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The 10 Best Music History & Criticism Books list have been recommended not only by normal readers but also by experts.
You’ll also find that these are top-ranking books on the US Amazon Best Sellers book list for the Music History & Criticism category of books.
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Let’s take a look at the list of 10 Best Music History & Criticism Books.
10 Best Music History & Criticism Books
Now, let’s dive right into the list of 10 Best Music History & Criticism Books, where we’ll provide a quick outline for each book.
1. Booze & Vinyl: A Spirited Guide to Great Music and Mixed Drinks by André Darlington Review Summary
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Booze & Vinyl: A Spirited Guide to Great Music and Mixed Drinks
The ultimate listening party guide, Booze and Vinyl shows you how to set the mood for 70 great records from the 1950s through the 2000s. From modern craft cocktails to old standbys, prepare to shake, stir, and just plain pour your way through some of the best wax ever pressed. Wickedly designed and featuring photography throughout, Booze & Vinyl is organized by mood, from Rock to Chill, Dance, and Seduce. Each entry has liner notes that underscore the album’s musical highlights and accompanying “Side A” and “Side B” cocktail recipes that complement the music’s mood, imagery in the lyrics, or connect the drink to the artist. This is your guide to a rich listening session for one, two, or more. Among the 70 featured albums are: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club, Purple Rain, Sticky Fingers, Born To Run, License to Ill , Appetite for Destruction, Thriller, Like a Virgin, Low End Theory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, Hotel California, Buena Vista Social Club, Back to Black, Pet Sounds, Vampire Weekend , and many more. Visit boozeandvinyl.com for more info.
2. Nobody Ever Asked Me about the Girls: Women, Music and Fame by Lisa Robinson Review Summary
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Nobody Ever Asked Me about the Girls: Women, Music and Fame
“Indispensable [reading] about the feminine journey through a man’s world” ― USA Today An intimate look at the lives of our most celebrated female musicians ― and their challenges with fame ― from a legendary music journalist Over four decades, Lisa Robinson has made a name for herself as a celebrated journalist in a business long known for its boys’ club mentality. But to Robinson, the female performers who sat down with her, most often at the peak of their careers, were the true revelations. Based on conversations with more than forty female artists, Nobody Ever Asked Me about the Girls is a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the effects of success on some of music’s most famous women. From Tina Turner, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks, Donna Summer, Bette Midler, Alanis Morissette and Linda Ronstadt to Mary J. Blige, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Adele, Beyonce, Rihanna, and numerous others, Robinson reveals the private obsessions and public distractions that musicians contend with in their pursuit of stardom. From these interviews emerge candid portraits of how these women―regardless of genre or decade―deal with image, abuse, love, motherhood, family, sex, drugs, business, and age. Complete with reflections from Robinson’s own career as a pioneering female music writer, Nobody Ever Asked Me about the Girls offers an overdue consideration of how hopes, dreams, and the drive for recognition have propelled our most beloved female musicians to take the stage and leave an undeniable, lasting musical mark on the world.
3. The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song From Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed by Shea Serrano Review Summary
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The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song From Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed
NOW BEING TURNED INTO A DOCUMENTARY TO BE AIRED ON AMC IN 2018 . New York Times Best Seller Picked by Billboard as One of the 100 Greatest Music Books of All- Time Pitchfork Book Club’s first selection . Here’s what The Rap Year Book does: It takes readers from 1979, widely regarded as the moment rap became recognized as part of the cultural and musical landscape, and comes right up to the present, with Shea Serrano hilariously discussing, debating, and deconstructing the most important rap song year by year. Serrano also examines the most important moments that surround the history and culture of rap music–from artists’ backgrounds to issues of race, the rise of hip-hop, and the struggles among its major players –both personal and professional. Covering East Coast and West Coast, famous rapper feuds, chart toppers, and show stoppers, The Rap Year Book is an in- depth look at the most influential genre of music to come out of the last generation. Complete with infographics, lyric maps, uproarious and informative footnotes, portraits of the artists, and short essays by other prominent music writers, The Rap Year Book is both a narrative and illustrated guide to the most iconic and influential rap songs ever created. It’s like the gold tank from Master P’s “Make ‘Em Say Uhh!” video, except it’s a book. It’s like Kanye’s verse on “Put On,” except it’s a book. It’s like the face Biggie made when he was on the boat with Puffy in “Hypnotize,” except it’s a book.
4. Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music by Alex Ross Review Summary
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Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music
Alex Ross, renowned New Yorker music critic and author of the international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Rest Is Noise , reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for modern art and politics―an aesthetic war zone where the Western world wrestled with its capacity for beauty and violence. For better or worse, Wagner is the most widely influential figure in the history of music. Around 1900, the phenomenon known as Wagnerism saturated European and American culture. Such colossal creations as The Ring of the Nibelung , Tristan und Isolde , and Parsifal were models of formal daring, mythmaking, erotic freedom, and mystical speculation. A mighty procession of artists, including Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Paul Cezanne, Isadora Duncan, and Luis Buñuel, felt his impact. Anarchists, occultists, feminists, and gay-rights pioneers saw him as a kindred spirit. Then Adolf Hitler incorporated Wagner into the soundtrack of Nazi Germany, and the composer came to be defined by his ferocious antisemitism. For many, his name is now almost synonymous with artistic evil. In Wagnerism , Alex Ross restores the magnificent confusion of what it means to be a Wagnerian. A pandemonium of geniuses, madmen, charlatans, and prophets do battle over Wagner’s many-sided legacy. As readers of his brilliant articles for The New Yorker have come to expect, Ross ranges thrillingly across artistic disciplines, from the architecture of Louis Sullivan to the novels of Philip K. Dick, from the Zionist writings of Theodor Herzl to the civil-rights essays of W.E.B. Du Bois, from O Pioneers! to Apocalypse Now. In many ways, Wagnerism tells a tragic tale. An artist who might have rivaled Shakespeare in universal reach is undone by an ideology of hate. Still, his shadow lingers over twenty-first century culture, his mythic motifs coursing through superhero films and fantasy fiction. Neither apologia nor condemnation, Wagnerism is a work of passionate discovery, urging us toward a more honest idea of how art acts in the world.
5. The Music of The Statler Brothers: An Anthology (Music and the American South) by Don Reid Review Summary
The Music of The Statler Brothers: An Anthology (Music and the American South)
THE MUSIC OF THE STATLER BROTHERS is an in-depth look at the musical career of The Statler Brothers’s forty-year reign as country music’s premier group. Lead singer, Don Reid, writes about each song ever recorded by the Grammy Award- winning foursome and gives backstage insight to the writings and the selections of each composition. A songwriter with two-hundred-fifty recordings of music by his own hand and a member of both the Country Music and Gospel Music Halls of Fame, Reid gives meaningful and often humorous insight into the day-to-day workings and trials of the music industry. There has been no other book by someone in the recording business that compares with this song-by-song chronicle. Unique in its content and style, this anthology offers anyone with an interest in the entertainment business more than a glimpse behind the curtain. Covering forty-five albums of original music, this is a must-read for all Statler Brothers fans and lovers of country and gospel music alike.
6. Then Sings My Soul: 150 of the World's Greatest Hymn Stories by Robert J. Morgan Review Summary
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Then Sings My Soul: 150 of the World's Greatest Hymn Stories
Rob Morgan’s inimitable style will help people reacquaint themselves with the hymns of the faithful. His goal is to keep these traditional hymns vital and meaningful to all generations. Don’t look for a dry recounting of boring stories. These devotional-style stories show the emotion and drama behind the hymns of faith that have changed many lives throughout history — the people whose faith led them to write these wonderful hymns and the people whose faith was affected by reading, hearing, and singing the songs. Designed to be personally reflective, these stories speak to your soul and add depth and meaning as you worship God through song. FEATURES: * Includes words and music to each hymn * Special softcover, french flap cover design * Ivory paper with brown ink * Jagged-edge paper, giving it a classic feel * Complete with hymn index * Use for devotionals, teaching illustrations, introductory remarks for song leaders and music ministers
7. Total F*cking Godhead: The Biography of Chris Cornell by Corbin Reiff Review Summary
Total F*cking Godhead: The Biography of Chris Cornell
“The new Chris Cornell biography is the book his legacy deserves.” — Kerrang! “Reiff unearths plenty of unexpected details and novel anecdotes…but the book is perhaps most valuable for the way it rounds out and humanizes this man who managed to keep so many of his cards close to the vest despite decades in the spotlight.” — Variety ” Total F*cking Godhead brings Chris Cornell, the voice of a generation, alive on the page. Impressively researched and compulsively readable, Godhead pulls no punches in recounting Cornell’s remarkable life and prolific career. It’s an inspired chronicle of an impassioned soul. Read it!” –Greg Renoff, author of Van Halen Rising With input from those who knew and worked with him–together with his own words– Total F*cking Godhead recounts the rise of Chris Cornell and his immortal band Soundgarden as they emerged from the 1980s post-punk underground to dominate popular culture in the ’90s alongside Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, and Nirvana. ” From his days as a struggling Seattle musician at the forefront of the grunge scene to becoming a global icon, Total F*cking Godhead thoroughly chronicles the life story and prolific output of one of the greatest and most influential singers of all time. You will discover the man and his music all over again.”–David de Sola, author of Alice in Chains: The Untold Story Seattle resident and rock writer Corbin Reiff also examines Cornell’s dynamic solo career as well as his time in Audioslave. He delves into his hard-fought battle with addiction, and the supercharged reunion with the band that made him famous before everything came to a shocking end. ” For those of us still trying to sort out the tragedy of Chris Cornell’s death comes this loving look back at the man’s life and music. I wrote my own book about grunge, and I still learned a lot from this excellent biography.” –Mark Yarm, author of Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge
