Andrew Mall 3/16/21 Andrew Mall 3/16/21

“God Is My Girlfriend”: Christian Rock and Niche Genres with Andrew Mall

Money 4 Nothing podcast (2021). Christian music and especially Christian rock is a world of its own, a self-contained universe that mirrors the trends and styles of the mainstream. But how does it work? And what can it tell us about the interactions between audiences and industries that structure popular music? We talk to Andrew Mall, the author of God Rock, Inc.: The Business of Niche Music, to explore everything from the Jesus People to Christian metalcore, while discussing how the complex relationship between sacred and secular pop can help us understand the ethics, aesthetics, and boundaries that define musical genre.

Jenna Reed 2/16/21 Jenna Reed 2/16/21

Studying Congregational Music: Key Issues, Methods, and Theoretical Perspectives

Routledge, Congregational Music Studies Series (2021)

Andrew Mall 2/3/21 Andrew Mall 2/3/21

Professor Andrew Mall’s Recent Work in Popular Music Studies

Northeastern’s College of Arts, Media + Design (2021). Recently, Prof. Mall’s work engaging other scholars in popular music studies in an open conversation to address several challenges that they have encountered in their teaching, researching, and writing has resulted in three separate but related initiatives, including a symposium, a co-authored report in the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and a co-edited forum in the journal Twentieth-Century Music.

Andrew Mall 1/28/21 Andrew Mall 1/28/21

Looking Towards the Future: Popular Music Studies and Music Scholarship

Twentieth-Century Music (2021). In this forum, we have collected articles from participants in a recent symposium on the future of popular music studies to reflect more deeply on the challenges we all face in in an increasingly diverse and divided world -- challenges of teaching, studying, comprehending, and embodying pop music in all its richness. The field must reckon with these challenges if it is to remain relevant, and in doing so (we argue) it perhaps models a way forward for music scholarship as a whole.

Andrew Mall 1/20/21 Andrew Mall 1/20/21

Autographed Bookplates for God Rock, Inc.

Promoting a new book during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic means no in-person events, and thus no easy way for me to autograph your copy of God Rock, Inc. But I found a middle ground: autographed, self-adhesive bookplates! If you have already purchased God Rock, Inc.: The Business of Niche Music and would like an autographed bookplate, free of charge, just contact me and let me know!

Andrew Mall 12/10/20 Andrew Mall 12/10/20

Selling Out or Buying In? CCM Magazine and Anxieties over Commercial Priorities in Christian Music, 1980s–1990s

Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture (2020). In 1992, EMI acquired Sparrow Records. At that time, EMI was one of the “Big Six” (secular) major record labels; Sparrow was the largest and most successful label in the Christian record industry. As in other sectors of the music and entertainment industries, reactions to corporate consolidations are mixed. CCM magazine and its sister publications, for decades the primary sources of information about and for the Christian market, provide a unique opportunity to observe and analyze these tensions leading up to these mergers and acquisitions.

Andrew Mall 11/24/20 Andrew Mall 11/24/20

Review of Shout to the Lord: Making Worship Music in Evangelical America, by Ari Y. Kelman

Yale Journal of Music and Religion (2020). In this review of Ari Y. Kelman's Shout to the Lord: Making Worship Music in Evangelical America (NYU Press, 2018), I describe the strengths and challenges of examining the cultural production of worship music thematically, as Kelman has chosen to focus on songwriting, worship leading, and the music industry in sequence.

Jenna Reed 11/6/20 Jenna Reed 11/6/20

A soundtrack to God Rock, Inc.

Listen to the curated playlists of God Rock, Inc. I have created separate Spotify playlists for each individual chapter of the book; individual songs are flagged within the book itself with a little LP icon.

Jenna Reed 11/6/20 Jenna Reed 11/6/20

God Rock, Inc.: The Business of Niche Music

University of California Press (2021)

Andrew Mall 10/16/20 Andrew Mall 10/16/20

Catching Up with CAMD’s Andrew Mall: Creativity During the Pandemic, the Importance of Being Nimble, and What He’s Working on Next

Northeastern’s College of Arts, Media + Design (2020). We recently caught up with Professor Mall to talk about how the creative industries have shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic, how Northeastern teaches students to embrace the flexibility that is necessary to thrive in these changing conditions, and what he is currently working on. Read more below.

Andrew Mall 9/6/20 Andrew Mall 9/6/20

Conference Report: “The Future of Pop: Big Questions Facing Popular Music Studies in the 21st Century,” AMS Pre-Conference Symposium

Journal of Popular Music Studies (2020). In this article, we report on the two-day event, “The Future of Pop: Big Questions Facing Popular Music Studies in the 21st Century,” at Northeastern University in October 2019. The event was sponsored by the Popular Music Study Group of the American Musicological Society (AMS-PMSG), Northeastern University, and Amherst College as a pre-conference symposium tied to the AMS’s annual meeting in Boston.

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

Music / Business / 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