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This chapter provides an overview of ecocritical methods for probing the relationship between popular music and the environment in an age of ecological crisis. This involves an overview of existing ecomusicological scholarship on popular music and the status of textual approaches. I then set out my own position, arguing for a performative view of music as generative acts of imagination that produce scenarios and identities that help us project ourselves into the uncertain future. I exemplify my position in a case study of climate change in pop music recordings by the artists Aurora, ANOHNI, and Björk. The deceptively abstract quality of climate change makes it especially beholden to aesthetic framing and the powers of narrative. Different songs bring the issue into view in different ways, which will open and/or close certain modes of sensing and understanding, effecting the horizon of the possible.
Keywords: cultural imagination ; ecocriticism ; ecomusicology ; environmental humanities ; futurism ; pastoral
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