Playlist with Commentary
This is a creative and hopefully fun assignment to apply what weve learned throughout the quarter to analysis of the music you know and love. Create a playlist with links to YouTube videos that fulfill each of the categories below, and write commentary on each track in the form of a paragraph (minimum 250 words each) analyzing the musical form, technologies, cultural significance, visualization, and/or why you think they fit the assignment. Where relevant, reference course readings and discussions in your analysis. Although the descriptions of each track will be brief, I expect a high level of analysis and insight in the writing on each track. The songs/videos you include cannot be ones you have already posted to course discussion boards. It is less important that you get the assignment right in terms of selecting songs that fit the categories and more important to develop the quality, precision, and depth of your written analysis interpretation of the tracks. It’s likely that there will be ambiguities about whether a song counts for a category or not, but your written analysis should make the case for how it fits or how it stretches the boundaries of the categories to expand our understanding of the category. If only a portion of a song fits a category, it can still count. But your analysis should focus on the parts of the song that are relevant to the category. You are welcome to include songs in languages other than English, as long as you give some kind of explanation of the lyrical content and musical context. Part of the assignment is for you to figure out how best to demonstrate each category and find songs that do so. None of the songs on your playlist should be tracks that we have listened to/viewed in class. You will be graded on the basis of the songs you write about, so if you want to make a longer mix, you do not need to write notes for the additional songs. Feel free to share more music that you like, if you want.
