Emma Longmuir
Music Postgraduate Research Student
Project Title: Narratives of Agelessness and Renewal in the Work of Annie Lennox
Supervisors: Dr Richard Elliott and Dr Gareth Longstaff
Emma Longmuir is a PhD candidate in Music and Media and a recipient of the Clara Whittaker Music PhD Scholarship. Her research focuses on age, time, renewal and life narratives in Annie Lennox’s work from 2020 onwards. Emma’s research interests sit within popular music studies and age studies, and she is particularly interested in work which creatively examines and interrogates ageing within popular music performance.
Emma’s PhD thesis focuses on Annie Lennox’s later life performances from 2020 onwards. Lennox’s unexpected comeback to popular music during the COVID-19 lockdowns has resulted in performances which revisit and reimagine some of her back catalogue. The thesis explores intersections between popular music studies, age studies and gender studies and argues that Lennox’s later life performances challenge ‘decline narratives’ which are frequently attributed to ageing female popular musicians. The project considers Lennox’s ‘ageless voice’ as a primary factor in subverting these narratives and examines how she utilises this within her song renewals. It interrogates ways in which Lennox’s later life performances begin to fragment relationships between past, present and future by reflecting and refracting different points in time.
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Education
- Master of Music, Newcastle University
- PGCE in Music with Specialist Instrumental Teaching, Royal Northern College of Music and Manchester Metropolitan University
- BA(Hons) in Music, Newcastle University
Memberships
Member of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM).
Achievements
Winner of the IASPM UK&I Andrew Goodwin Memorial Prize (2023): ‘The “Ageless Voice”: Exploring Age and Agelessness in Annie Lennox’s 2020 and 2022 Performances of “Here Comes the Rain Again”’
