Showing titles in History & Criticism

In this audio-original production, author Richard Fawkes traces the development of the musical, highlighting composers and lyricists including Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim. Presented by the vivacious singer Kim Criswell, star of Cats, and including nearly 100 famous musical extracts.

Reflecting on the Beach Boys’ long, fascinating history, this book tells the story behind 50 of the band’s greatest songs from the perspective of group members, collaborators, fellow musicians, and notable fans. The band's music is as influential now as it was 50 years ago, and this retelling of how the iconic rock group found itself in the annals of pop culture couldn't come at a better time.

Now it can be told! The true, behind-the-scenes story of Casablanca Records, from an eyewitness to the excess and insanity. Casablanca was not a product of the 1970s, it was the 1970s. From 1974 to 1980, the landscape of American culture was a banquet of hedonism and self-indulgence, and no person or company in that era was more emblematic of the times than Casablanca Records and its magnetic founder, Neil Bogart.

In the '80s, the Birmingham, England, band Duran Duran became closely associated with new wave, an idiosyncratic genre that dominated the decade's music and culture. No album represented this rip-it-up-and-start-again movement better than the act's breakthrough 1982 LP, Rio. A cohesive album with a retro-futuristic sound—influences include danceable disco, tangy funk, swaggering glam, and Roxy Music's art-rock—the full-length sold millions and spawned smashes such as "Hungry Like the Wolf" and the title track.

Long before the United States had presidents from the world of movies and reality TV, we had scores of politicians with connections to country music. In I'd Fight the World, Peter La Chapelle traces the deep bonds between country music and politics. These performers and politicians both rode and resisted cultural waves: some advocated for the poor and dispossessed, and others voiced religious and racial anger, but they all walked the line between exploiting their celebrity and righteously taking on the world. 

'Hungry Beat is the story of an all-too-brief era where the short-circuiting of that industry seemed viable. But hell, the times were luminous as was the music these artists made. The songs and many of the players remain, and here they tell their story and lick their wounds' Ian Rankin The...

"Pitchfork really did change music forever, which makes Ryan Schreiber one of the major innovators of this era. This book is a fascinating exploration into Pitchfork, and as a tribute, I put it at number one in my list of top books of the year." — Fred Armisen "More than a gripping memoir...

Swan Songs follows hip-hop visionary Leonard Swanson as he works, quits, signs on, and travels the country, playing in small capacity venues for even smaller capacity audiences, for which he gets paid in booze, drugs and a night on a bedbug-ridden mattress somebody dragged in from the street, all the while making the album he thinks will change hip-hop forever.

Pioneering metal writer Keith Kahn-Harris presents a moving, visionary exploration of Ozzy Osbourne, and of metal music and culture: the potent legacy Ozzy left us. What is a ‘good death’? How about this: After years of terrible health, you gather friends and admirers for one last, glorious...

Minimalist Music looks critically into the music’s past, shows how the genre thrives across styles, and points the way toward minimalism’s ongoing future. Minimalism as a genre is best defined not by any style or flavor but by its means. Certain rhythms and chords in other music may identify...

Richard Digby Smith, legendary Island Records engineer, takes listeners deep into the studio during the golden era of rock and reggae. From Bob Marley to Eric Clapton , Led Zeppelin to Free , his memoir captures the raw magic of music creation from inside the control room. This is not just another celebrity name-dropper. It’s an insider's journey through decades of musical evolution, analog machines, world-famous studios, and unforgettable characters.

In this magisterial volume, Harvey Sachs, author of the highly acclaimed biography Toscanini, takes listeners into the heart of 10 great works of classical music - works that have endured because they were created by composers who had a genius for drawing music out of their deepest wellsprings. These masters - Mozart and Beethoven; Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Verdi, and Brahms; Sibelius, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky - communicated their life experiences through music, and through music they universalized the intimate.  

Vs. is the sound of a band on fire. The same confluence of talent, passion, timing, and fate that made “grunge” the world’s soundtrack also lit a short fuse beneath Pearl Jam. The band combusted between late 1992 and mid-1994, the span during which they planned, recorded, and supported their sophomore record. The spotlight, the pressure, the pace—it all nearly turned the thriving act to ash.

Welcome to the electrifying world of K-pop! From its origins in a once-overlooked corner of Asia to today's global superstars like BTS and BLACKPINK, discover how South Korea built an entertainment empire that's revolutionizing modern culture. This comprehensive guide reveals the fascinating story behind K-pop's meteoric rise and lasting impact.

In a book that inspired the Amazon original series starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Malcolm McDowell, oboist Blair Tindall recounts her decades-long professional career as a classical musician, from the recitals and Broadway orchestra performances to the secret life of musicians who survive hand to mouth in the backbiting New York classical music scene, trading sexual favors for plum jobs and assignments in orchestras across the city.

Giuseppe Verdi remains the greatest operatic composer that Italy, the home of opera, has ever produced. Yet throughout his lifetime, he claimed to detest composing and repeatedly rejected it. He was a landowner, a farmer, a politician, and a symbol of Italian independence, but his music tells a different story. An obsessive perfectionist, Verdi drove collaborators to despair, but his works were rightly lauded from the start as dazzling feats of composition and characterization. From Rigoletto to Otello, La Traviatato to Aida, Verdi's canon encompassed the full range of human emotion. 

Non-fans regard Céline Dion as ersatz and plastic, yet to those who love her, no one could be more real, with her impoverished childhood, her (creepy) manager-husband's struggle with cancer, her knack for howling out raw emotion. There's nothing cool about Céline Dion, and nothing clever. That's part of her appeal as an object of love or hatred — with most critics and committed music fans taking pleasure (or at least geeky solace) in their lofty contempt.

'My dear, she's on fire!' DAMIAN BARR 'A snappy guide to an all-conquering aesthetic' Financial Times 'The following things have seemed impossibly camp to me at one point or another: a doll whose body acts as a cover for a toilet roll, a tantrum over wire coat hangers, a 1950s muscle magazine...

Drawing on eighty-six interviews with key architects of this jazz renaissance and those who came before them—from Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia and Moses Boyd to Gilles Peterson, Courtney Pine and Cleveland Watkiss — Unapologetic Expression captures the radical spirit of a vital British musical movement.

The unmissable memoir of a life at the heart of 60s culture – from Lennon and McCartney, to the Mersey Beat Poets and more. Who was John Lennon’s first girlfriend? Who is the only woman to have dated Lennon and McCartney? And Tom Wolfe. And Anthony ‘Madchester’ Wilson. And married Roger...