David Metzer’s work explores a range of twentieth and twenty-first century styles, including classical, popular music, and jazz. He is currently working on a book dealing with how musicians have confronted the toll of incarceration in American society from the 1920s to the present day.

Dr. Metzer’s publications include The Ballad in American Popular Music: From Elvis to Beyoncé (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and Quotation and Cultural Meaning in Twentieth-Century Music (Cambridge University Press, 2003). He has had articles published in Popular Music, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal of Musicology, Black Music Research Journal, and Modernism/Modernity, among other journals.