Abstract
This huge chunk of a book is best consumed across occasional periods of reading, for it covers a very broad range of topics and at over 600 pages is best digested in relatively small doses. The nine sections of the book deal with theory and method, the popular music business, popular music history, the global and the local, the star system, body and identity, media, technology and digital economies. The book offers an effective marker of the state of popular music studies in the second decade of the 21st century and helps to consolidate the development of the field as this has occurred over the past 30 years or so. While it will be of considerable interest to anyone working in this field, it will also serve as a good introduction to those who are relatively new to it. This does mean that there is little by way of topic or treatment which is surprising, but there are nevertheless some fine summary overviews of a wide spectrum of issues, from rock stars as icons to music in advertising and the interrelationship of music and television. This broad spectrum suggests a great number of pedagogical applications. As a new handbook, the volume will be a useful teaching resource for a good few years to come and should be in the library of any university or college with programmes specialising in the academic study of popular music.