Introduction: the notion of magic in popular music discourse

According to this theory, a universal system of coherence exists between the celestial and the human worlds, and as the planets’ rotation produces musical tones, so human souls resonate in harmony with what is around them.1 Here, music provides a metaphor as well as a structure for understanding the analogy between the two worlds, and what is ‘magic’ about this theory is that outwardly different and distinct objects (a planet, a man, a soul, a crop) are thought to have an influence upon one another at a remove (Godwin 1987, p. 10). Setting his analysis of cultural ‘mythologies’ in an Adornian, anti-capitalist framework, Barthes considers that contemporary publicists (and consumers) endow the goods they sell (and buy) with magical properties, attributing to them special powers unconnected to the objects per se. [...]buying a Citroën DS car, whose name is a homophone of the French word for ‘Goddess’ (déesse), allows the consumer to experience a feeling of smooth and shiny perfection, a sense of control over matter, movement and speed. In effect, the polyvalence of the notion of magic fills a gap in language by allowing the user to name any type of ‘special’ experience triggered by music, any moment when an alternative to our supposedly oppressive ‘reality’ arises. Because magic is, in this sense, akin to the notion of utopia, Loeffler makes the powerful conclusion that the widespread recognition of the occurrence of magic (at least in popular music discourse) reveals our common desire for social connections, and for kindness towards one another. [...]borrowing the notion of ‘alief’ (or non-belief) from Szábo Gendler and Jason Leddington, Exarchos contends that the experience of magic involves a conflict of belief, a form of cognitive dissonance on the part of the audience, whereby one observes something without endorsing it, or is no longer convinced by the knowledge they hold of that thing.