Music is an important part of many people's lives and of popular culture. For this class, you could write about a music video (best to have a videotaped copy so you casn watch it repeatly, freeze frames etc) from a visual point of view, perhaps trying to explain what connection the images have to the song, or you might examine how women or minorities are portrayed. A second approach would be to concentrate on the lyrics of a song for the text analysis paper. Be careful to pick a song which has words that can stand on their own, like poetry. The best papers (here's some examples) of this kind that I've gotten put the song into some kind of context--the songwriter's life, the other songs of that person or style (genre, e.g. rap). The World Wide Web is full of information by artists, fans, scholars and labels. Ask Patrick for a helpful handout for writing about poetry (or see here for an abbreviated version).
Here's another introductory page on music
MTV Analysis See also PN 1992.8 M87G 66 1992
Books:
Aesthetics of Rock R. Meltzer ML 3877 M45 1987
She-Bop a history of women in rock by Lucy O'Brien
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The Similarities engine: tell it what music
you like and it will recommend others that you'll like too.