Hearing Luxe Pop – Glorification, Glamour, and the Middlebrow in American Popular Music: California Studies in Music, Sound, and Media

"Howland presents an important counternarrative to both rock and jazz scholars whose investment in a kind of stylistic/ideological purity has obscured the continuities between traditions. These throughlines, including this 'damnably American' luxe style, often operate at the margins of emerging canons but at the center of popular experience."--Robynn Stilwell, author of S-Town and the Art of Podcast Music

"A one-of-a-kind guided tour through a kaleidoscopic musical landscape, where pop music--from the Great American Songbook to hip-hop--assumes the high-class sheen of the grand tradition. In this wonderful book, Howland ranges widely across the spectrum of high, middle, and lowbrow musical style and aesthetics, exploring the mysteries and miracles of musical hybridity in the American pop pageant."--Albin Zak, author of I Don't Sound Like Nobody: Remaking Music in 1950s America