Down with Childhood: Pop Music and the Crisis of Innocence

Sometimes popular music registers our concerns and anxieties more lucidly than we realise. This is evident in the case of an ideal of childhood innocence in rapid decay in recent decades.

So claims Down with Childhood, as it takes in psychedelia’s preoccupation with rebirth and inner-children, the fascination with juvenilia amidst an ebbing UK rave scene and dozens of nursery rhyme hip-hop choruses spawned by a hit Jay-Z tune.

As it examines the often complex sets of meanings to which the occ...