I am series editor of the CUP Elements in Popular Music. I’ve previously edited a number of journals and was pleased to take the lead in a new series of publications that could cover a wide range of topics in the field. Popular music studies research spans two main areas. One is music-focused, including studies of musical forms, individual artists, specific musical works, and genres. The other end of the spectrum is contextual study, often focusing on cultural theory, audiences, reception, and issues related to identity. In between, there’s a broad range that includes ethnographies, practice-based or led research, histories, industrial perspectives, fandom, celebrity, and many other fields. My vision for the series is to embrace all these areas and more, with popular music (broadly defined) at its centre.

It has taken a while to get the series moving; editorial work doesn’t attract much funding or support in the academic world, so it’s a task that has to be done on top of everything else, which isn’t easy as a senior academic. I’ve really enjoyed the process, though. Encouraging scholars to publish and striving to make the final results as good as possible has been hugely satisfying and rewarding as part of my academic citizenship.

We have three elements out at the moment; the most popular, Rock Guitar Virtuosos, has been downloaded more than 25,000 times. Its popularity comes perhaps from a mix of academic analysis that appeals to researchers and details about advanced electric guitar performance methods that are invaluable to any guitar player. The series encourages formal but comprehensible language, and its intention is to appeal to a wider public in addition to a core audience of university lecturers, researchers, and research students. Another publication focuses on the Trevor Horn-produced album Slave to the Rhythm by singer Grace Jones. The Crossings (as it’s called) provides a new model approach to such a study, mixing technical and theoretical perspectives. The third current publication in the series addresses the ambitious task of exploring Popular Music in Brazil. This is an important contribution in English to the body of scholarship that exists in Latin American languages.

We have an exciting couple of years ahead. Future Elements in Popular Music are planned that cover topics like Taylor Swift, Cold War popular music in Hungary and Eastern Europe, popular music in Iran, PJ Harvey, music censorship in Latin America, music and football, technoculture, and music production secrets.

What I like about the format is that whenever I write a journal article, it is quite short, and you can’t really get into much detail. But trying to write a book is such a major undertaking that it takes years to complete. It’s nice to have a format somewhere in the middle to fill that gap.