Research Guides: Popular Music Resources: Home

Subject Librarian

Steve Henry

he/him

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301-405-9256

Subjects: Music, Music Education

Quick Introduction

MSPAL has a variety of resources to help you with your popular music research project, including databases, articles, books, CDs, and some unique primary sources.

Below, you will find a brief description of some of the tools that may be most helpful to you.

Online Resources

Music Index
Music Index is probably the best all-around source for finding journal and magazine articles on popular music. It covers both scholarly sources (e.g. the journal Popular Music) as well as popular glossy magazines (e.g. Rolling Stone).

There are two caveats. Caveat #1 is that Music Index is not a fully full-text database. When searching Music Index, look for links to 'full-text" for the articles you want to read. If you do not see the full-text button, click the red Find It button to see if the UMD Libraries have it in another full-text repository or in paper--if we do not have the article in any form, you will be see with a link to request it through interlibrary loan.

Caveat #2 is that the Music Index database only covers articles written in 1976 or more recently, which misses a lot of primary sources for the study of popular music history. If you are looking for articles written before 1976, try the print version of Music Index (going back to 1949), the RILM database (back to 1967), or a bibliography on popular music. For REALLY old stuff, like 19th century and early 20th century music, try RIPM.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is the scholarly version of Google and it provides search results from many scholarly journals and books. It covers a wide range of subjects and journals and it is presented in a familiar and easy to use interface.

Before using it, though, you really gotta do the following to get the maximum benefit:

In Google Scholar, you can set your home library. This will allow Google Scholar to give you direct links to full-text articles it knows the University of Maryland provides access to. You can also set multiple home libraries if you are enrolled at or teach at another institution. Here's what you need to do:

1. Go to scholar.google.com
2. Log in with a Google account. Since UMD email accounts are also Google accounts, you can use your UMD email, or its also fine to use another Google account.
3. Click the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines, top left of the screen if you are on a laptop/desktop).
4. Click Settings
5. Search for University of Maryland.
6. Select the result that says "University of Maryland Libraries - Find @ UMD
7. Click Save

Now as long as you are logged in to your Google account when searching Google Scholar, you will get links to full-text articles from your search results.
Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive
Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive is a series of digital collections focused on 20th and 21st century genres such as Rock, Folk, and Hip-Hop & Rap. Researchers will find all material represented in the original publications, preserved in its original context, fully searchable and in high-resolution full color. The dates of coverage are1960-2016. There isn't a ton of material here but just about everything is interesting and there is some great primary source material.
JSTOR
JSTOR is a very large online repository of full-text scholarly journals. Its advantage for the study of popular music is that just about everything in JSTOR is high quality, all the articles you find will be immediately downloadable as PDFs, and the coverage is vast. One major downside is that due to licensing agreements, JSTOR doesn't typically have content from the most recent five years or so. For the most recent articles, try Music Index, RILM, or Google Scholar.

Since JSTOR is such a large repository, one downside is you can easily get irrelevant search results (e.g., Lizzo--the Physical Chemist--will show up if you just search for "Lizzo"). You can get around this issue by adding more words to your search (Lizzo and (rap or music or flute)). Another good option is to click Browse and then drill down to a specific subject area (e.g. Arts>Music). Tip: popular music is quite interdisciplinary--you will find lots of good stuff not just in the Music category, but in many others as well. Particularly fruitful subjects to browse in JSTOR would be: History, Language & Literature, Performing Arts of course, and all the areas listed under Area Studies.
RILM Music
RILM is similar to Music Index in that it is mainly an index and not fully full-text. It uses the same interface as well. (Follow the advice under Music Index above for locating articles that are not available as full-text within RILM.

RILM differs from Music Index in its coverage--RILM skews noticeably more scholarly and it doesn't cover all the popular magazines that Music Index does. RILM is also more international in scope. Finally, the online version of RILM goes back further (it has coverage back to 1967).

Reference

There are many discographies and guides to research in the reference section of MSPAL. Here are a few that may be especially useful:

