Low Pop: The Sentimental Ballad (A04)

• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 438577023

The subproject’s subject is the sentimental ballad: a musical form occurring in all song-oriented genres that often includes the greatest hits while being devaluated in discourses and feminized by ascription. Based on the ballad as ‘low pop’-phenomenon, the project investigates the common ground of experiencing sentimental affects, the dynamically gendered connotations of popular genres as well as the persistence of the high/low-difference within the popular. The corpus of the compilation series Kuschelrock (‘Cuddle Rock’) – comprising more than 1,200 ballads from rock, pop and soul – serves as the project's starting point.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1472: Transformations of the Popular
• Applicant Institution: Universität Siegen
• Project Head: Professor Dr. Florian Heesch