Andrew Mall 7/30/20 Andrew Mall 7/30/20

Ethics at Christian Festivals

Music Festival Studies conference presentation (2020). In this paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork at Christian music festivals and formal interviews with festival organizers, I address festivals as sites of musical ethics made manifest. By focusing on specific niche Christian music festivals, I am able to emphasize the relationships between the values of their organizers, artists, and attendees and the lived experiences of the events themselves. But my conclusions have implications for the viability of the broader festival industry, particularly small events that cannot afford to compete with the Bonnaroos, Coachellas, and Lollapaloozas.

Andrew Mall 3/1/20 Andrew Mall 3/1/20

“As For Me and My House”: Christian Music Executives Roundtable

Journal of Popular Music Studies (2020). At the 2018 IASPM-US conference in Nashville, I organized a roundtable of Christian music executives. This was a unique opportunity to hear Christian music executives discussing the unique challenges and issues they face in a popular music market for which religious identity is necessarily a core component. Roundtable participants have worked in A&R, executive leadership, higher education, music ministry, music super- vision, production, publishing, radio promotions, and recording, among other roles, and represent more than 100 years of cumulative experience as music industry professionals.

Andrew Mall 2/14/20 Andrew Mall 2/14/20

Going Viral Helped Catapult Roddy Ricch and 'The Box' to No. 1 — But There's More to the Story

TIME (2020). It’s barely two months into 2020, but it’s already been a big year for rapper Roddy Ricch. The 21-year-old Compton artist has claimed the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Top 100 for the past five weeks with his viral earworm of a rap song, “The Box,” from his debut album Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial, which is the longest-running No. 1 debut rap album to be on the Billboard 200 in nearly two decades since 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’ in 2003.

Andrew Mall 2/2/20 Andrew Mall 2/2/20

Music Festivals, Ephemeral Places, and Scenes: Interdependence at Cornerstone Festival

Journal of the Society for American Music (2020). Cornerstone was an annual four-day-long Christian rock festival in Illinois that ran from 1984 until 2012, first in Chicago’s northern suburbs and then on a former farm in the rural western part of the state. This article examines the production of space and place at Cornerstone. In doing so, it contributes a vital link between scene theory and the growing ethnomusicological literature on festivals.

Andrew Mall 2/1/20 Andrew Mall 2/1/20

Introduction: Festivals and Musical Life

Journal of the Society for American Music (2020). In this special issue of JSAM, my overarching goal has been to showcase the rich diversity of festival research, decentering popular music studies from it, and in doing so to demonstrate both that music scholars working in a variety of areas have much to contribute to contemporary popular and academic discourse on music festivals, and that festival studies has much to contribute to music scholarship beyond popular music studies. The articles collected here contribute to a broad interdisciplinary literature on music festivals. Each also illustrates the value of music festival research to the scholarship of music in the Americas.

Andrew Mall 1/23/20 Andrew Mall 1/23/20

“Lift Each Other Up”: Punk, Politics, and Secularization at Christian Festivals

Christian Punk, Bloomsbury (2020). This chapter focuses on the Chicago-based Christian Celtic-punk band Flatfoot 56, analyzing their performances in secular venues and at the Christian music festivals Cornerstone and AudioFeed. Arguing that Christianity and punk are inseparable to the band’s identity, the chapter analyzes their approach to religious communication in songs and from the stage. The chapter also addresses the evolution of Christian music festivals and the tensions around youth-focused niche forms of Christian music, such as punk.

Andrew Mall 12/20/19 Andrew Mall 12/20/19

Beer & Carols: A Christmas Carol Sing-Along

Beer & Carols sing-along, December 20, 2019

Andrew Mall 11/19/19 Andrew Mall 11/19/19

'A Low-Key Bop.' How Dancing to the Home Depot Theme Song Became the Internet's Unlikely Obsession

TIME (2019). An unlikely yet catchy melody took the Internet by storm in recent weeks, bolstered by the looping, highly meme-able nature of TikTok, the social media platform that brokers in 15 second clips. The song? The humble Home Depot theme song, which, up until now was only prominently featured in commercials for home improvement, like installing tile or building a patio.

Andrew Mall 11/16/19 Andrew Mall 11/16/19

Gamelan Laras Tentrem Concert

Gamelan Laras Tentrem concert, November 16, 2019

Andrew Mall 11/1/19 Andrew Mall 11/1/19

How Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' Became the Holiday Gift That Keeps on Giving

TIME (2019). The temperatures are dipping and twinkling lights are being hung, but nothing confirms that the holiday season is in full swing as cogently as Mariah Carey’s now-iconic holiday classic, “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” The festive track, a veritable pop masterpiece written and performed by Carey (with a co-writing assist from her longtime collaborator at the time, Walter Afanasieff) has consistently dominated not only the holiday music charts, but the zeitgeist since it made its joyous debut in 1994.

Andrew Mall 11/1/19 Andrew Mall 11/1/19

“Find a Way”: Amy Grant and Christian Pop’s Mainstream Crossover

AMS conference presentation (2019). In this paper I argue that Amy Grant’s success was the cumulative result of longer strategies to cross her over from the relatively small Christian market to the massive general mainstream pop market. Archival research reveals business and artistic decisions that prepared Grant for her first attempt at crossover with the 1985 album Unguarded.

