[Commlist] cfp: Popular Music Autobiographies: Rereading Musicians and their Audiences

CALL FOR CHAPTERS

“POPULAR MUSIC AUTOBIOGRAPHIES: REREADING MUSICIANS AND THEIR AUDIENCES”

This broad, interdisciplinary collection to be published by Bloomsbury 
Academic in 2024 will consider why popular music autobiography has 
recently become such a widely-read genre and a significant factor in 
mediating popular music for its audience.

Texts such as Viv Albertine’s Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, 
Music, Boys, Boys, Boys,  Miki Berenyi’s Fingers Crossed, Alex James’ 
Bit of a Blur, Nile Rodgers’ Le Freak, Gucci Mane’s Autobiography of 
Gucci Mane, and Bob Dylan’s Chronicles have been critically acclaimed 
and recorded on various best-seller lists whilst delivering for many 
fans an apparent insider’s understanding of musicians whose work they 
are invested in.

Yet such narratives have many other functions beyond thrilling fans with 
a sense of intimacy. Pop music autobiographies have variously attempted 
to rewrite social history; to redress gender or racial stereotypes; to 
question received models of fame; to validate new genres and scenes; to 
explore the renditions of subjectivity in pop music and lyrics; to 
justify transgressive behaviour; to critique the music industry.

The essays in this volume will address such diverse questions as the 
above, employing cultural theory frameworks to investigate what this 
often patronised or stereotyped genre has to offer in understanding 
popular music and its audiences today. The collection will also consider 
the forms deployed in pop music autobiographies, which range from 
familiar narrative arcs to experimental texts and virtual platforms.

We will work from a broad definition of autobiography, including 
conventional written narratives, via renditions of subjectivity in 
concerts, interviews, and life-writing, to manifestations of musicians’ 
lives including social media, museums, and avatars.

Suggested topics/themes for chapters (feel free to propose others that 
are important to you):

Earlier narratives by musicians before the rock era
Interviews as dialogised autobiography
Experimental forms of autobiography vs conventional narratives
Transgressive autobiographies and rock mythologising
Female and feminist musicians’ life writing
Musicians’ houses and museums as material Autobiographies
Musical subjectivities and musical genres
Lyrics as coded autobiography
Concerts as performed subjectivity
Ghosted autobiographies and promotional narratives
Oral histories and group autobiography
Musicians’ social media personae as real time virtual autobiographies
Avatars: performing virtual subjectivities
Proposals/abstracts should be 500 words maximum. Please include up to 5 
keywords and a brief biography of the author(s) which includes an 
institutional affiliation and your contact email.

Editorial team: Tom Attah (Leeds Arts University), Kirsty Fairclough 
(SODA at Manchester Metropolitan University), Christian Lloyd (Queens 
University of Canada)

Send your proposal(s) to: (poplifewriting /at/ gmail.com)

Deadline for Proposals: 30th April, 2023.  Accepted authors will be 
notified w/c 15th May 2023.  Accepted chapters to be delivered no later 
than 15th January 2024.

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