Smooth: Music That Is Easy to Listen to, from the Middle of the Road to Everywhere

Author:   Paul Hegarty (University of Nottingham, UK)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN:  

9798765104361


Pages:   256
Publication Date:   21 August 2025
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

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Smooth: Music That Is Easy to Listen to, from the Middle of the Road to Everywhere


Overview

Smooth explores the ways in which music has sought to be easy, approachable, comforting and beguiling in its accessibility. From easy listening and exotica in the 1950s through jazz fusion, new age music, ambient and chill out, K-Pop, AOR and MOR, Japanese city pop and performance of high emotion alongside the warm and mellow bath of adult contemporary, Smooth analyses what easy listening can be across a range of often very poorly-defined genres. Global in scope, Smooth covers the music of the culture industry as aspiring to the universal and timeless, and evaluates how easy (and eased) listening works and how it affects the listener.

Full Product Details

Author:   Paul Hegarty (University of Nottingham, UK)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9798765104361


Pages:   256
Publication Date:   21 August 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Smoothness in Listening 1. Omnipresent Background 2. Function 3. Big Emotion 4. Smooth Jazz 5. Generic Transcendence: Adult Contemporary 6. Soft Power: AOR 7. Identification and the Group: K-Pop 8. Ambience/New age/Chill 9. Nostalgia, Melancholy and Japanese city pop 10. The Songbook: Timeless singers and songs 11. Christmas Conclusion: All and Nothing

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Author Information

Paul Hegarty is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is the author and editor of 11 books that span critical and cultural theory, rock, experimental and noise music, as well as audiovisual art including Noise/Music (Bloomsbury, 2007), Rumour and Radiation (Bloomsbury, 2014) and Annihilating Noise (Bloomsbury, 2020). He is also Co-editor of Bloomsbury's Ex:Centrics series.

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Latest Reading Guide

NOV RG 20252

 

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