The Beatles and Vocal Expression

1. The Beatles and Vocal Expression is the first corpus analysis of paralinguistic voice qualities in recorded popular song. 2. It addresses two key gaps in existing Beatles scholarship: a history of their performance practices and a close study of their mainly African American stylistic forebears (Everett 2000), which will benefit students in popular music and cultural studies. 3. The new mixed-methodology, which locates paralinguistic voice qualities in recordings, identifies features, shows functions, and draws aural threads within and across songs on The Beatles’ UK studio albums, gives readers a new insight into their vocalisms and paralanguage as a theoretical framework and analytical tool. 4. Taking the recording as text, the mixed-methodology examines paralinguistic voice qualities using Sonic Visualiser (industry standard software specifically designed to digitally analyse recordings). Importing this systematic analytical tool into a traditionally qualitative field reveals new insights into concepts, characteristics, metaphors, and functions of paralanguage in performance. This provides a transferable method for students to analyse other groups/solo performers and encourages them to link the scholarship to their own musical practice. 5. The results reveal expressive tropes that enhance or contradict narrative, play with listener expectations, and give rise to a series of paralinguistic personae – a new way of assessing identities that singers temporarily embody in performance.