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This thesis focuses on twenty-first century pop parody as a lens through which to examine the politics of pop music. It includes close analysis of several parody case studies, combined with an exploration of several formats of mainstream pop - Motown, hip hop, and boy band music - which are the targets of these parody songs. The project focuses particularly on parody songs whose musical aesthetics satirise those of mainstream pop, while the lyrics self-reflexively name the musical devices that are mocked. I consider how these parody songs function, who or what they aim to critique, and how successful that critique is. The Introduction sets out research questions, method, and chapter summaries, and discusses Žižek's theory of cynical distance, which is a key obstacle that the parody songs must negotiate. The thesis is then divided into three parts. Part I, composed of Chapter 1, provides the first comprehensive survey of types of musical comedy and parody. In setting out scholarship on mainstream and manufactured pop, I conclude that despite the recent 'poptimist' turn of pop music studies, the aesthetics of 'manufactured' pop are still largely overlooked. Part II, comprising Chapters 2 and 3, focuses on parody songs by the musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords. Chapter 2 shows how the group incorporate a self-reflexive awareness of the problem of cynical distance in their parody of Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On', presenting an effective critique of the use of pop music as political protest. The parody song highlights issues pertaining to the politics of Motown music, prompting a re-formulation of received narratives surrounding 'What's Going On'. Chapter 3 examines the racial dynamics in parodies of black musical genres, including hip hop, by Flight of The Conchords, Weird Al Yankovic, and Lil Dicky, among other artists. I argue that the self-reflexivity displayed by these comedic white rappers is insufficient to overcome the problem of cultural appropriation in pop music and parody. Part III, comprising Chapters 4 and 5, focuses on boy band music. Filling a lacuna in research on boy band music aesthetics, Chapter 4 outlines the aesthetics and socio-economic characteristics this pop format. I argue that boy band music's social function must be theorised using the tools of both feminism and Marxism (not one or the other). Chapter 5 explores boy band parodies by Axis of Awesome, Da Vinci's Notebook, and Jon Lajoie. Analysis of the function and structure of these songs highlights issues of race, gender, authenticity, and commercialism in parody and pop. I find that pop parody is a useful tool for understanding power dynamics in pop music, and that the parody songs constitute key sites for the workings of ideology, particularly relating to capitalism, race, and gender.

The thesis delves into the social dynamics of music-making in Iceland. It builds on this researcher's twenty-year long career as a music journalist in his native country, making use of the knowledge, connections and insights accumulated therein. This research project has made use of participant observation, in-depth interviews, historical documents as well as ethnography. Thirty musicians from the current Icelandic pop/rock world were interviewed, focussing on how they manoeuvre themselves within a relatively small society. The thesis was inspired by Ruth Finnegan's book, The Hidden Musicians - Music-Making in an English Town, similarly looking at the structure of a tightly knit music community, and how place shapes and informs its residents. Iceland's small size (pop. 350,000) is a defining factor; its "village" feel feeds into the shaping of its music culture. My theoretical framework is built around classic socio-musicological theories (derived from Pierre Bourdieu and Howard Becker), more recent research carried out by Sara Cohen, Tia De Nora, and Nick Prior, as well as theories on the difference between professional and amateur music-making (based on the work of, among others, Canadian sociologist Robert A. Stebbins). A grounded theory arose from the interview data, confirming the impact of a "village" factor, which simultaneously liberates and restricts artistic work. The peculiarities of Iceland's pop/rock world manifests themselves in interrelated aspects, such as its status as a micro-nation and this shapes much of the dynamism of its popular music culture. Co-operation across different genres is high, and a lack of formal bureaucracy in terms of doing things was significant. Support from institutions like the radio, music competitions and music offices is effective and strong, making for a relative easy market access domestically and facilitating an optimistic outlook from the interviewees towards their chosen field. The musicians' inner need to make music, perform and release it was scrutinised and the small size of Iceland's population - and therefore, the Icelandic popular music world - gives rise to a fuzzy distinction between amateur and professional. This fact underscores the aforementioned prolific levels of activity in Iceland's musical community. Yet in spite of these positive elements, active Icelandic musicians also admitted to experiencing much precarity and unpredictability in terms of their creative work. All of these elements, detailed here, make for a vibrant and active music scene, with participants effectively "punching above their weight".

