beatlemania to offer a more comprehensive understanding of what the now iconic band has meant to women over the course of six decades.

Why is gender inseparable from pop songs? What can gender representations in musical performances mean? Why are there strong links between gender, sexuality and popular music? The sound of the voice, the mix, the arrangement, the lyrics and images, all link our impressions of gender to music. Numerous scholars writing about gender in popular music to date are concerned with the music industry’s impact on fans, and how tastes and preferences become associated with gender. This is the first collection of its kind to develop and present new theories and methods in the analysis of popular music and gender. The contributors are drawn from a range of disciplines including musicology, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, philosophy, and media studies, providing new reference points for studies in this interdisciplinary field. Stan Hawkins’s introduction sets out to situate a variety of debates that prompts ways of thinking and working, where the focus falls primarily on gender roles. Amongst the innovative approaches taken up in this collection are: queer performativity, gender theory, gay and lesbian agency, the female pop celebrity, masculinities, transculturalism, queering, transgenderism and androgyny. This Research Companion is required reading for scholars and teachers of popular music, whatever their disciplinary background.

In this rigorous study, Marcus Collins reconceives the Beatles' social, cultural and political impact on sixties Britain.

Teaching the Beatles is designed to provide ideas for instructors who teach the music of the Beatles. Experienced contributors describe varied approaches to effectively convey the group’s characteristics and lasting importance. Some of these include: treating the Beatles’ lyrics as poetry; their influence on the world of art, film, fashion and spirituality; the group’s impact on post-war Britain; political aspects of the Fab Four; Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting and musical innovations; the band’s use of recording technology; business aspects of the Beatles’ career; and insights into teaching the Beatles in an online format.

When rock ’n’ roll emerged in the 1950s, ministers denounced it from their pulpits and Sunday school teachers warned of the music’s demonic origins. The big beat, said Billy Graham, was “ever working in the world for evil.” Yet by the early 2000s Christian rock had become a billion-dollar industry. The Devil’s Music tells the story of this transformation. Rock’s origins lie in part with the energetic Southern Pentecostal churches where Elvis, Little Richard, James Brown, and other pioneers of the genre worshipped as children. Randall J. Stephens shows that the music, styles, and ideas of tongue-speaking churches powerfully influenced these early performers. As rock ’n’ roll’s popularity grew, white preachers tried to distance their flock from this “blasphemous jungle music,” with little success. By the 1960s, Christian leaders feared the Beatles really were more popular than Jesus, as John Lennon claimed. Stephens argues that in the early days of rock ’n’ roll, faith served as a vehicle for whites’ racial fears. A decade later, evangelical Christians were at odds with the counterculture and the antiwar movement. By associating the music of blacks and hippies with godlessness, believers used their faith to justify racism and conservative politics. But in a reversal of strategy in the early 1970s, the same evangelicals embraced Christian rock as a way to express Jesus’s message within their own religious community and project it into a secular world. In Stephens’s compelling narrative, the result was a powerful fusion of conservatism and popular culture whose effects are still felt today.

Drawing on methodologies and approaches from media and cultural studies, sociology, social history and the study of popular music, this book outlines the development of the study of men and masculinities, and explores the role of cultural texts in bringing about social change. It is against this backdrop that The Beatles, as a cultural phenomenon, are set, and their four live action films, spanning the years 1964-1970, are examined as texts through which to read changing representations of men and masculinity in 'the Sixties'. Dr Martin King considers ideas about a male revolt predating second-wave feminism, The Beatles as inheritors of the possibilities of the 1950s and The Beatles' emergence as men of ideas: a global cultural phenomenon that transgressed boundaries and changed expectations about the role of popular artists in society. King further explores the chosen Beatle texts to examine discourses of masculinity at work within them. What emerges is the discovery of discourses around resistance, non-conformity, feminized appearance, pre-metrosexuality, the male star as object of desire, and the emergence of The Beatles themselves as a text that reflected the radical diversity of a period of rapid social change. King draws valuable conclusions about the legacy of these discourses and their impact in subsequent decades.

The Beatles were the most significant cultural phenomenon of their time, but what exactly did they signify? Using a psychoanalytic approach, The Beatles with Lacan attempts to answer this still relevant question. It argues that Beatlemania and the music of Lennon/McCartney highlighted the end of the Modern Age as it had been expressed in the ideals of the Enlightenment. The albums from Revolver (1966) to Abbey Road (1969) are seen collectively as the first popular post-modern classic of western music, and the Beatles themselves as cultural pioneers of enduring achievement.