Rock Music Analysis: Don't Stop Believin by Journey

Your paper will constitute an analysis of a single recorded rock song or instrumental of your choice, including both a purely musical examination and a consideration of the position in rock history held by your chosen recording. If your recording is not available on YouTube, it will be necessary to provide me with a CD or MP3 recording of the selection. Your paper should discuss the musical style of the selection. You will need to support your assertions about musical style with specific details of such stylistic components as form, rhythm, melody, harmony, texture, timbre, dynamics, and instrumentation. You should focus on the interactions of such aspects of the composition/recording as musical form, genre, performance style, and lyrics (if present).

You should restrict your analysis of the lyrics to comments on major themes and images you are able to connect to musical aspects in meaningful ways (Don’t analyze the lyrics for their own sake! See Assignment #4). I strongly recommend that you consider organizing your analysis around the formal breakdown you have already completed (See Assignment #3. If you haven’t yet done this work, be sure to read the instructions for Assignment #3 carefully now!). Be sure to make clear which musical features/parameters distinguish the different sections from one another. Some questions that will be helpful: Which types of sections are present? Can they be labeled with terms such as “verse,” “chorus,” and “bridge,” or are they better designated simply as “A,” “B,” “C,” etc.? Do instrumentation and/or vocals change at the points of section change? Are all like sections (e.g. all the choruses or verses) the same, or do they change/evolve of the course of the song? Which styles of rock music tend to make use of forms similar to that of your chosen song? Is the answer to this question significant in terms of the identification of influences?

You should identify the musical influences and traditions informing your selected work and comment on the ways in which the work interacts with and contributes to those influences/traditions (See Assignment #5). Depending on your choice of music, you may be able to discuss the influence your selection has had on more recent work. If the composition has been recorded by other artists, you might compare it to one or more other versions, if they are available to you. In evaluating the relationship of your selection to its antecedents, or to music which has followed it, be sure to place emphasis on how the stylistic evolution you discover can be viewed in terms of larger trends in the development of rock music.

A successful paper will include both an introduction and conclusion.

Your introduction should

1) provide some relevant background on the artists and/or the recording, and

2) include a thesis statement that indicates the main thrust of your analytic interpretation of the song. Thesis statement example: “Walter Murphy’s “Fifth of Beethoven” (1976) might strike one, based on its title alone, as an entry in the field of art rock, but the rhythmic, timbral, and formal aspects of the recording reveal that it is much more significantly a disco record meant for dancing.”

The paper should be approximately 3 double- spaced, typewritten pages in length. You may wish to include a separate sheet with the song’s lyrics, and you may annotate the sheet by labeling the formal sections, but that sheet should not be included in the overall page total. You are expected to footnote properly primary and secondary resource materials, including websites. However, your own analytic ideas are the main point of the assignment; it is not a research paper! As with the concert report, do not merely reproduce or paraphase words or ideas from record jackets or web sites. As always, you are expected to adhere to the University’s policies on academic integrity. Please proofread your papers carefully. Do not try to guess how to spell musical terms–consult a dictionary. Writing is hard work and often requires several drafts before the essay reads smoothly and cogently.