Music criticism and the social construction of meanings for Prince’s mid-1980s recordings

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35699/2317-6377.2020.19860

Keywords:

Prince and the Beatles, Music criticism, Music’s social meaning, Social mediation

Abstract

This work focuses on a social debate raised in the mid-1980s by both American journalists and music critics regarding two of Prince’s records. The first, Around the World in A Day, was released in 1985; the second, Parade: Music from the Motion Picture Under The Cherry Moon, was released in 1986. The debate surrounding these records stemmed from assumptions that they referenced albums produced by The Beatles in the late 1960s. This article presents an inquiry on the relationship between Prince, journalists and music critics, as well as on the roles played by these and other social agents in the collective construction of meanings for these Prince’s records, including musicians who collaborated in their production.

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Author Biography

Jonas Soares Lana, Federal Institute of Rio de Janeiro (Campus Eng. Paulo de Frontin)

Jonas Soares Lana is a professor at the Instituto Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Eng. Paulo de Frontin campus) and conducts research in the areas of popular music, ethnomusicology and anthropology. He holds a BA and an MA in History from the Federal University of Minas Gerais and a PhD in Social Sciences from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. Part of his doctoral research was conducted at the Music Department of Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio, USA). He is the author of the doctoral thesis "Rogério Duprat, Song Arrangements and the Tropicalist Sonoplasty? He collaborated as an editor for the "Music" section of the Itaú Cultural Encyclopedia. More recently he started a research on music, social memory and social movements in Baixada Fluminense, focusing on the history of the Donana Cultural Center - Belford Roxo/RJ). He currently collaborates as a professor and researcher in the Graduate Program in Music at the School of Music of the UFRJ - Federal university of Rio de Janeiro.

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Published

2021-04-09

How to Cite

Lana, Jonas Soares. 2021. “Music Criticism and the Social Construction of Meanings for Prince’s Mid-1980s Recordings”. Per Musi, no. 40 (April):1-18. https://doi.org/10.35699/2317-6377.2020.19860.

Issue

No. 40 (2020): General Topics

Section

Articles in Portuguese/Spanish

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