Figurations of the Singer-Songwriter in digital-algorithmic media cultures

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Butler
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 570165952

The project examines processes of updating and diversifying the singer-songwriter figure in the context of the so-called digital transformation. It starts from the observation that, although the singer-songwriter figure has been omnipresent in the global pop music scene for about half a century, it has significantly gained in media presence since the 2010s: Musicians such as Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift use the figure as a point of reference in processes of self-fashioning; yet the figure is also, and increasingly so, referred to in the aesthetic and/or ideological positioning of artists beyond the folk rock/pop paradigm (in hip hop, for example). This updating and diversifying ‘revival’ of the singer-songwriter figure, as the project assumes, is particularly due to the proliferation of digital-algorithmic media technologies in the production, distribution and reception of popular music, as their promises of participation as well as closeness and intimacy resonate with the promise of authenticity traditionally associated with the singer-songwriter figure. The project scrutinizes this thesis by analyzing the discursive and non-discursive practices of producing the singer-songwriter figure in selected media constellations – from crowd-based patronage structures (e.g. Patreon) to ‘digital campfires’ (e.g. on TikTok) as places of virtual community building to debates on AI-driven songwriting (e.g. in the case of the ‘last’ song by The Beatles). By focusing on these processes of figuration, it sheds light on how exactly someone – and who in the first place – is fabricated as a singer-songwriter, by whom and under what conditions; it asks how the singer-songwriter takes, or is given, a specific shape in different medial environments, how they are authenticated and evaluated as such, and which potential (identity-political, economic, aesthetic, ...) effects and functions this may have. The project thus unravels how the singer-songwriter figure is re-evaluated, repositioned and appropriated through media-technological transformations in conjunction with social changes and developments. In doing so, it not only contributes to a genealogy of the singer-songwriter figure and thus complements the existing research discourse, which has largely been focusing on historical case studies and questions of genre, but – on a conceptual-theoretical level – also contributes to a more nuanced analysis and description of processes of figuration in digital-algorithmic media cultures.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants