In this thesis I establish an experientialist, listener-focused account of authenticity in relation to recorded popular song. In response to limited musicological and phenomenological examination of listener authentication, I develop a synthesis of authenticity, self, and identity (as understood in ‘social’ theory, philosophy, psychology, and musicology) and embodied-ecological accounts of music perception and experience. Throughout, it is argued that authenticating experiences of ownership and agency arise within active, intentional, and imaginative encounters with music.

Material is organised in four parts. In the opening sections of Part One I lay the intellectual foundations for an aesthetic of authenticity that has interrelated phenomenological, temporal, processual, and relational components. Following this, I establish a composite theoretical framework that draws together strands of ecological theory, embodied cognition and phenomenologically-oriented accounts of embodiment.

In Part Two I posit authentication as grounded in bodily experience. After considering the phenomenological and musicological efficacy of Mark Johnson’s image schema theory and Maxine Sheets-Johnstone’s ‘archetypal corporeal-kinetic forms’, I examine affordances of motional entrainment, gestural recognition, affect, and temporal flow.

Ecological correspondences between listener and song form the focus of Part Three, where, through the analysis of three case studies, I argue that authentication can emerge from the disclosure of ecologies – both real and imagined – that afford recognition, identification, and immersion.

In Part Four I summarise my theoretic-analytical strategy, make a critical case for the phenomenological-hermeneutic treatment of listening experience, and, acknowledging authenticity’s ethical charge, probe more thoroughly the influence of musical experience (of self).