Description
Book SynopsisThriving within a narrow niche in rock music is the recording on which one artist composes, plays, sings and often produces each track. As a showcase of individual effort and talent, the single-artist rock album has been adopted by artists such as Neil Young, Stevie Wonder, and Prince to produce unique additions to their discographies.To this type of album, Steve Hamelman has affixed the label AlphaSoloism. In All by Myself: Essays on the Single-Artist Rock Album, eleven scholars explore eleven different albums, both well-known and obscure, released between 1970 and 2011. Their essays illuminate aesthetic, technical, and theoretical elements that distinguish AlphaSolo recordings from conventional ones.In addition to providing historical background on studio, live, original, and cover recordings released between the 1970 to the present, the essays explore questions of intention, craft, performance, and reception. All by Myself marks the AlphaSolo subgenre's moment of origin as a musical
Table of ContentsChapter 1: “I Think I’m Pretty Good”: Paul McCartney and the Art of AlphaSoloism by Steve Hamelman Chapter 2: A Perspective on the Single-Artist Album and John Fogerty’s Blue Ridge Rangers (1973) by Thomas Kitts Chapter 3: Songs in the Key of Strife: Stevie Wonder’s Solitary Songs of Social Significance on Innervisions (1973) by Ian Peddie Chapter 4: His Life with You He Shares: Prince’s For You (1979) by Sarah Niblock Chapter 5: Breaking Free of Queen: Roger Taylor’s Fun in Space (1981) by Nick Braae Chapter 6: Martin Newell’s The Greatest Living Englishman (1993) by James Martens Chapter 7: Resignation with Flair: Elliott Smith’s Roman Candle (1994) by Kristin Lieb Chapter 8: Thrown into a Cruel World: Neil Young’s Dead Man (1995) by Ulrich Adelt Chapter 9: Narrative Themes about Post-Band Solo Work in Media Coverage of Ben Folds’s Rockin’ the Suburbs (2001) by Jordan M. McClain and Amanda S. McClain Chapter 10: “What’s for Tea, Daughter?”: Technology and Selling Out in Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out (2005) by Colin Helb Chapter 11: So Young, So Country, So Self-Contained: Hunter Hayes (2011) by Lawrence Pitilli
