Songs of innocence and of experience

Songwriters often use lyrics to describe the current events and social attitudes of a particular period or people. An examination of America's popular songs—and the stories behind ...

Relationships are a wonderful, mysterious, often elusive, sometimes painful part of the human experience. The most intimate of all human relationships, according to the Bible, is t...

Following the successful,The American Musical Theatre Song Encyclopedia(Greenwood, 1995), this new encyclopedia reviews in-depth individual songs written for the American musical f...

Like all double albums, Songs in the Key of Life is imperfect but audacious. If its titular concern - life - doesn’t exactly allow for rigid focus, it’s still a fiercely inspired c...

Children’s art became a powerful weapon in America’s Cold War arsenal. Through art exchange programs like Art for World Friendship, American children functioned as cultural ambassa...

Islands are concentrated “instances” of place, in every sense of the term. As such, there are no better candidates for observing and critiquing the dynamics of globalization. Throu...

The first encyclopedia of theatre songs from Broadway shows ranging fromThe Black Crook(1866) to the 1994 Tony Award-winningPassion, this handy guide features over 1,800 songs from...

The key to understanding the vast majority of sacred expression in country music is understanding the gospel song and the religious developments for which it was the primary musica...