“All I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when these other people don’t like them as much as I do.” —Nick Hornby, from Songbook

A wise and hilarious collection from the bestselling author of Dickens and Prince, Just Like You, Funny Girl and About a Boy.

Songs,

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Last Night a DJ Saved My Life was the first comprehensive history of the disc jockey, a figure who has become a powerful force shaping the music industry-and since its original publication, the book has become a cult classic. Now, with five new chapters and over a hundred pages of additional material, this updated and revised edition of Last Night a DJ Saved My Life reasserts itself as the definitive account of DJ culture, from the first record played...

Hearts of Darkness is the story of a generation's coming of age through the experiences of its three most atypical pop stars. James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and Cat Stevens could never have been considered your typical late-sixties songwriters – self-absorbed and self-composed, all three eschewed the traditional means of delivering their songs, instead turning its process inward. The result was a body of work that stands among the most profoundly...

"This revealing and timely book is a must-have for anyone passionate about music. LGBT musicians have shaped the development of music over the last century, with a sexually progressive soundtrack in the background of the gay community's struggle for acceptance worldwide. With the advent of recording technology, LGBT messages were for the first time transferred from the cabaret stage and brought to the homes of millions. David Bowie Made Me Gay is...

Behind the Christmas songs we love to sing lie fascinating stories that will enrich your holiday celebration. Taking you inside the nativity of over thirty favorite songs and carols, Ace Collins introduces you to people you've never met, stories you've never heard, and meanings you'd never have imagined. The next time you and your family sing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," you'll have a new understanding of its message and popular roots. You'll discover...

A trailblazing exploration of the poetic power of popular songs, from Tin Pan Alley to the Beatles to Beyonce and beyond. Encompassing a century of recorded music, this pathbreaking book reveals the poetic artistry of popular songs. Pop songs are music first. They also comprise the most widely disseminated poetic expression of our time. Adam Bradley traces the song lyric across musical genres from early twentieth-century Delta blues to mid-century...

In this follow-up to Love is a Mix Tape, a writer for Rolling Stone, after his wife's death, finds solace in music, which leads him to the strangest places and gives him the courage to start over, move on and rock the mike.

"The entire history of popular music over the past fifty years refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it-including rock, country, punk, R&B, dance and hip-hop-woven together into a cosmic reckoning with music's evolution as a popular art form, as a huge cultural and economic force, and as an essential component to our identities, from Black Sabbath to Black Flag to Beyoncé, and beyond"--

"How can art help us make sense--or nonsense--of the world? If wrong life cannot be lived rightly, as Theodor Adorno had it, what weapons and strategies for living wrongly can art provide? With the same intelligence that animates his poetry, Michael Robbins addresses this weighty question while contemplating the idea of how strange it is that we need art at all. Ranging from Prince to Def Leppard, Lucille Clifton to Frederick Seidel, Robbins's mastery...

"This is a book about the whirlwind of creativity, the passionate drive to make art born of individuated experience that is both unique and unduplicatable... This singular new book of profiles represents not so much a summation as a culmination of Peter Guralnick's groundbreaking work over the years, covering not only the vast sweep of the American musical landscape but its profound personal impact on the author as well"--Adapted from jacket flap....