Most often associated with modern artists such as Bob Dylan, Elton John, Don McLean, Neil Diamond, and Carole King, the singer-songwriter tradition in fact has a long and complex history dating back to the medieval troubadour and earlier. This Companion explains the historical contexts, musical analyses, and theoretical frameworks of the singer-songwriter tradition. Divided into five parts, the book explores the tradition in the context of issues including authenticity, gender, queer studies, musical analysis, and performance. The contributors reveal how the tradition has been expressed around the world and throughout its history to the present day. Essential reading for enthusiasts, practitioners, students, and scholars, this book features case studies of a wide range of both well and lesser-known singer-songwriters, from Thomas d'Urfey through to Carole King and Kanye West. "… lead[s] the reader to analyse big themes in music: genre, race, gender, societal trends and industry machinations." Jeanette Leach, Shindig! 'There is emphasis on singer-songwriters from the LGBTQ community. Including detailed notes, this fascinating survey will have something for anyone interested in the topic.' R. D. Cohen, Choice 'The editors are clear in their introduction that this companion is aimed both at readers who like and perform and engage with popular music and also at students and teachers and researchers involved with formal (and informal) study of popular music. By this token, implied themes such as gender and sexuality, race and politics emerge regularly throughout the work, and these are used to explain and illuminate the singing-songwriting creative act itself.' Stuart Hannabuss, Reference Reviews This Companion explores the historical and theoretical contexts of the singer-songwriter tradition, and includes case studies of singer-songwriters from Thomas d'Urfey through to Kanye West. Katherine Williams is Lecturer in Music at the University of Plymouth. Her monograph Rufus Wainwright is forthcoming in 2016 and she has published in Jazz Perspectives, the Jazz Research Journal and the Journal of Music History Pedagogy. She was awarded the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation/Jazz Education Network Research Fellowship 2015 to conduct research on Duke Ellington. She is active as a saxophonist, and regularly works with contemporary composers to create and perform new music for saxophone and electronics. Justin A. Williams is Lecturer in Music at the University of Bristol, author of Rhymin' and Stealin': Musical Borrowing in Hip-Hop (2013) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop (Cambridge, 2015). As a professional trumpet and piano player in California, he ran a successful jazz piano trio and played with the band Bucho!, who won a number of Sacramento Area Music Awards and were signed to two record labels.