This book offers a compelling, in-depth overview of popular music¿s significance as an aspect of contemporary history and heritage. Bringing together a selection of wide-ranging contributions from Europe and Australia, this book demonstrates the variety of ways in which popular music is being cast as cultural heritage and as a medium that invokes the collective memory of successive generations whose identity and sense of cultural belonging have often been indelibly inscribed by the musical soundscapes of their teen and early adult years. This book was originally published as a special issue of Popular Music and Society.