From the age of song sheets in the late 19th-century to the contemporary era of digital streaming, pop music has been our most influential laboratory for social and aesthetic experimentation, changing the world three minutes at a time. Drawing on a lifetime of listening and writing about music, the author of Positively Fourth Street proves that pop has done much more than peddle fantasies to teenagers. From vaudeville singer Eva Tanguay—the "I Don't Care Girl" who upended Victorian conceptions of feminine propriety—to the scandal of Blondie playing disco at CBGB, David Hajdu presents an incisive history of a form that has repeatedly upset social and cultural expectations. Encyclopedic in his knowledge and tastes, Hajdu is always engaging, equally at home discussing Bessie Smith, Jimmie Rodgers, Thelonious Monk, Leonard Bernstein, and the Beatles.