Singing the Body Electric explores the relationship between the human voice and recording technology, offering startling insights into the ways in which recording affects our understanding of the human voice, and more generally, the human body. From the phonautograph to magnetic tape, to digital sampling, this book visits particular musical works that define the century-and-a-half of sound recording. The discussion looks at the myriad modulations of the human voice in music, beginning with that special moment when the voice was first inscribed onto the body of the phonograph. For, like other media technologies including the printing press and photography, the phonograph has had a deep and sustained impact on modern notions of objectivity, agency, the self and the body. Dr Miriama Young discusses a selection of musical works in which the human voice is captured, transformed or synthesized using technology. These selections range from the sampled voice, the mechanical voice and the technologically modified voice, as well as instances in which human beings mimic the sounding traits of the machine. The book draws from a range of musical examples, from Luciano Berio's Thema: Omaggio a Joyce to Radiohead, from Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room, to Björk, and from Pierre Henry's Variations on a Door and a Sigh to Christian Marclay's Maria Callas. In essence, this book transcends time and musical style to reflect on the larger way in which 'the machine' transforms our comprehension and experience of the human voice.

The book is an interdisciplinary enterprise that combines music aesthetics and musical analysis with literature and philosophy.