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"Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O'Connor burst onto the pop scene in 1987 with her album The Lion and the Cobra, and followed it with the Grammy-winning I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (1990), which featured a cover of Prince's song "Nothing Compares 2 U." In 1992, she infamously tore a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live to protest the sexual abuse committed by priests and covered up by church authorities. O'Connor was immediately...
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"Unequivocally fresh and engrossing. Even the biggest fans will find something new to enjoy here." ―Razorcake
The central experience of the Ramones and their music is of being an outsider, an outcast, a person who's somehow defective, and the revolt against shame and self-loathing. The fans, argues Donna Gaines, got it right away, from their own experience of alienation at home, at school, on the streets, and from themselves.
This sense...
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"An excellent introduction to the band that might have evolved, [the author] suggests, into the Beatles." -New York Journal of Books
Of all the white American pop music groups that hit the charts before the Beatles, only the Beach Boys continued to thrive throughout the British Invasion to survive into the 1970s and beyond. The Beach Boys helped define both sides of the era we broadly call the sixties, split between their early surf, car, and...
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Music matters volume 013
Language
English
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"Mariah Carey is immediately known for two things: a stratospheric, five-octave vocal range and massive success on the charts (she has more Billboard no. 1 singles than any other solo artist). As Andrew Chan points out in this book, that fed easily into the narrative around an artist who came of age in the excess-riddled 1990s-and was married to Sony CEO Tommy Mottola. Chan, though, is digging deeper into her catalog and her biography to argue that...
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Music matters volume 010
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English
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"Tammy Wynette is literally referred to as "the first lady of country music," which speaks both to her importance in the genre as well as the way she has been partially defined by her marriage to singer George Jones. She had 20 number-one hits, the best-known being "Stand By Your Man." Steacy Easton believes Wynette was a complicated figure whose work plays with themes of domesticity, high femme armor, soft politics, pain, melodrama, sex, fame, tradition,...
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Music matters volume 009
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English
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Why Patti Smith Matters is the first book about the iconic artist written by a woman. The veteran music journalist Caryn Rose contextualizes Smith's creative work, her influence, and her wide-ranging and still-evolving impact on rock and roll, visual art, and the written word. Rose goes deep into Smith's oeuvre, from her first album, Horses, to acclaimed memoirs operating at a surprising remove from her music. The portrait of a ceaseless inventor,...
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Music matters volume 008
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English
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"The book chronicles the life and cultural significance of the rapper and dancer Bushwick Bill, who exposed and exploited ableist and racist assumptions to become a singular voice in rap and the relentless battle over free speech in the United States"--
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A Pitchfork Best Music Book of 2019: A look at what the beloved pop singer meant to fans, written with "nostalgic affection and astute critical thinking" (Los Angeles Times).
In the '60s and '70s, America's music scene was marked by raucous excess, reflected in the tragic overdoses of young superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. At the same time, the uplifting harmonies and sunny lyrics that propelled Karen Carpenter and her brother,...
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English
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Growing up in the shadow of her superstar sister, Solange Knowles became a pivotal musician in her own right. Defying an industry that attempted to bend her to its rigid image of a Black woman, Solange continually experimented with her sound and embarked on a metamorphosis in her art that continues to this day. In Why Solange Matters, Stephanie Phillips chronicles the creative journey of an artist who became a beloved voice for the Black Lives Matter...
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English
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An artist in every sense of the word, Lhasa de Sela wowed audiences around the globe with her multilingual songs and spellbinding performances, mixing together everything from Gypsy music to Mexican rancheras, Americana and jazz, chanson française, and South American folk melodies. In Canada, her album La Llorona won the Juno Award and went gold, and its follow-up, The Living Road, won a BBC World Music Award. Tragically, de Sela succumbed to breast...
Author
Series
Music matters volume 012
Publisher
University of Texas Press
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
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"Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton is best-known for two songs covered by white rock 'n' roll stars (Elvis Presley, "Hound Dog"; Janis Joplin, "Ball 'n' Chain") but she is unquestionably one of the great blueswomen of her generation. She embodies some of the clichés of the blues, too: Born in the South, raised in the church, appropriated by white performers, hard drinking, relatively early death, big nickname, buried in an indigent's grave. Lynnée...
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