Andrew Mall 10/30/19 Andrew Mall 10/30/19

The Future of Pop: Big Questions Facing Popular Music Studies in the 21st Century

AMS pre-conference symposium (2019). Despite the normalization of popular music studies over the last 50 years, complex questions linger about the state of the field and the directions it will take. “The Future of Pop” fostered interdisciplinary collaborations between scholars of different ranks and diverse backgrounds by encouraging conversations about the future of popular music studies.

Andrew Mall 8/22/19 Andrew Mall 8/22/19

‘Old Town Road’ defied a 20-year trend in hit music. Math explains why

PBS Newshour (2019). For more than two decades, Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men could not be knocked off their U.S. Billboard throne. From December 1995 to March 1996, their ballad “One Sweet Day” spent 16 weeks at the top of the charts, setting a record that outlasted the megahit-makers that came after them: Taylor Swift, Kelly Clarkson, Beyonce, Outkast, Green Day, Alicia Keys, Jay-Z and Adele. Then “Despacito” and “Old Town Road” arrived.

Andrew Mall 7/31/19 Andrew Mall 7/31/19

“Beer & Hymns” and Congregational Song: Participatory Sing-alongs as Community

Christian Congregational Music conference presentation (2019). Beer and Hymns is exactly what it sounds like: we raise our red Solo cups and lift our voices together to sing hymns, spirituals, praise songs, and folk songs together. Song choices include both secular and sacred selections, and the nightly gatherings attract participants from a variety of theological backgrounds, many of whom have an ambivalent or troubled relationship with Protestant Christianity (including mainline and non-denominational evangelicalism). Our voices entwine, and often our arms do, too. And by the end of the night, as our singing reverberates in the night, we emerge unified by our singing, even if only for one night.

Andrew Mall 6/5/19 Andrew Mall 6/5/19

How iTunes changed music

News@Northeastern (2019). Apple’s music platform, iTunes, changed the digital music landscape when it debuted in 2001. It “proved that digital music could be profitable,” says Andrew Mall, an assistant professor of music industry at Northeastern University. Now, 18 years later, Apple is retiring the music service in favor of three separate apps for music, video, and podcasts.

Andrew Mall 5/5/19 Andrew Mall 5/5/19

Gamelan Laras Tentrem Concert

Gamelan Laras Tentrem concert, May 5, 2019

Andrew Mall 4/12/19 Andrew Mall 4/12/19

“Beer & Hymns” and Redemption: Reimagining and Reclaiming Religious Identity through Participatory Sing-alongs

Sound & Secularity symposium presentation (2019). Given the ambivalent (and sometimes antagonistic) relationship between houses of worship and houses of drink in the United States, the mere act of singing hymns in bars can be interpreted as resisting prescriptive religious norms. But in recontextualizing these songs in Wild Goose’s pub tent, beers in hand, participants—including current and former churchgoers—reimagine their theologies and reclaim their religious identities. In this paper, I analyze the sonic and social fabric of Beer and Hymns as a participatory space that enables resilience and redemption.

Andrew Mall 3/15/19 Andrew Mall 3/15/19

Subculture

The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture, SAGE Publications (2019). Subculture is a theoretical perspective used to describe and analyze social groups that constitute some subset of a larger dominant, mainstream, or mass culture. Subculture theory has been most commonly applied to oppositional social groups and youth cultures by scholars in disciplines as diverse as anthropology, communications, cultural studies, ethnomusicology, media studies, popular music studies, sociology, and others.

Andrew Mall 3/14/19 Andrew Mall 3/14/19

Emo

The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture, SAGE Publications (2019). Emo, short for “emocore” or “emotional hardcore,” refers both to a genre of rock music and to its subculture. The genre first emerged from punk rock and hardcore punk in the mid-1980s in local underground music scenes, most notably that of Washington, D.C. Throughout the 1990s, it gradually spread across the trans-local networks of underground music scenes in North America. In the early 2000s, several emo bands and the genre itself achieved mainstream success. Like punk rock and other subcultures in previous decades, emo became a popular trend and commodity at its commercial peak, especially among teenagers and young fans.

Andrew Mall 3/3/19 Andrew Mall 3/3/19

Gamelan Laras Tentrem Concert

Gamelan Laras Tentrem concert, March 3, 2019

Music / Business / Ethics at Christian Festivals

“As For Me and My House”: Christian Music Executives Roundtable

Going Viral Helped Catapult Roddy Ricch and 'The Box' to No. 1 — But There's More to the Story

Music Festivals, Ephemeral Places, and Scenes: Interdependence at Cornerstone Festival

Introduction: Festivals and Musical Life

“Lift Each Other Up”: Punk, Politics, and Secularization at Christian Festivals

Beer & Carols: A Christmas Carol Sing-Along

'A Low-Key Bop.' How Dancing to the Home Depot Theme Song Became the Internet's Unlikely Obsession

Gamelan Laras Tentrem Concert

How Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' Became the Holiday Gift That Keeps on Giving

“Find a Way”: Amy Grant and Christian Pop’s Mainstream Crossover

The Future of Pop: Big Questions Facing Popular Music Studies in the 21st Century

‘Old Town Road’ defied a 20-year trend in hit music. Math explains why

“Beer & Hymns” and Congregational Song: Participatory Sing-alongs as Community

How iTunes changed music

Gamelan Laras Tentrem Concert

“Beer & Hymns” and Redemption: Reimagining and Reclaiming Religious Identity through Participatory Sing-alongs

Subculture

Emo

Gamelan Laras Tentrem Concert

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Andrew Mall, ph.d