Review of Ron Moy, Authorship Roles in Popular Music: Issues and Debates (Routledge, 2015)

The ‘Anchoring vi Schema’ and its relation to phrase rhythm in popular music

“…It is not my intention, however, to subject popular music to the phrase-analytical criteria typically applied to music of the common practice period. Robin Attas concurs, offering that ‘Rothstein's strong emphasis on tonal motion may not be entirely suitable for popular music, where cyclic harmonic progressions, expanded harmonic vocabularies, and groove-based structures often result in a very different harmonic idiom’ (2011, paragraph 5). Notably, some of my analytically minded predecessors assert the existence of a phenomenon similar to phrase rhythm in traditional tonal music operative in popular music.…”

“…In the context of rock music from the period 1955–1969, Walter Everett writes of measuring units (such as phrases) ‘against normal, prototypical lengths that exist as abstract standard models’ (2009, p. 328). Finally, Attas shows how a re-conception of the notion of ‘phrase’ may allow for discussion of phrase rhythm in popular music – demonstrated through the analysis of music by contemporary singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan (2011).…”

“…Rothstein (1989) demonstrated how expanded and contracted phrases in Western classical music may be related to prototypical models of normative lengths, such as four or eight measures. Theorists of popular music do not agree about the viability of applying traditional tonal concepts (such as ‘phrase’) to popular music, though (Stephenson 2002, p. 7; Attas 2011, paragraph 2; Temperley 2018, p. 61). Without demanding that popular music fulfill certain cadential requirements, I nevertheless submit that it is possible to theorise about phrase expansion in popular music.…”