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Recovery Studies and Pop Musicology: The Twelve Steps as Lyrical, Visual and Sonic Rhetoric

image of Recovery Studies and Pop Musicology: The Twelve Steps as Lyrical, Visual and Sonic Rhetoric
  • By Adam J. Goldwyn
  • Source: The Intellect Handbook of Popular Music Methodologies , pp 523-536
  • Publication Date: June 2025
  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/9781835951033_33
  • Language: English
  • Accessibility Summary:  EPUB 3 and pdf file included; compatible with devices and software which can read these formats. Adjustable font size, spacing, contrast, text justification, number of columns (ePUB only). Alternative text for images. Tagged with a logical reading order to assist screen readers. Navigation between in-text citations and reference list, and endnotes and endnote markers.

This paper uses multimodal discourse analysis to examine how themes and motifs that have their origins in the twelfth-step program of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous have been presented through the auditory medium of music and the visual medium of music videos. An analysis of singers across genres including hip-hop (Eminem, Macklemore and Lewis), country (Kenny Chesney, Dan+Shay), blues (Stevie Ray Vaughan), and pop (Alanis Morissette) demonstrates that recurring visual, lyric, and auditory elements of these songs contain images that have one meaning for the small in-group of people familiar with recovery while also disseminating such in-group discourse to the global consumer marketplace of pop culture listeners.

Keywords: Alcoholics Anonymous ; Alcoholism ; Drug Addiction ; Multimodal Discourse Analysis ; Music Videos ; Pop Music ; Recovery Studies

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References

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References

  1. Anon. (2001), Alcoholics Anonymous, New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Cash, Johnny (2006), ‘I Came to Believe’, American V: A Hundred Highways, CD, USA: American.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Chesney, Kenny (2009), ‘That's Why I'm Here’, YouTube, 24 November, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqo0aVgKHRo. Accessed 29 January 2022 .
  4. Christgau, Robert (1989), ‘In Step by Stevie Ray Vaughan’, Consumer Guide, http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?id=2137&name=Stevie+Ray+Vaughan+and+Double+Trouble. Accessed 25 October 2021 .
  5. Dan+Shay (2017), ‘How Not To’, YouTube, 16 January, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMXOPi2iHSY. Accessed 29 January 2022 .
  6. Dream Theater (2002), Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, CD, USA: Elektra.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Dream Theater (2007), Systematic Chaos, CD, USA: Roadrunner Records.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Eminem (2009), ‘When I'm Gone’, YouTube, 16 June, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wYNFfgrXTI. Accessed 29 January 2022 .
  9. Goldwyn, Adam (2022), ‘The rhetoric of recovery in Social Distortion's White Light, White Heat, White Trash’, Punk and Post-Punk, 11:3, pp. 353–70.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Jensen, George (2000), Storytelling in Alcoholics Anonymous: A Rhetorical Analysis, Carbondale, IL and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Kaminer, Wendy (1992), I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions, Boston, MA: Addison Wesley.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Keenan, Maynard James (2013), interviewed by K. Loder, MTVNews.com, 15 June, https://archive.ph/20130615202518/http://www.mtv.com/bands/a/a_perfect_circle/news_feature_040122/. Accessed 15 November 2021 .
  13. Machin, David (2010), Analysing Popular Music: Image, Sound, Text, Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Macklemore and Lewis, Ryan (2011), ‘Otherside’, YouTube, 12 September, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru-LgSvOCrE. Accessed 29 January 2022 .
  15. Macklemore and Lewis, Ryan (2012), ‘Starting Over’, The Heist, CD, USA: Macklemore LLC.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Macklemore and Lewis Ryan (2013), ‘Starting Over’, YouTube, 20 December, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbjEYddz7MA. Accessed 29 January 2022 .
  17. Mäkelä, Klaus , Arminen, Ilkka , Bloomfield, Kim , Eisenbach-Stangl, Irmgard , Helmersson Bergmark, Karin , Kurube, Noriko , Mariolini, Nicoletta , Ólafsdóttir, Hildigunnr , Peteron, John , Phillips, Mary , Rehm, Jürgen , Room, Robin , Rosenqvist, Pia , Rosovsky, Haydée , Stenius, Kerstin , Światkiewicz, Grażyna , Woronowicz, Bohdan and Zieliński, Antoni (1996), Alcoholics Anonymous as a Mutual Self-Help Movement: A Study in Eight Societies, Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Morissette, Alanis (2020), ‘Reasons I Drink’, YouTube, 27 February, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWHpIP1-kUI. Accessed 29 January 2022 .
  19. Room, Robin (1989), ‘Alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous in U.S. films, 1945–1962: The party 536ends for the “wet generations”’, Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 50, pp. 368–83.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Sedgwick, Eve (1990), Epistemology of the Closet, Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Vaughan, Stevie Ray and Double Trouble (1989), In Step, CD, USA: Epic.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Walsh, Joe (2012a), ‘One Day at a Time’, Analog Man, CD, USA: Fantasy.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Walsh, Joe (2012b), ‘One Day at a Time’, YouTube, 28 September, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlfCyHbLdpI. Accessed 29 January 2022 .
  24. Way, Lyndon (2017), Popular Music and Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies, London: Bloomsbury.
     [Google Scholar]

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