Toby Manning: Mixing Pop and Politics

Repeater, 2024, softcover, 600 pages, 15.3 x 23.3 cm

How has chart music in Britain and America mirrored political and social movements over the past 70 years?

Mixing Pop and Politics is a history of modern Britain and America told through music. In the book, Manning explores how 1950s rock’n’roll rejected social conformity, how the 60s’ counterculture reshaped both music and society and how the 70s saw glam, funk, and punk reject a reemerging conservatism.

With the 80s making a turning point in pop and politics, the rebellious energies of rave, hip-hop and grunge were soon coopted or crushed, while, in the 90s, Britpop and gangsta rap, like politics, relayed a reductive ‘realism’. With the 2000s defined by war and economic collapse, music became increasingly insular and individualist – before the revival of rap and grime in the 2010s paralleled the resurgence of radical politics.

While 2020s music reflects a less hopeful era, Mixing Pop and Politics argues that, despite constant co-optation, music will always reinvent itself from the ground up – providing a powerful analogy for social change.