“Linearity in Popular Song.” In On Popular Music and Its Unruly Entanglements, eds. Nick Braae and Kai Arne Hansen, 83-101. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
This chapter addresses temporality in popular music, with a particular focus on hearing and interpreting notions of linearity in songs. Drawing on the work of Jonathan Kramer, I argue that linear (or goal-directed) time can be understood as arising from melodic, arrangement, lyrical, and performance elements of a song. This is demonstrated with respect to five songs by Queen, Prince, and Rod Stewart. In the final analytical section, I introduce a new term—the denouement coda—for a closing section of a song that introduces new musical material, and, in some way, provides a metaphorical or lyrical comment on the preceding sections.