Charting Popularity: A Comparative Analysis of Music Success

On this episode, Marc talks with Toby Manning, author of “Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music,” published in May of 2024. It’s an extensive examination of pop music from the early 1950’s to the present in America and England, and how it interacted with the political culture of its respective times. Covering a vast selection of songs and albums, Manning finds connections and provides insights that you might never have considered. Anyone interested in pop music of the last 70 years will find something entertaining and thought-provoking inside this book.

As Toby  writes, “Popular music’s dialectic of repression and refusal charts and channels the political struggles of the last three-quarters of a century, and it’s this relationship to which this book is dedicated.”

We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Toby Manning!