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Dusty Springfield: The Ultimate Collection

Devon Powers, PopMatters, 3 December 2001

OH, POP MUSIC! One minute, it pushes the envelope wide-wide open, then the next seals it up tight as can be! Such a force it is, for reinforcing cultural expectations, for undoing them! Just think: this pop star plays the virgin/whore; these boys rant misogynist raves while tarted up like streetwalkers/divas; and wow, these suckers sing with a mangled cockney, when their origins are tried and true to the U.S of A! What are we audiences—poor dears, amazed souls—to do? When the world is both explained and confused by our pop cultural icons, when we hate and love them for who we are or who we want to be, when the world they occupy/sanctify seems so different from what's just beyond our homestead windows—what, oh what, will become of us?

Total word count of piece: 770

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