The Paranoid Style in American Rock

An Interview with the Singer and Songwriter Elizabeth Nelson

I was already a fan of The Paranoid Style before I heard a note of their music. Elizabeth Nelson, who formed the band with her guitarist husband Timothy Bracy (of the noted Athens, Ga. band The Mendoza Line) in 2012, confirmed via email or social media such as X Twitter that The Paranoid Style was named after the book that almost made me an American History major in college: Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics. The influential title essay (which can be downloaded for a dollar or two as an iBook) examined and defined the radical right-wing movement and players such as the John Birch Society that had gotten Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater the Republican nomination for president in 1964.

"I think what strikes me about the portions of the American right that Hofstadter addresses is the aggressive strangeness of the core movement — that it has its own customs and indeed a particular style — a fashion aesthetic even, and how outrageously weird it tends to be," Nelson wr…