Showing titles in History & Criticism

The Shortest History of Music takes us on a lively tour through several thousands of years of music history, tracing our relationship with this essential art and allowing us to freshly appreciate and understand music today.

The story goes that under the influence of blues and rock and roll, Britain suddenly started making spectacularly great music in the 1960s like some clever, quick-learning cultural satellite of America. But Britain’s mid-20th-century pop music explosion didn’t happen from a standing start. The reasons, both dazzling and multifaceted, appear to lie deeper than those legendary deliveries of blues records to Liverpool’s port and the legacy of music halls.

The definitive story of the making and legacy of Graceland, Paul Simon’s career-topping 1986 album, drawn from extensive research and exclusive interviews with nearly 100 participants and witnesses: musicians, producers, engineers, record executives and journalists from Africa, the US, and...

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. 

Derided as one-hit wonders, estranged from their original producer and record label, and in self-imposed exile in Los Angeles, the Beastie Boys were written off by most observers before even beginning to record their second album—an embarrassing commercial flop that should have ruined the group's career. But not only did "Paul's Boutique" eventually transformed the Beasties from a fratboy novelty to hiphop giants, its sample-happy, retro aesthetic changed popular culture forever.

Welches weltbekannte Mädchen nicht einmal einen Imbißstand unter ihrem Pseudonym aufmachen durfte (Girl from Ipanema); mit welchem Handbuch man einen Top-Ten-Hit schreibt (3 A.M. Eternal); und weshalb man von seiner eigenen kreativen Leistung am Ende oft nichts hat (Bitter Sweet Symphony)...

West Midlands 1980s, home to heavy metal. Black Sabbath and Judas Priest are household names, but over the smoking chimneys and factory yards, something new and equally ugly forms.... "Grebo" was a media-constructed music genre that even today sends a shudder down the spines of discerning music fans and critics. A homegrown proto-grunge, grebo was a British phenomenon that drew on an eclectic range of influences, from punk, '60s garage, and psychedelia, through to '70s heavy rock and thrash metal. It foreshadowed rave culture and was steeped in class politics.

Black metal is a paradox. A noisy underground metal genre brimming with violence and virulence, it has captured the world's imagination for its harsh yet flamboyant style and infamous history involving arson, blasphemy, and murder.

Rock and roll was birthed in basements and garages, radio stations and dance halls, in cities where unexpected gatherings of artists and audience changed and charged the way music is heard and celebrated, capturing lightning in a bottle. Musician and writer Lenny Kaye explores 10 crossroads of time and place that define rock and roll, its unforgettable flashpoints, characters and visionaries, how each generation came to be, how it was discovered by the world.  

There have been few times in modern music history that an instant shift in how we listen to - and view - music has occurred. However, the launch of MTV on August 1, 1981, was certainly one such occurrence. Instantly, music fans were now “listening with their eyes” rather than relying solely on their ears.

The surprising story of how iconic works of music sparked debate and action in the halls of Congress. In On the Record: Music That Changed America, Anna Harwell Celenza uncovers the sometimes–surprising influence of music on American politics and culture. From "The Star–Spangled Banner" and...

As an A&R man at Epic Records, Tom Werman helped introduce the world to REO Speedwagon, Boston, Ted Nugent, and Cheap Trick; he also discovered KISS, Rush, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but his record label passed on all of them. Then, as an independent producer, he oversaw landmark albums by Mötley Crüe, Twisted Sister, Lita Ford, Jeff Beck, Poison, and many more. All in all, his record-making resume includes twenty-three gold- or platinum-selling albums and cumulative sales of more than fifty-two million copies.

'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...

However you found your way into indie rock, once you were a listener, it felt like being part of a secret club of people who had discovered something special, something secret, something superior. In Such Great Heights, music journalist Chris DeVille brilliantly captures this cultural moment, from the early aughts and the height of indie rock, until the 2010s as streaming upends the industry and changes music forever.

From Nelson George, supervising producer and writer of the hit Netflix series The Get Down, Hip Hop America is the definitive account of the society-altering collision between Black youth culture and the mass media.

This audiobook analyzes the themes and progression of the composers' most famous works, comparing and contrasting them to each other and other composers' great works.

Guitars playing abrasive, discordant riffs, the thunderous double-kick of the drums acting like an accelerated heartbeat, and porcine, guttural vocals pummeling twisted lyrics. Courting controversy from inception to its modern day iteration, death metal presents a number of contradictions: Driven and adventurous musicians compete to make uncomfortable noises; it is crude and far beyond parody and yet consistently popular; and the music is pig-headedly uncommercial despite making a few labels, albeit briefly, wealthy.

P-Funk keyboardist Daniel Bedrosian brings to life the recording and musical activity of Parliament-Funkadelic in 1975, an epoch-making year marked by the release of three seminal albums: Chocolate City , Let's Take It to the Stage , and Mothership Connection. By the end of it, George Clinton and P-Funk were catapulted into superstardom, becoming a massive platinum success with multiple hit singles.

A delightful biography of a celebrated Stradivarius cello and an inviting overview of cello music and musicians by world-famous concert cellist Carlos Prieto.

Rock stars who "went disco" crossed a musical rubicon and forever smashed cultural conformity. The ongoing dance-rock phenomenon demonstrates the impact of this unique place and time. The disco crossover forever changed rock.