Introduction: The notion of magic in popular music discourse

Abstract

This special issue focuses on the intersection of popular music and the notion of magic, offering a small but hopefully precise and enlightening cross-section of the many and various ways in which musicians, audiences and critics apply this notion to popular songs and music events. The term 'magic', in its adjectival or noun form, is often used as a catch-all synonym for admiration, creativity or success, and many studies have already insisted upon the 'magic' capacity of a performer to leave their audience spellbound (e.g. Looseley 2015, p. 116 on Edith Piaf; Nancy Guy 2015 on Beverly Sills; there are too many to cite). This issue focuses rather less on the perceived magic (aura) of individual artists and more on the compositional and discursive processes that generate rare and intense connections between humans, and which practioners qualify as 'magic'. Whether the term invokes a presumably lost sense of spirituality, a sense of intellectual bafflement, or yet something else, it hides assumptions and values that we propose to unravel.