Philipp Wulf - Criticism of the love song

Philipp Wulf - Criticism of the love song

XS-Verlag, Berlin 2026, 384 pages, softcover. Description

From the Beatles to Taylor Swift, pop celebrates love as an agent for achieving existential happiness. As Hegel's “art of the mind, which is addressed directly to the mind itself,” music also appears to be the art form predestined for feeling. But the love song is not just a genre, but rather the aesthetic form in which the subject negotiates his emotional world constituted in a competitive society. Philipp Wulf knowledgeably examines the genesis of the romantic concept of love, the aesthetics of pathos and sentimentality, and phenomena such asGuilty pleasureor the conscious, distinguished consumption of kitsch viaCamp. His ideologically critical study is an examination of the social conditions of how we hear and feel - and at the same time an implicit declaration of love for the art form of the pop song.