Politics and Pop: The Soft Rock Revolution

From rock & roll to contemporary pop, Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music (Repeater, 2024) is a timely and original exploration of popular music’s role in shaping our society. Told through a Marxist lens, Toby Manning traces the last seventy years of political and social upheavals through its most iconic US and UK-based music.

Mixing Pop and Politics examines the connections between popular music and political ideology and explores themes like the liberation of rock ’n’ roll, containment of girl groups, defiance of glam, resignation of soft rock, the communal spirit of disco, and the individualism of 1980s pop. Spanning the early 1950s to today, the book reveals how music—from doo-wop to hip-hop, punk to crunk, and grunge to grime—has both reflected and resisted the political forces of its time.

Toby Manning is the author of The Rough Guide to Pink Floyd (2006) and John le Carré and the Cold War (2018).

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