Home, Work, and Music: Towards a Domestic Turn in Popular Music Studies

In this introduction to this special issue we make the case for a domestic turn in popular music studies, a programmatic invitation for a direct and sustained pivot to the home in all its variable forms and leaky complexity. We point to the lack of concerted treatment of the home in popular music studies while identifying its centrality to debates about creative labor, the changing nature of (live) music, and gendered inequalities in musical practices. We follow this with a brief summary of some historical work by feminist scholars on popular music and society and then move to a thematic summary of the collection. Here, we show how the articles speak to four interweaving themes—spaces, relations, technologies and cultural work—and draw out the methodological implications for a home-centered approach.