'Shame makes the world go around.’ Morrissey and the gendered discourse of class disgust

Can popular music or an individual song text inform us about society and make us question dominant discourses in the political and public sphere? This article will argue that this is indeed the case, so while the mass media (in particular) provide the dominant codes (Hall, 1999) that most audiences effortlessly recognise and relate to, it is important to recognise that counter-hegemonic ideologies are also in circulation. In a society where hegemonic discourses are produced by the upper and middle classes, the capacity to articulate a contradictory narrative to the marginalised is aided by the ‘reach’ of popular music (Botta 2006, p. 123).