This dissertation examines the construction of narratives in popular music as well as ethical questions raised by its authors and their creative works in this context. It explores the topic through the authorship and works of singer-songwriter Christina Rosenvinge. She is a long-standing figure in popular music, who has worked in the field from the beginning of the 1980s until the present in both Spain and the United States, and has toured extensively in Latin America. Exploring these questions in regards to a single artist derives from the tradition of cultural history, which asserts that studying a particular, in this case a person and their works, and its relationship to the general can provide a significant understanding of broader culture. To examine the historical subject comprehensively with ethics in mind, I propose a three-pronged division of analysis, namely historicity, communality, and corporeality. 

In this dissertation, I examine three different types of sources: the music that Rosenvinge has made over the years, her writings consisting of a published memoir and a short monologue, and three interviews that I conducted with Rosenvinge in 2018, 2019, and 2021. The sources emphasise the perspective of the artist through memory, creativity, and experimentation, which enable me to consider how Rosenvinge remembers and narrates her past and works as well as why that might be the case. It is also necessary, however, to examine other material ranging from critiques to visual sources to understand the historical nuances of the possibilities of storytelling.

In uniting three academic approaches, namely cultural history, hermeneutic narrative ethics, and feminist approaches, I propose a new way to analyse the possible as well as ethics. In this dissertation, ethics is based upon the idea that it is a meaning-making practice, rather than, as more commonly perceived, a basis for moral judgements. Moreover, ethics is connected to the concept of the possible and here, I posit that narratives that suggest new perspectives and ways to act out broaden our understanding of ourselves and our surroundings and in this way, our sense of the possible. In comparison, narratives that place us in specific categories such as gender diminish this sense. Ethics develop through our understanding of the possible and therefore, need to be re-defined on a case-by-case basis. By studying a single artist, this dissertation emphasises the uniqueness of ethical phenomenons and related questions.