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Off Key stands as an inspiring contribution to the debate on the meaningful difference between film music with a rare sense of political urgency and great intellectual depth. --Music & Letters Written in a lively and engaging style, Off Key casts a spotlight on several dark corners of popular culture: Elvis Presley musicals, composer biopics, Italian horror films, Madonna's acting career. Sifting through the various meanings of work, Kay Dickinson argues that these misbegotten synergies between the film and music business expose the larger fissures that extrude in the relation between capital and labor in the culture industry. Dickinson's dialectical diagnoses are consistent with a truism in the entertainment business; you learn much more from your crashing failures than you do from your soaring successes. --Jeff Smith, Author of The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music Elvis meets Eisenstein in Kay Dickinson's boldly original study of the ways in which song and cinema often DON'T blend seamlessly. Once neglected but having become a bit too familiar, the topic of film's relationship to popular music is made new again through Dickinson's wonderfully unexpected and suggestive explorations of the frequent mis-matches in American and British cinema. -- Corey K. Creekmur, Associate Professor of Film Studies, University of Iowa While film music gone awry is Off Key's central issue, Dickinson never leaves the labors of musicians and the cultural industries' wish to organize and negotiate them from the discussion. And this is where Off Key is both most important and intellectually challenging. By providing one of the most surprising, illuminating and off-kilter reads that either film or popular music scholars have recently produced, Off Key not only explains why these pieces of detritus have washed up onto our media landscape but gives us important insights into their cultural significance. As a result, after encountering Off Key you will never be able to watch or listen to an Elvis or Madonna movie the same way again. --Tim J. Anderson, author of Making Easy Listening An innovative addition to studies of popular music and film...In its historical contextualization, methodological approach, and audio-visual evidence, Off Key proves itself an incredibly rich text. --Popular Music and Society Opens up imaginative lines of enquiry, and changes the way you think about music, film, and the specific cases deployed here. --Popular Music [A] compelling new book...For all the wide-ranging theoretical verve Dickinson displays, the most impressive and important feature of Off Key is its integration of well-researched economic and political trends into the textual analyses. --Film Quarterly

"""Off Key stands as an inspiring contribution to the debate on the meaningful difference between film music with a rare sense of political urgency and great intellectual depth.""--Music & Letters ""Written in a lively and engaging style, Off Key casts a spotlight on several dark corners of popular culture: Elvis Presley musicals, composer biopics, Italian horror films, Madonna's acting career. Sifting through the various meanings of ""work,"" Kay Dickinson argues that these misbegotten ""synergies"" between the film and music business expose the larger fissures that extrude in the relation between capital and labor in the culture industry. Dickinson's dialectical diagnoses are consistent with a truism in the entertainment business; you learn much more from your crashing failures than you do from your soaring successes.""--Jeff Smith, Author of The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music ""Elvis meets Eisenstein in Kay Dickinson's boldly original study of the ways in which song and cinema often DON'T blend seamlessly. Once neglected but having become a bit too familiar, the topic of film's relationship to popular music is made new again through Dickinson's wonderfully unexpected and suggestive explorations of the frequent mis-matches in American and British cinema.""-- Corey K. Creekmur, Associate Professor of Film Studies, University of Iowa ""While film music gone awry is Off Key's central issue, Dickinson never leaves the labors of musicians and the cultural industries' wish to organize and negotiate them from the discussion. And this is where Off Key is both most important and intellectually challenging. By providing one of the most surprising, illuminating and off-kilter reads that either film or popular music scholars have recently produced, Off Key not only explains why these pieces of detritus have washed up onto our media landscape but gives us important insights into their cultural significance. As a result, after encountering Off Key you will never be able to watch or listen to an Elvis or Madonna movie the same way again.""--Tim J. Anderson, author of Making Easy Listening ""An innovative addition to studies of popular music and film...In its historical contextualization, methodological approach, and audio-visual evidence, Off Key proves itself an incredibly rich text.""--Popular Music and Society ""Opens up imaginative lines of enquiry, and changes the way you think about music, film, and the specific cases deployed here."" --Popular Music ""[A] compelling new book...For all the wide-ranging theoretical verve Dickinson displays, the most impressive and important feature of Off Key is its integration of well-researched economic and political trends into the textual analyses."" --Film Quarterly"

an inspiring contribution to the debate on the meaningful difference between film and music, infusing the discussion of film music with a rare sense of political urgency and great intellectual depth. Carlo Cenciarelli, Music and Letters

Author Information

Kay Dickinson is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies within the Media and Communications Department of Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is editor of Movie Music: The Film Reader (2002) and co-editor of Teen TV: Genre, Consumption and Identity (2004).

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