John Howland, Hearing Luxe Pop: Glorification, Glamour, and the Middlebrow in American Popular Music (Oakland: University of California Press, 2021), ISBN: 978-0-520-30010-1 (hb), 978-0-520-30011-8 (pb).

Abstract

In his new book, John Howland showcases a set of ‘entertainment practices and aesthetics’ (13) geared towards lushness, glamour, and sophistication, and traces their lineage across genres and generations. One of the refreshing aspects of his approach is the way he takes mass enjoyment seriously as a historical phenomenon, bringing it from the overlooked background to the foreground of interest. Many genre and style histories pivot on subcultural or vanguard innovations and give short shrift to the vast middle-of-the-road sonic terrains with which they commingle and cross-fertilize. Howland takes us to the soft, luscious centre. In this, he participates in the recent advancement of scholarship into middlebrow musical taste and discourse. His cross-genre perspective frees him to appreciate hybrids (e.g., ‘jazz-with-strings’, ‘symphonic soul’, ‘jazz-meets-pop’) and fuzzy adjacencies (‘a large family of “jazzy”, syncopated popular musics’, 85), while shining light on some lesser-known entertainment forms (e.g., ‘the big-band venue of movie theater prologue-revue shows’, 93). Far from resulting in a bland porridge, the impure exchanges and mongrelizations he highlights are multiform and vibrant with stylistic collisions. The book fleshes out a historical narrative, covering four distinct eras: