Scholarly Journal Article Summary

For my scholarly journal to summarize, I chose an article from the June issue of the Journal of Popular Music Studies. The article was entitled "A Complete Loser: Masculinity and it's Discontents in Elvis Constello's My Aim is True and The Year's Model." I chose this article because I am a fan of Elvis Costello and I thought it would be interesting to learn more about him that what I have learned just from listening to his music.
The article began with a quote from Costello, where he states that he knows only two motivation points for writing his songs: revenge and guilt. Costello's music was described as a shot against femininity in the '70's. However, the write of the article suggests that Costello wasn't a chauvinist, and instead challenged what masculinity meant and creating his own new persona. Costello was the first artist to self-examine his own preoccupation with masculinity, which confused listeners in the beginning into thinking Costello was a one-trick pony who only wrote about getting revenge against ex loves. However, his songs were the first in rock where the man was admitting total defeat at the hands of a woman, and they were without self-pity or macho revenge.