Trouble Songs: A Musicological Poetics

“Highly annotated—often to personal, humorous, and hidden effects—the book weaves among genres, chronologies, and various forms of trouble to ask ‘Where are we in song? Who are we in song?’ Johnson suggests that an answer lies somewhere in the locus of singer, song, and listener—the “essential relations in the Trouble Song.’ Detouring into philosophy, cultural theory, and verse, Johnson works multilaterally to explore what trouble in popular music does to connect listeners, embolden them, and open a space from which trouble can be addressed across time.” — Publishers Weekly