All-singing and all-dancing, Erin Giannini's Breaking into Song is the go-to, number one in-depth study of the intersection of musicals and television.

Simon Bacon, pop culture author and editor

It's sometimes easy to overlook the ways in which music and television intersect, but Erin Giannini's Breaking into Song is a fascinating study that digs into the many ways in which the two media work together.

James E. Perone, author, "Listen to Movie Musicals!"

A thoughtful study of television's musical imagination, Breaking into Song by Erin Giannini offers a rigorous and wide-ranging account of music's use and shifting presence across television history, from post-vaudeville variety programming to the resurgence of self-aware musical series in the twenty-first century. Moving across teen drama soundtracks, beloved single-episode experiments, and short-lived industrial curiosities such as Cop Rock and Galavant, Giannini reveals music not as a televisual novelty but as a structuring force-one that shapes characterization, serial form, industrial strategy, and cultural memory. Breaking into Song offers a timely and necessary reconsideration of the central role music has played in shaping television aesthetics, form, and cultural memory; it will be an indispensable resource for scholars of television, media history, and popular culture.

Stephanie Graves, PhD