WHY PAMPER LIFES COMPLEXITIES?
MUSIC AND SOCIETY
SERIES EDITORS PETER J. MARTIN AND TIA DENORA
Music and Society aims to bridge the gap between music scholarship and the human sciences. A deliberately eclectic series, its authors are nevertheless united by the contention that music is a social product, social resource, and social practice. As such it is not autonomous but is created and performed by real people in particular times and places; in doing so they reveal much about themselves and their societies.
In contrast to the established academic discourse, Music and Society is concerned with all forms of music, and seeks to encourage the scholarly analysis of both popular styles and those which have for too long been marginalised by that discourse folk and ethnic traditions, music by and for women, jazz, rock, rap, reggae, muzak and so on. These sounds are vital ingredients in the contemporary cultural mix, and their neglect by serious scholars itself tells us much about the social and cultural stratification of our society.
The time is right to take a fresh look at music and its effects, as todays music resonates with the consequences of cultural globalisation and the transformations wrought by new electronic media, and as past styles are reinvented in the light of present concerns. There is, too, a tremendous upsurge of interest in cultural analysis. Music and Society does not promote a particular school of thought, but aims to provide a forum for debate; in doing so, the titles in the series bring music back into the heart of socio-cultural analysis.
The land without music: music, culture and society in twentieth-century Britain
ANDREW BLAKE
Music and the sociological gaze: art worlds and cultural production
PETER J. MARTIN
Sounds and society: themes in the sociology of music
PETER J. MARTIN
Popular music on screen: from the Hollywood musical to music video
JOHN MUNDY
Popular music in England 18401914: a social history (2nd edition)
DAVE RUSSELL
The English musical renaissance, 18401940: constructing a national music (2nd edition)
ROBERT STRADLING AND MEIRION HUGHES
Time and memory in reggae music: the politics of hope
SARAH DAYNES
WHY PAMPER LIFES COMPLEXITIES?
Essays on The Smiths
edited by
Sean Campbell and Colin Coulter
Copyright Manchester University Press 2010
While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press,
copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may
be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author
and publisher.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN 978 0 7190 7840 8 hardback
ISBN 978 0 7190 7841 5 paperback
First published 2010
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CONTENTS
Why pamper lifes complexities?: an introduction to the book
Sean Campbell and Colin Coulter
Has the world changed or have I changed?: The Smiths and the challenge of Thatcherism
Joseph Brooker
Irish blood, English heart: ambivalence, unease and The Smiths
Sean Campbell
Heaven knows well soon be dust: Catholicism and devotion in The Smiths
Eoin Devereux
Sing me to sleep: suicide, philosophy and The Smiths
Kieran Cashell
A boy in the bush: childhood, sexuality and The Smiths
Sheila Whiteley
This way and that way: toward a musical poetics of The Smiths
Jonathan Hiam
I dont owe you anything: The Smiths and kitchen-sink cinema
Ceclia Mello
A double bed and a stalwart lover for sure: The Smiths, the death of pop and the not so hidden injuries of class
Colin Coulter
Last night we dreamt that somebody loved us: Smiths fans (and me) in the late 1980s
Karl Maton
When were in your scholarly room: the media, academia, and The Smiths
Fergus Campbell
So much to answer for: what do The Smiths mean to Manchester?
Julian Stringer
Take me back to dear old Blighty: Englishness, pop and The Smiths
Kari Kallioniemi
Guantnamo, here we come: out of place with The Smiths
Nabeel Zuberi
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Joseph Brooker teaches modern literature at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of Joyces Critics (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), Flann OBrien (Northcote House Publishers, 2005) and Literature of the 1980s: After the Watershed (Edinburgh University Press, 2010).
Fergus Campbell is Reader in Social and Cultural History at Newcastle University. He is the author of Land and Revolution: Nationalist Politics in the West of Ireland, 18911921 (Oxford University Press, 2005) and The Irish Establishment, 18791914 (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Sean Campbell is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Media at Anglia Ruskin in Cambridge. He is the author of Irish Blood, English Heart: Second-Generation Irish Musicians in England (Cork University Press, 2010), and is co-author (with Gerry Smyth) of Beautiful Day: Forty Years of Irish Rock (Atrium Press, 2005).
Kieran Cashell is Coordinator of Research, School of Art and Design, Limerick Institute of Technology and author of Aftershock: The Ethics of Contemporary Transgressive Art (IB Tauris, 2009) and More Relevance than Spotlight and Applause: Billy Bragg in the British Folk Tradition in I. Peddie (ed.), Popular Music and Human Rights, Volume I, British and American Music (Ashgate, 2010).
Colin Coulter teaches Sociology in the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He is the author of Contemporary Northern Irish Society: An Introduction (Pluto, 1999) and the co-editor of