A New Book is about to come in November regarding “Dangerous” album by Suan Fast.
Description:
Dangerous is Michael Jackson’s coming of age album. Granted, that’s a bold claim to make given that many think his best work lay behind him by the time this record was made. It offers Jackson on a threshold, at long last embracing adulthood-politically questioning, sexually charged-yet unable to convince a skeptical public who had, by this time, been wholly indoctrinated by a vicious media. Even though the record sold well, few understood or were willing to accept the depth and breadth of Jackson’s vision; and then before it could be fully grasped, it was eclipsed by a shifting pop music landscape and personal scandal-the latter perhaps linked to his assertive new politics. This book tries to cut through the din of dominant narratives about Jackson, taking up the mature, nuanced artistic statement he offered on Dangerous in all its complexity. It is read here as a concept album, one that offers a compelling narrative arc of postmodern angst, love, lust, seduction, betrayal, damnation, and above all else racial politics, in ways heretofore unseen in his music. This record offered a Michael Jackson that was mystifying for a world that had accepted him as a child and as childlike and, hence, as safe; this Michael Jackson was, indeed, dangerous.
Cover:
- Paperback: 160 pages
- Publisher: Continuum Publishing Corporation (6 Nov 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1623566312
- ISBN-13: 978-1623566319
To pre-order your copy on Amazon, CLICK HERE
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Susan Fast is Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies and Director of the Graduate Program in Gender Studies and Feminist Research at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. She is a musicologist whose primary area of research is popular music since World War II. Her areas of expertise include representations of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, constructions of self and other, performance and performativity, and geopolitical violence/conflict in contemporary popular music. She is author of the book In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music (Oxford, 2001), a collection of essays that explores the body in musical performance, gender and sexuality, cultural appropriation/hybridity, and ritual/mythology in rock music. Her publications also include articles on Live Aid and cultural memory, constructions of authenticity in U2, performance and new technology, Tina Turner’s gendered and racialized identity in the 1960’s, issues of feminism and rock criticism, gendered and racialized issues surrounding back-up singing, and on the mass-mediated benefit concerts that appeared after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. She is co-editor, with Kip Pegley, of Music, Politics, and Violence (Music/Culture series, Wesleyan University Press, 2012). Her current research project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, investigates issues related to gender, race and normative genre boundaries in rock music, and includes case studies on the vibrant scene of all-female tribute bands to hard rock and heavy metal, back up singing in rock music, and genre in the work of Michael Jackson. She is co-editor of Michael Jackson: Musical Subjectivities, Popular Music & Society 35/2. She is writing a book on Michael Jackson’s Dangerous for Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series. She is on the advisory board of the Institute for Popular Music, University of Rochester.
