Librarian
Search Tips for Music Research
When doing research on contemporary or popular music, you may find it difficult to find peer-reviewed journal articles on your chosen artist, group, or song.
In fact, there is a good chance there is no-peer reviewed article on your specific topic.
BUT there will be peer reviewed articles on the musical genre or historical issues that surround your artist or song.
- Start by searching your artist/group/song. Place names that are made up of more than one word in quotes, to make sure your search looks for that exact name or phrase. Example: "Taylor Swift," "Birds of a Feather," or "Am I the Drama?"
- When searching from library homepage, the default results will include popular sources like magazines. These can be good additional (non-scholarly) sources for your research.
- Try filtering the results for "Peer-Reviewed Journals" and "Articles."
- Even if an article isn't written specifically about your artist or song, if it comes up in the search results, it might mention your artist or song. Try opening the article and searching the text to see if your artist or song is buried in the text, or even in a footnote.
- If there are no results, move to the next step.
- Brainstorm some keywords to broaden your search.
- Are there any related people, such as producers, songwriters, or older/more well-known artists whose work is similar in some way, or who you would like to compare or contrast to your artist?
- What genre does your artist or song represent? Wikipedia is often a good place to get started identifying genres. Example: Harry Styles. Search the genres you identify in one of our dictionaries and encyclopedias, like Bloomsbury or Grove. Are there other artists you can identify as related? Topics that come up that might be related to your particular artist or song? For example, if you were looking to write about Harry Styles, you could try searching "synth-pop."
- What issues does your artist or group face, represent, or make music about? What is the larger topic that you are writing about? For example: "Black identity and hip hop," "gender and country music," "popular music and social protest."
