Paul Carr is emeritus professor in Popular Music at the University of South Wales. A leading scholar in popular music studies, his research interests focus on musicology, the live music industry and pedagogical frameworks for music education, publishing widely in all of these areas. In addition to his traditional academic work, he has also offered advice and published numerous reports on the music industry for Welsh Government, recently serving as secretariat for the Cross-Party Group for Music. Paul is also an established guitarist, having toured and recorded with artists as diverse as The James Taylor Quartet and ex Miles Davis saxophonist Bob Berg.

Paul’s most recent book, Nostalgia, Song and the Quest For Home (Bloomsbury 2025)  is an edited collection which focuses on the interrelationship of nostalgia, popular song and notions of home, articulated via a range of international examples, ranging from Bruce Springsteen’s creativity being inspired by his hometown of Freeway, to depictions of home in Ukrainian Popular Music after the Russian invasion, to how nostalgia and conceptions of home shape the reception of ABBA songs.

This presentation will draw on Paul’s own past, of growing up in the North East of England, discussing how, having lived away for the best part of four decades, he developed a complex more appreciative relationship with his past home— based on a ‘real’ ‘imagined’ past. Prior to discussing this current project, he will discuss how his ‘exile’ led him to write a monograph on the rock star Sting (2017)—whose own creativity has been significantly impacted by his distant relationship to his ‘imaginary home’. The presentation will also discuss how songwriters ranging from Sting, to Roger Whitaker to Bob Marley have used nostalgia as a creative tool to articulate their sense of home—and conversely how the music industries have used nostalgic forces as a marketing tool.

The presentation will feature recorded examples and will conclude with a solo guitar performance featuring renditions of music which is nostalgic to Paul himself.

 Paul Carr Walking Distance Album