Music

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In her introduction to this memoir, Donna Leon confesses, “I have never planned more than the first step in anything I’ve done.” Perhaps that is why Wandering through Life is a series of s

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Everyone knows the music of Elton John. But some may not know that Elton never writes any lyrics.

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“a worthy part of any Beatles’ fans collection.”

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“Improbably, perhaps, for a work of music criticism, Kick Out the Jams is as revealing a first draft of history from those cumulatively calamitous three-and-a-half decades as you’r

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The relationship between journalist and subject is an ancient one, and the ice is frequently broken with the hoisting of a glass . . . or two.

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“Don’t Call It Hair Metal is a loving paean to a halcyon time in hard-rock history.”

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Does the world need another book on Oscar Hammerstein II? Hugh Fordin’s Getting to Know Him is a solid biography.

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Ever since the music called jazz emerged in the Black and Creole communities of early 20th century New Orleans (as most histories of the music contend), the vast majority of journalists, authors, a

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“The book is a joy to read. You can dip in anywhere and swim about in Dylan’s brain.”

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Folk Music is not a conventional biography, and readers hoping to find in it details of Bob Dylan’s personal life will have to search elsewhere.

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Music memoirs come in many different forms, but Three Pianos by Andrew McMahon is in a small sub-genre: the self-loathing confessional.

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"In music, impact comes from steady improvement, pruning, intensifying, through intelligence, sensitivity."

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“For those of us who care about opera, Don Giovanni Captured is a fascinating book.”

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Even amid all his late-life venting in The Last Days, Geoff Dyer manages to please once again with his artful sentences and close observations.”

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Let’s be honest—to really enjoy Through the Prism, Untold Stories from the Hipgnosis Archive by Aubrey Powell, it would help if you lived through the days of yore when rock album covers we

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“Hong’s memoir is as perfect in tone and pitch as a memoir can be.”

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“This revealing, nicely crafted account of rock performers from Bill Haley and His Comets to Pink Floyd will appeal greatly to nostalgic rock fans.”

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There’s a lot to argue with in Joseph Horowitz’s Dvorák’s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music.

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How does a composer suspend time? A fermata—a dot underneath a semi-circle—tells the musician that a note should be prolonged beyond its normal duration.

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Singing Like Germans is a superb piece of historical research enlivened by its author’s deep fascination with her subject matter.”

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“If there’s one book about music that deserves to be read cover to cover this year it’s Kelefa Sanneh’s Major Labels. It’s bound to be a contemporary classic.”

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Britain’s Desert Island Discs has been on the BBC since 1942. They don’t have to choose records on that mythical patch of sand with a lone palm tree for company, but many do.

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“Drawing on Heylin’s many remarkable new discoveries in the Dylan Archive, The Double Life of Bob Dylan: A Restless, Hungry Feeling (1941–1966) makes phenomenally captivating readi

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