Who Is Constructed In Shuker's Play Themes?

Themes may be constructed through recurring figures, repetitive direct or indirect lyrical references, the placement of multiple tracks and sections as well as through acts and scenes. Marianne Tatom Letts theorises that themes constructed by lyrics ‘play themes off each other to make a larger point’ to that outwardly observable; she terms this ‘lyrically thematic’. Shuker develops this idea as he suggests ‘a theme can be compositional, narrative, or lyrical’; all of which are featured in 21st Century Breakdown.

There is value in briefly contrasting the terms ‘genre’ and ‘style’ to clarify my understanding of each term throughout this dissertation. In popular music studies the terms are often employed interchangeably as noted by popular
musicologist, Allan Moore. For Moore, ‘genre’ concerns the social factors that ‘cut right across style, such that there will be genres that intersect both and rock and other styles of popular music’. Drawing on Moore we may read style as an aspect of genre that concerns the musical articulation of a work.