These are some of our favorite books about music from 2025. Read more
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Tag: Music
The Best Music Books of 2024
There are enough great books about music each year to fill a library. It can be a lot to get through, so we selected a handful that we really love, including memoirs, history tomes, and more. Read more
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‘A History of Western Music’ by August Kleinzahler
August Kleinzahler’s “A History of Western Music” will be a special treat for poetry readers who also appreciate music in all its forms and genres. The poems in this collection probe the power of music, exploring the psychological and emotional realms it occupies in our life. Read more
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Why Did Satirical Genius Tom Lehrer Swap Worldwide Fame for Obscurity?
In the 1950s and 60s, his songs stunned and delighted listeners with their irreverence, wit and nihilism. Then he gave it all up to teach mathematics. Lehrer is still alive at 96 – so I went in search of answers. Read more
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In Honor of Duke Ellington: Here Are 15 Great Books About Jazz
Can a sentence swing and a paragraph bop? Is it possible for prose to be as stripped down and cool as a Miles Davis trumpet solo, or a poem to be as incantatory as John Coltrane’s saxophone? Despite all of the musical genres which the United States contributed to contemporary culture, most of them born from the specifically African American experience it should be added, jazz remains in many ways the lodestar of our melodic and rhythmic firmament, the “Classical Music” of America (as complicated as that assertion might be). Read more
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A New Book Celebrates Author Kazuo Ishiguro and Singer Stacey Kent’s Collaboration
Author Kazuo Ishiguro and jazz singer Stacey Kent turned a friendship into a songwriting collaboration. Sixteen lyrics have been compiled in a new book The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain. Read more
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Newly Discovered String Quartet by Clockwork Orange Author Anthony Burgess to Have Premiere
He is best-known as the author of A Clockwork Orange, his 1962 savage social satire, but Anthony Burgess saw himself primarily as a thwarted musician. Although self-taught, he was a prolific composer, and now a previously unknown piece for a string quartet is to receive its world premiere following its discovery. Read more
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‘Lou Reed: The King of New York’ by Will Hermes
…Hermes, a superb writer, does poetic justice to the complicated life of his difficult subject. As Hermes details, a raft of current singers claim debt to Reed, from Courtney Barnett and St. Vincent to Sharon Van Etten and Kurt Vile, as well as creatives in television, art, and fashion. Hermes offers a fresh and deep immersion in Reed’s world in all of its weird and wonderful, curmudgeonly glory, from Andy Warhol’s Factory and the Velvet Underground to days and nights of rock ’n’ roll decadence and his final moments surrounded by family and friends. Reed was influenced by many people over the years, including Delmore Schwartz and Bob Dylan, but none more so than his third wife, multimedia artist Laurie Anderson, who is a big part of this powerful story, this biographical magnum opus. Read more
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What the Music You Love Says About You
This Is What It Sounds Like is a journey into the science and soul of music that reveals the secrets of why your favorite songs move you. But it’s also a story of a musical trailblazer who began as a humble audio tech in Los Angeles to became Prince’s chief engineer for Purple Rain, and then create other No. 1 hits as one of the most successful female record producers of all time. Now an award-winning professor of cognitive neuroscience, Susan Rogers leads readers to musical self-awareness. She explains that we each possess a unique “listener profile” based on our brain’s natural response to seven key dimensions of any song. Are you someone who prefers lyrics or melody? Do you like music “above the neck” (intellectually stimulating), or “below the neck” (instinctual and rhythmic)? Whether your taste is esoteric or mainstream, Rogers guides readers to recognize their musical personality, and offers language to describe one’s own unique taste. Like most of us, Rogers is not a musician, but she shows that all of us can be musical–simply by being an active, passionate listener. Read more
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Al Young, Poet With a Musical Bent, Is Dead at 81
Mr. Young, who served for three years as California’s poet laureate and also wrote about jazz, was known for his readings, which often incorporated music. Read more