The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits by Joel Whitburn
Call Number: REF ML156.4.P6 W44 2004
ISBN: 9780823074990
Publication Date: 2004-07-01
With information on the most successful hits ever to reach the top of Billboard magazine's singles charts between 1955 and mid-2003, this resource includes fascinating facts, biographies and chart positions for every artist.
Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings by Steve Sullivan
Call Number: REF ML156.4.P6 S87 2013
ISBN: 9780810882959
Publication Date: 2013-10-04
From John Philip Sousa to Green Day, from Scott Joplin to Kanye West, from Stephen Foster to Coldplay, The Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Volumes 1 and 2 covers the vast scope of its subject with virtually unprecedented breadth and depth. Approximately 1,000 key song recordings from 1889 to the present are explored in full, unveiling the stories behind the songs, the recordings, the performers, and the songwriters. Beginning the journey in the era of Victorian parlor balladry, brass bands, and ragtime with the advent of the record industry, readers witness the birth of the blues and the dawn of jazz in the 1910s and the emergence of country music on record and the shift from acoustic to electrical recording in the 1920s. The odyssey continues through the Swing Era of the 1930s; rhythm & blues, bluegrass, and bebop in the 1940s; the rock & roll revolution of the 1950s; modern soul, the British invasion, and the folk-rock movement of the 1960s; and finally into the modern era through the musical streams of disco, punk, grunge, hip-hop, and contemporary dance-pop. Sullivan, however, also takes critical detours by extending the coverage to genres neglected in pop music histories, from ethnic and world music, the gospel recording of both black and white artists, and lesser-known traditional folk tunes that reach back hundreds of years. This book is ideal for anyone who truly loves popular music in all of its glorious variety, and anyone wishing to learn more about the roots of virtually all the music we hear today. Popular music fans, as well as scholars of recording history and technology and students of the intersections between music and cultural history will all find this book to be informative and interesting.
Blues, Funk, Rhythm and Blues, Soul, Hip Hop, and Rap by Eddie S. Meadows
Call Number: REF ML128.P63 M43 2010
ISBN: 9780415973199
Publication Date: 2010-06-10
Despite the influence of African American music and study as a worldwide phenomenon, no comprehensive and fully annotated reference tool currently exists that covers the wide range of genres. This much needed bibliography fills an important gap in this research area and will prove an indispensable resource for librarians and scholars studying African American music and culture.
The Green Book of Songs by Subject by Jeff Green
Call Number: ML156.4.P6 G73 2002
ISBN: 0939735105
Publication Date: 2002-07-01
Hailed by Library Journal as "an impressive feat" and "highly recommended" (with star), the new "Green Book Of Songs by Subject" is the unique, invaluable reference tool for music professionals, teachers, students, choral groups, public speakers, and others searching for lists of songs about particular concepts. Updated for 2002, the "Green Book" classifies over 35,000 songs by nearly 1,800 themes, such as patriotism, politics, cities, food, God, money, war, school, sports, history -- even 147 pages on 25 "love" themes ranging from "falling in love" to "get lost!" Praised by writers at USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Entertainment Tonight and BBC, the "Green Book" covers all genres and eras of music over the past 100 years, even offering novelty records, advertising jingles and children's songs. Listings include over 9,100 artists cross 24,000 albums on 1,500 labels - 86,000 listings in all. ALA/Booklist says, "Recommended... The only drawback is that it's hard to put down." Categories are cross-referenced; a new index offers 4,000 search terms.1,569 pages. $64.95 paperback, $79.95 hardcover. Published by Professional Desk References, 5543 Edmondson Pike, #183, Nashville, TN 37211. Toll-free: 888-335-7664 or 615.832.1942. Fax: 615-311-410. Sample pages available via www.greenbookof songs.com. Wholesalers include Ingram, Baker and Taylor and others.

Special Collections in Popular Music

You can find collections of rare or unique materials at Special Collections in the Performing Arts (SCPA), located inside MSPAL. A few collections might be especially interesting to popular music researchers:

The Keesing Collection on Popular Music and Culture
"The Keesing Collection on Popular Music and Culture consists of books, serials, recordings, sheet music, clippings, memorabilia, and teaching and research materials related to twentieth-century American popular music, and to rock and roll music in particular. The materials were collected by Hugo Keesing, a popular culture scholar and former professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, and by Dr. Keesing's brother, Wouter Keesing. The bulk of the collection covers the period from the 1950s to the 1990s. Serials in the collection include Rolling Stone, Pulse, Discoveries, Goldmine, and many other national and regional music serials. Research and teaching materials include Dr. Keesing's University of Maryland syllabi and class notes, writings, auction lists, catalogues, and price guides. In addition to the books housed with the archival collection, there are an additional 3,000 books that are can be found through the University of Maryland catalog. The collection is broad in its coverage of twentieth-century popular music; however, the collection originally contained a significant number of books, magazines, clippings, and memorabilia related to Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Roy Orbison, and Fats Domino, respectively. These materials have been organized into four separate collections; each collection has its own finding aid. Please note: While the majority of this collection has been processed, select series may not yet have complete inventories. Please contact the curator for more information."
D.C. Punk and Indie Fanzine Collection
"The Washington, D.C. Punk and Indie Fanzine Collection (DCPIFC) seeks to document the variety of publications that were created by fans of and participants in the punk and indie music scenes that have thrived in the Washington, D.C.-area since the late 1970s. The DCPIFC contains fanzines - publications produced by enthusiasts, generally in small runs - created by members of the D.C. punk and indie music communities, as well as fanzines from outside of D.C. that include coverage of D.C. punk and indie music. The collection includes primarily paper fanzines, but it also includes born digital fanzines and digitized files of some paper fanzine materials."