Author (with Jadey O’Regan) of ‘Hooks In Popular Music’ (Palgrave Macmillan). Lecturer, School of Psychology, University of Wollongong. Band director, Smooth Sailing Yacht Rock Party.
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Right. Goodbye Google.
Jadey and I are in this, more or less summarising our book on hooks before analysing the hooks in ‘Cuff It’ by Beyoncé and ‘bad idea, right?’ by Olivia Rodrigo. Looking forward to reading some of the other chapters!
Do not cite an academic paper unless you’ve read it
Final call for papers! 📣
🗣 More info here: amps.org.au/call-for-pap...
🗓 Important Dates
Extended abstract submission deadline – 6 May 2026
Abstract notifications – 29 May 2026
Conference: 9-11 December 2026
Subjects I’ve taught at uni:
History and Philosophy of Psychology
Australian Popular Music
Genetics and Bioscience for Psychologists
Singing and Vocality
Learning and Cognition
Circa 1999, pre Napster, I discovered you could download MP3s from usenet, and the random song I downloaded to see if it worked was ‘Hideway’ by Olivia Tremor Control. Which was great! On figuring out where that song came from, I bought a CD online for the very first time, from CDNow I think.
Jadey and I got interviewed for this one!
I also bought ‘Bryter Layter’ by Nick Drake that day, because I’d come across a RealPlayer file of that album’s ‘Northern Sky’ on a website (relatively soon after it was on an ad in Europe apparently?) and I wanted to hear more beautiful melancholy like that…
I wrote this recently for the Conversation about what research says about why and how songs get stuck in our heads.
theconversation.com/why-do-we-ge...
Found this a pretty interesting piece about the machinery behind music industry hype and the writer‘s personal response to finding out that her new faves’ popularity may not be as organic as she hoped
www.wordsfromeliza.com/p/fake-fans
