Series: 33 1/3 Europe

Perhaps the best musical encapsulation of the Cold War as experienced in the walled city of West-Berlin, Kollaps is a product of its time while remaining as vital, exhilarating and surprising as the day it was released. The book explores the contexts, themes and influences that shaped Kollaps. It describes the early days of Einstürzende Neubauten in West-Berlin, their infamous...

As market reforms and migration transformed Albania in the early 1990s, Ardit Gjebrea began mixing traditional folk music with world music and Italian pop. The resulting album, Projekt Jon (1997), provided a new model for song—Western and cosmopolitan, yet firmly rooted in the fertile soil of the nation—against a backdrop of deepening political uncertainty about the very future of Albania....

This book explores the album Külmale maale (To the Cold Land, 1989) by J.M.K.E. – the most legendary punk rock band in Estonia – concentrating on the meaning of the album in different sociocultural contexts from its release until today. In 35 years, the album has not lost its relevance: It was selected by 102 music critics as the best...

“I'm a Barbie Girl, in a Barbie world,” the ubiquitous refrain that dominated the airwaves in summer 1997. Aqua's single from their debut album Aquarium spread like wildfire, topping charts across the globe. With their erotically charged lyrics and dance beats, Aqua moved beyond their Danish Eurodance beginnings and achieved global renown in the late 1990s. In the US, however,...

Darkthrone’s A Blaze in the Northern Sky (1992) is a foundational keystone of the musical and aesthetic vision of the notorious Norwegian black metal scene and one of the most beloved albums of the genre. Its mysterious artwork and raw sound continue to captivate and inspire black metal fans and musicians worldwide. This book explores the album in the context...

The voice of Amália Rodrigues (1920-1999), the “Queen of Fado” and Portugal’s most celebrated diva, was extraordinary for its interpretive power, soul-wrenching timbre, and international reach. Amalia à l’Olympia (1957) is an album made from recordings of her first performances at the fabled Olympia Music Hall in Paris in 1956. This album, which was issued for multiple national markets (including...

This book explores an album of popular music with a remarkable significance to a violent wave of postcolonial tensions in the Netherlands in the 1970s. Several “actions” were claimed by a small number of first-generation descendants of approximately 12,500 reluctant migrants from the young independent state of Indonesia (former Dutch East Indies). Transferred in 1951, this culturally coherent group consisted...

Examining the cultural significance of the rap album Jarmark (2020) as a reflection of Polish politics and history during the country’s populist turn and migration following EU enlargement. Taco Hemingway is the first Polish artist to be streamed a billion times on Spotify. His fifth studio album, Jarmark, is his most political work to date. Previously described as the voice...

From the beginning of her career in 1935 to her death in 1963 and right up to the present, Édith Piaf has been recognised as unique and iconic. She is France’s most celebrated and mythified singing star across the world. Récital 1961 explores her most important album: the live recording of her comeback concert at the Paris Olympia on 29...

Rock ‘n’ roll may not have toppled the USSR, but it definitely rumbled through its foundations. Unlike the often-saccharine pop music sanctioned by the Soviet state, Ukrainian punk musicians of the 1980s Kyiv underground adapted ideologies of rock to roast the absurdities of late Soviet life, to articulate new ways of being Ukrainian, and to celebrate the cathartic pleasures of...