The creative process of The Beatles revisited: A multi-level analysis of the interaction between individual and collaborative creativity
Issue: Vol 9 No. 1 (2014)
Journal: Popular Music History
Subject Areas: Popular Music
Abstract:
Much of both popular and academic writing about creativity in popular music has been characterized by a conflict between commercial production and artistic creativity. On the one hand, creativity has been explored with reference to the large-scale structure of the popular music industry. On the other hand, much of the writing has been based on a Romantic or individualist notion of creativity, explicit for example in the auteur theory. This line of writing has certainly been popular with respect to The Beatles. Drawing on recent research on creativity in popular music and organizational research, the article challenges this dichotomy by focusing on the interaction between individual creativity and different forms of collaborative creativity in the production of The Beatles’ records.
Author: Yrjö Heinonen
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