The migration of cynical academic ideas about postmodernism into music journalism are traced in this book. The result of this migration is a widespread fatalism over the ability of the music industry to absorb any expression of defiance in popular music.

The book synthesizes a number of fields: American and British academic and journalistic music criticism; aesthetic and literary history and theory from romanticism through postmodernism; alternative music such as feminist punk and grunge; political economy, which has fueled the obsession with commercial incorporation; and subcultural sociology.