Kenneth Smith is Professor of music at the University of Liverpool, UK, and President of the Society for Music Analysis. He is the author of Skryabin, Philosophy and the Music of Desire (2017) and Desire in Chromatic Harmony (2020) and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis (2018). Stephen Overy is Lecturer in philosophy at Newcastle University, UK. He specialises in philosophy of the unconscious and desire, situating the work of a line of thinkers from Kant to Deleuze in relation to its implications for materialism.
Kenneth Smith and Stephen Overy present a unique approach to the analysis of popular music that links conventional music theoretic and Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts providing the analyst a window into the unconscious drives shaping popular music. * Ciro Scotto, Associate Professor of Music Theory, Ohio University, USA * Listening to the Unconscious provides a compelling approach to music listening. It is an invaluable addition to the field of popular music studies, demonstrating deftly the relevance of psychoanalysis in music scholarship. Comprising an extensive collection of musical examples, Smith and Overy have developed an impressive array of theories that lay the foundations for important forms of critical thinking. * Stan Hawkins, Professor Emeritus, University of Oslo and University of Agder, Norway *