is even more ridiculous than you might have suspected. She makes certain keys in a Madonna song allegorical for different subject positions, then creates a whole narrative around those attributions, like return to the tonic is masculine closure. I don't think that anyone listens to Madonna like that, not even Susan M. The narrative is the product of an analysis, but this analysis, though I'm sure it is correct in naming the chords of the song, would never suggest this exact narrative to another analyst looking at the same chords, and even less to an actual listener uninformed by these abstruse music theory codings. This, I suspect, is what is meant by low hermeneutics. She attribute agency to Madonna, and makes it perfectly clear that she thinks this is what singer is doing with a quite deliberate effort, and this narrative is audible in the music itself.
I don't even know if she believes it herself, or simply thinks that this is a convenient way to put music analysis to a noble purpose. There's probably a good reason for sociological discussion of music NOT to put too much emphasis on the technical analysis of music. Music's social effects do not depend on things that only musicologists, if even they, can perceive. I like Taruskin's formula: not 'what music means' but 'what music has meant.'
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