The issue of change has long been a central focus in critical studies on men and masculinities. The issue of if, how and why men and masculinity/masculinities change has been central to feminist strategy as well as a question of explanation. Scholars from a variety of academic disciplines have pointed frequently to contemporary popular music as evidence of broader cultural shifts in changing masculinities, whereby the question of change is viewed in positive terms though exploring open emotional expression, or as stasis, where very little changes.
Importantly, popular music scholars are interested between the idea of changing representations and what these representations say about culture more generally; both in terms of musical texts as cultural representations and the power of music to shape gendered norms within cultures. Yet the question is how to study and how to ascertain cultural shifts as well as the impact of music is a tricky one. A well-worn sociological critique of musicological research on the issue is twofold: firstly that the tendency to argue on the basis of selected examples seeks confirm a particular interpretation (“cherry picking”); secondly that a methodology which seeks to locate meaning through an analysis of cultural texts does explain how they are interpreted by groups. The counter argument, however, is that sociological approaches reduce music to mere symbol, ignoring the specifically musical properties which convey meaning and failing to offer an explanation as to why and how and why the “music itself” resonates.
This paper focuses on understanding the cultural resonance of popular musics in relation to theories around changing men, masculinity/masculinities. It offers a model which explores the link between text and interpretation through a framework of creation, representation, mediation and reception. In doing so it makes two main arguments: firstly that change is not necessarily progressive or egalitarian, with reference to the way in which right-wing movements mobilise masculinism and the idea of overly emotional men as a central resource in aesthetic critique; secondly that the increasing fragmentation of representations of masculinity in popular music, still require an analysis of the structural conditions under which multiple representations flourish.