Fulbright Lecture will focus on Swedish music exports
Professor Weisbard’s lecture will explore how Sweden has reshaped the world’s pop music, from Abba onwards. Photo: Bengt H Malmqvist
This year’s Fulbright Lecture will be given by Eric Weisbard, Professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama. He is a specialist in American popular music and culture in the 20th century.
Professor Weisbard’s lecture will explore how Sweden has reshaped the world’s pop music, from Abba onwards. The lecture will describe how producer Max Martin gathered a guild of songwriters to create hits with artists ranging from Britney Spears to The Weeknd, while Spotify accounted for another turning point in music history by transforming the pirate platform of MP3 downloading into a streaming service for hundreds of millions.
In short, Professor Weisblad will use his lecture to explore how an unabashedly commercial “Swemix” shifted pop from Americanisation and British Invasion to globalisation.
Professor Weisbard’s books include Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Songbooks: The Literature of American Popular Music (Duke University Press, 2021) and Hound Dog (Duke University Press, 2023). He is currently editing The Oxford Handbook of Pop Music.
Lecture: Music for Export: Abba, Max Martin, Spotify and the Swemix of American Pop
Date and time: 21 March 2024, 16:15–17:15.
Venue: University Main Building, Room IX
Åsa Malmberg
The Fulbright Lecture:
The visiting professorship Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Academic Studies was established at the Swedish Institute for North American Studies (SINAS) at Uppsala University in 1996. SINAS is the only academic institution in Sweden specialising in research and education on North America, particularly the United States. The Fulbright Chair enables a leading US scholar in the field of American Studies to spend a period of time at SINAS. Apart from teaching courses and pursuing research, the holder of the Fulbright Chair gives a public lecture each year, known as the Fulbright Lecture.