Popular Song in the 19th Century. Edited by Derek Scott. Turnhout: Brepols, 2022. 380 pp. ISBN: 978-2-503-60078-9

Abstract

tions, categories and classifications in a way that inadvertently formulates a priori guidelines. Organisationally, this renders a disconnect between the majority of the book and the final chapters, which would perhaps stand better as a distinct article. There are quite a few moments of useful insight in this book. Popular debate does in many ways continue to revolve around a needless parsing of definitions; this book offers a unique corrective to that tendency. However, I would be remiss if I did not state that readers already familiar with existing scholarly literature will likely find A Philosophy of Cover Songs to be an intriguing if somewhat pedantic exercise. Ultimately, the kind of pragmatic pluralism Magnus argues for is already deployed by scholars in areas of popular music, communication, media studies and cultural studies (even if we do not explicitly name our approach with that term). And we have been doing so in more – and more contextually expansive – ways than are suggested by the author. Some of the definitive work on cover songs addresses concerns over (for example) copyright, historiography, race, the archive, changing practices of consumption, cross-cultural influence, postmodernism, commerce, aesthetics, changing technological formats, narrative recontextualisation and the relation between audience use and perceptions of value (Plasketes 2010; Popular Music and Society special issue, 2008). Indeed, pluralism (whether pragmatic or not) already defines our approach to cover songs.