8. Wild Thing: The Short, Spellbinding Life of Jimi Hendrix by Philip Norman Review Summary
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Wild Thing: The Short, Spellbinding Life of Jimi Hendrix
New York Times Book Review • “The Best Books to Give This Year” Publishers Weekly • Best Books of the Year (Nonfiction) A shattering new biography of rock music’s most outrageous―and tragic―genius. Over fifty years after his death, Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970) is celebrated as the greatest rock guitarist of all time. But before he was setting guitars and the world aflame, James Marshall Hendrix was a shy kid in Seattle, plucking at a broken ukulele and in fear of a father who would hit him for playing left- handed. Bringing Jimi’s story to vivid life against the backdrop of midcentury rock, and with a wealth of new information, acclaimed music biographer Philip Norman delivers a captivating and definitive portrait of a musical legend. Drawing from unprecedented access to Jimi’s brother, Leon Hendrix, who provides disturbing details about their childhood, as well as Kathy Etchingham and Linda Keith, the two women who played vital roles in Jimi’s rise to stardom, Norman traces Jimi’s life from playing in clubs on the segregated Chitlin’ Circuit, where he encountered daily racism, to barely surviving in New York’s Greenwich Village, where was taken up by the Animals’ bass player Chas Chandler in 1966 and exported to Swinging London and international stardom. For four staggering years, from 1966 to 1970, Jimi totally rewrote the rules of rock stardom, notably at Monterey and Woodstock (where he played his protest-infused rendition of the “Star-Spangled Banner”), while becoming the highest-paid musician of his day. But it all abruptly ended in the shabby basement of a London hotel with Jimi’s too-early death. With remarkable detail, Wild Thing finally reveals the truth behind this long-shrouded tragedy. Norman’s exhaustive research reveals a young man who was as shy and polite in private as he was outrageous in public, whose insecurity about his singing voice could never be allayed by his instrumental genius, and whose unavailing efforts to please his father left him searching for the family he felt he never truly had. Filled with insights into the greatest moments in rock history, Wild Thing is a mesmerizing account of music’s most enduring and endearing figures. 8 pages of color illustrations
9. The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee Review Summary
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The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
Now a Netflix original movie starring Machine Gun Kelly, Daniel Webber, Douglas Booth, and Iwan Rheon, directed by Jeff Tremaine. ” Without a doubt, it is the most detailed account of the awesome pleasures and perils of rock & roll stardom I have ever read. It is completely compelling, and utterly revolting, full of blood, leather, eyeliner, heroin, and, oh yes, the glam metal that made the Eighties…the Eighties.”–Joe Levy, Rolling Stone Celebrate thirty years of the world’s most notorious rock band with the deluxe collectors’ edition of The Dirt –the outrageous, legendary, no- holds-barred autobiography of Motley Crue. Fans have gotten glimpses into the band’s crazy world of backstage scandals, celebrity love affairs, rollercoaster drug addictions, and immortal music in Motley Crue books like Tommyland and The Heroin Diaries , but now the full spectrum of sin and success by Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, and Mick Mars is an open book in The Dirt. Even fans already familiar with earlier editions of the bestselling expose will treasure this gorgeous deluxe edition. Joe Levy at Rolling Stone calls The Dirt “without a doubt . . . the most detailed account of the awesome pleasures and perils of rock & roll stardom I have ever read. It is completely compelling and utterly revolting.”
10. Country Music: An Illustrated History by Dayton Duncan Review Summary
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Country Music: An Illustrated History
The rich and colorful story of America’s most popular music and the singers and songwriters who captivated, entertained, and consoled listeners throughout the twentieth century–based on the upcoming eight-part film series to air on PBS in September 2019 This gorgeously illustrated and hugely entertaining history begins where country music itself emerged: the American South, where people sang to themselves and to their families at home and in church, and where they danced to fiddle tunes on Saturday nights. With the birth of radio in the 1920s, the songs moved from small towns, mountain hollers, and the wide-open West to become the music of an entire nation–a diverse range of sounds and styles from honky tonk to gospel to bluegrass to rockabilly, leading up through the decades to the music’s massive commercial success today. But above all, Country Music is the story of the musicians. Here is Hank Williams’s tragic honky tonk life, Dolly Parton rising to fame from a dirt- poor childhood, and Loretta Lynn turning her experiences into songs that spoke to women everywhere. Here too are interviews with the genre’s biggest stars, including the likes of Merle Haggard to Garth Brooks to Rosanne Cash. Rife with rare photographs and endlessly fascinating anecdotes, the stories in this sweeping yet intimate history will captivate longtime country fans and introduce new listeners to an extraordinary body of music that lies at the very center of the American experience.