Singing Out
The Musical Voice in Audiovisual Media
Published on 31. March 2025
Book
Hardback
224 pages
978-1-3995-0820-9 (ISBN)
Description
Singing Out explores a broad range of singing voices and sung moments, from lavish film musical sequences, television and videogames, through to online platforms, advertising, and multimedia installation work. It illustrates the diverse ways in which the singing voice is produced and understood in different media across international contexts, taking into consideration issues such as corporeal form, age, race, reception, and gender.
The act of singing emphasises issues of identity, technology, and the identifying markers of the voice itself, heightening communication, acting as an aid to memory, and inviting judgement. Singing demarcates and breaks down textual and conceptual boundaries, and offers an intensity of experience that gives it a special status on the soundtrack.
Singing Out contains a range of approaches to the singing voice, offering students and researchers a variety of methodological and critical tools to understand the contemporary context and importance of singing in multimedia.
The act of singing emphasises issues of identity, technology, and the identifying markers of the voice itself, heightening communication, acting as an aid to memory, and inviting judgement. Singing demarcates and breaks down textual and conceptual boundaries, and offers an intensity of experience that gives it a special status on the soundtrack.
Singing Out contains a range of approaches to the singing voice, offering students and researchers a variety of methodological and critical tools to understand the contemporary context and importance of singing in multimedia.
Reviews / Votes
From the first page, this collection sings! Carroll and Haworth have expertly edited a collection that is a necessary addition to numerous academic discourses, such as the musical, sound and voice studies, and one of the few sustained studies into singing in audio-visual media. Singing Out offers fascinating explorations about the body, stardom, technology and liveness through a range of perspectives on singing in reactions videos, biographical television dramas, performance art, video games and advertisements. Each chapter is unique in focus, but all share a rigorous approach to singing as worthy object of study, becoming a chorus of voices that hit all the right notes. * Dr. Julie Lobalzo Wright, Associate Professor, University of Warwick *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
23 black and white illustrations
4 tables
2 line drawings
17 images
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
494 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-3995-0820-9 (9781399508209)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Catherine Haworth is Course Leader for Music and Music Technology at the University of Huddersfield. Her research focuses on musical practices of representation and identity across various media, with a particular interest in film and television music. Catherine has published on topics including the female detective in 1940s Hollywood; music, gender and medical discourse; women and music in James Bond; and celebrity culture in the film musical. She edited a special edition of Music, Sound and the Moving Image on gender and sexuality, and co-edited the collection Gender, Age and Musical Creativity. Beth Carroll is a Lecturer in Film at the University of Southampton. Her research focuses on matters relating to audiovisual media, including space, place and the body. Beth is particularly interested in sound and the impact it has on issues of immersion and phenomenology in film, videogames, and VR. She is the author of Feeling Film: A Spatial Approach and co-editor of Contemporary Musical Film.
Content
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Beth Carroll and Catherine Haworth
Part I. Stardom and The Singing Body
1. Bearer of All Things: Black Women's Voices in 20th Century American Popular Music
Abigail Lindo
2. A Voice Too Much: Performance, Authenticity and Nostalgia in Biographical Television Drama Hannah Andrews and Leanne Weston
3. Super-Natural: Television Singing, the Special Guest Star and Stevie Nicks in American Horror Story (2011-)
Catherine Haworth
Part II. Voices, Commerce and Consumption
4. Singalong Advertising: Imagined Communities of Consumption
Malcolm Cook
5. Auto-tuning Hannah Montana: Miley Cyrus's Child Voice and the Technological Subversion of Girlhood
Liam Maloy
6. Where Voice and Body Meet Again: Punjabi Rappers in Bollywood Music Videos
Julia Szivak
Part III. The Singing Voice as Transformation
7. On Screen, on Stage, in Live Performance: Songs and Singing in Sister Act
Ian Sapiro
8. Kinshasa's Music, Dreams and Shared Cinematic Realities: Listening to Vocal Performance in Felicite (2017)
Chris Letcher
9. 'But the right words, never come': Transformative Identities, Female Agency and Performance in Sayonara Wild Hearts
Jennifer Smith
Part IV. Singing, Technology and Mediation
10. 'We don't have that': Representation of Hindustani Classical Vocal Performance in YouTube Reaction Videos
Irina Mironova
11. 'I see Marina, but feel Maria': Marina Abramovic's Mediation of Callas's Voice
Lea Luka Sikau
12. The World is Mine: Queer Affective Horizons in the Vocaloid Pop of Hatsune Miku
Shelina Brown
References
Index
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Beth Carroll and Catherine Haworth
Part I. Stardom and The Singing Body
1. Bearer of All Things: Black Women's Voices in 20th Century American Popular Music
Abigail Lindo
2. A Voice Too Much: Performance, Authenticity and Nostalgia in Biographical Television Drama Hannah Andrews and Leanne Weston
3. Super-Natural: Television Singing, the Special Guest Star and Stevie Nicks in American Horror Story (2011-)
Catherine Haworth
Part II. Voices, Commerce and Consumption
4. Singalong Advertising: Imagined Communities of Consumption
Malcolm Cook
5. Auto-tuning Hannah Montana: Miley Cyrus's Child Voice and the Technological Subversion of Girlhood
Liam Maloy
6. Where Voice and Body Meet Again: Punjabi Rappers in Bollywood Music Videos
Julia Szivak
Part III. The Singing Voice as Transformation
7. On Screen, on Stage, in Live Performance: Songs and Singing in Sister Act
Ian Sapiro
8. Kinshasa's Music, Dreams and Shared Cinematic Realities: Listening to Vocal Performance in Felicite (2017)
Chris Letcher
9. 'But the right words, never come': Transformative Identities, Female Agency and Performance in Sayonara Wild Hearts
Jennifer Smith
Part IV. Singing, Technology and Mediation
10. 'We don't have that': Representation of Hindustani Classical Vocal Performance in YouTube Reaction Videos
Irina Mironova
11. 'I see Marina, but feel Maria': Marina Abramovic's Mediation of Callas's Voice
Lea Luka Sikau
12. The World is Mine: Queer Affective Horizons in the Vocaloid Pop of Hatsune Miku
Shelina Brown
References
Index