
Steven Rings is a music theorist whose research focuses on popular music, voice, and transformational theory. Rings’s second book, What Did You Hear?: The Music of Bob Dylan (University of Chicago Press, 2025), explores the virtues of imperfection in Bob Dylan’s music making. Earlier publications on Dylan include “A Foreign Sound to Your Ear: Bob Dylan Performs ‘It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),’ 1964–2009” (Music Theory Online, 2013), which won the 2014 Outstanding Publication Award from the Society for Music Theory’s Popular Music Interest Group.
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