The British Pop Dandy: Masculinity, Popular Music and Culture

If one is looking for a cut and dried exposé of dandyism in British popular music - a comprehensive (or obvious) list of dandified figures that have graced its history since the advent of rock and roll, for example, or a fully worked out analysis of such salient figures - one will not find it here. Hawkins' writing about the dandy is as brilliantly elusive as the subject itself: like the dandy, who prefers to flaunt convention, gendered and otherwise, in the name of revolting against it, Hawkins does not follow a straight line in his narrative, preferring not to define too precisely, not to analyse too concretely, to suggest rather than determine, to accrue significations layer by layer, and to leave interpretive doors open rather than close them firmly. [...]he also historicises the emergence of the British pop music dandy more specifically within post-industrial Britain, discussing such influences as British music hall, the art school tradition, the influence of Andy Warhol on a generation of pop musicians, and movements such as the Teddy Boys and Mods, among other elements. Hawkins asserts a hierarchy of the various media that he analyzes, insisting that 'it is music videos that mostly stake out the pop dandy's territory' (p. 13), but on this point he sells himself short: it is precisely that Hawkins goes beyond the visual to try to locate dandyism in musical sound that is one of the path-breaking aspects of this book.