170: The Message in the Music of the Beatles with Scott Kuehn - a podcast by Musical U
from 2019-04-11T07:00
Welcome back to Beatles Month!
Today we’re talking with a Beatles expert who also happens to be a member of Musical U. As a Professor of Communications at Clarion University, Scott is trained in the study of semiotics: the meaning within media such as pop music.
And he's taken this lens of analysis to the music of the Beatles and specifically in the "Beatlemania" years of the early sixties when teenage girls would scream and faint at concerts and TV performances - to find out what exactly the band did that produced such extreme reactions. And how they carried that on throughout their career in ever-changing ways.
In this conversation we talk about:
• The combination of music and visuals that led to Beatlemania and the specific techniques the Beatles used to stoke that hysteria
• Whether the Beatles did all these clever things instinctively and subconsciously or if it was an intentional, conscious process
• And how the Beatles' use of musical elements to support the message of the lyrics changed over time through the five distinct eras of their music that Scott identifies
We love when an interview on this show provides a new way of looking at or listening to music, and we think you're going to enjoy the little "homework" exercise Scott sets at the end of our conversation as a way to open your mind and your ears to what made the Beatles so effective and so successful.
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Full Show Notes and Transcript: Episode 170
Links and Resources
• Alan Pollack “Notes on …” Series
• Clarion Faculty Profile for Dr. Scott Kuehn
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