This project explores the extent to which blues music in the 21st century is linked to its cultural past through identification and examination of the key concepts and relationships that may contribute to a contemporary understanding of the blues and cultural artefacts, as circulated and consumed in popular music practices. Despite the vast amount of scholarship on blues music, including revisionist literature that emerged in the late 20th century and in the first decade of this century, there has been no singular study of popular music or the blues that has specifically addressed the sociocultural and musicological links between the traditions of the past in the context of 21st century popular music in sufficient depth and so research into contemporary interpretations of blues music as it exists in the 21st century remains relatively scarce. This project provides an account of the cultural resonances and development of the blues genre in popular music culture to establish what the blues means, how it means, and to who it is meaningful through the formulation of a conceptual framework offered as a unique methodological tool for identifying and exploring blues music in the 21st century. Within this interdisciplinary framework, concepts including those concerned with technological mediation, intertextuality, cultural identity, memory, and meaning, are mobilised, refined, and combined in order to reveal and explore problematic relationships that exist in and between concepts of race, place, and technology as connected to blues music in the 21st century. Through an ethnomusicological strategy of enquiry and largely inductive approach to the collection of qualitative and quantitative data, the results of analyses conducted using a broad range of methods including music theoretic analysis, semiotics, intertextuality, survey, and interview are presented in order to both address how and why a contemporary blues music revival may be perceived to be taking place and to offer a fresh historical review of the context in which the blues has developed from a 21st century platform. This study finds that popular music performers and consumers are continually reimagining the blues through engagement with the traditions of the past and accordingly argues for an extension to the boundaries of blues music in its stylistic and cultural categorisation in 21st-century discourse. It is also argued that the results of research presented here also go some way in illustrating both how such engagement with the traditions of the past may directly reflect tensions in contemporary society, and how blues-marketed artefacts are demarcated and declassified within the music industry.

It is thought - by musicians, listeners and music theorists alike - that music has the ability to mimic, mirror or reproduce the effects of psychedelic drugs: a concept of immense significance considering the expansive corpus of literature attesting to the therapeutic value of such drugs. This thesis attends to how music can be meaningfully compared to the effects of drugs like mescaline, psilocybin and LSD. The musicological theories explaining the relationship between the effects of such drugs and music are based almost entirely on prototypes: the complexity of a psychedelic pharmacopeia reduced to LSD, LSD's extraordinary array of effects reduced to three, and the three effects theorised, for the most part, in relation to a particular style of rock that crystallised around San Francisco in the 1960s. This style - acid rock - has been most extensively analysed in relation to the question of how music can be psychedelic, resulting in a list of sounds understood to recreate the effects of such drugs for the listener. In this thesis I demonstrate the prevalence of these same sounds in Goth, a diverse collection of popular music styles associated not with drugs but rather the Gothic. By demonstrating how the various sub-styles of Goth - which have many analogues in the wider popular music repertoire - are rich in precisely the same sounds understood to reproduce the effects of LSD, I suggest two broad conclusions: either Goth(ic) music is psychedelic, or acid rock is not because the theories that explain the ways it reproduces the effects of such drugs cannot be held to account. I propose both conclusions are true. Goth is psychedelic by the current academic model, but this model is problematic; in particular its reliance on prototypes has had the unfortunate side-effect of imposing a culturally biased understanding of psychedelic drug experiences upon the repertoire to which the term might refer. Whilst I demonstrate how music analysts might map out a more stylistically inclusive definition of psychedelia in a manner that is mindful of the prototypes involved, I suggest the highest potential for understanding how music is able to reproduce the effects of such drugs lies in a pharmacological concept known as set and setting.