music biographies 2022

The Best Music Books of 2022

Miki berenyi, ‘fingers crossed: how music saved me from success’.

Lush were rock stars back home in London. In the U.S., they were a Nineties dream-pop cult band, starring Miki Berenyi as the iconic chanteuse with the neon-scarlet hair. Fingers Crossed is her candid, often brutally hilarious memoir of the mid-level rock hustle in the shoegaze and Britpop scenes. But it’s also the story of a loud woman in a male world that plainly doesn’t want her there. She hits the Lollapalooza tour, flirts with fame, meets loads of misogynistic men, many of them in bands. Yes, she names a name or two. (Anthony Kiedis’ pickup technique gets high praise, though it doesn’t work on her.) But you don’t need to know a thing about Lush to love Fingers Crossed — Berenyi makes her story so relatable, so poignant, so emotionally intense, it’s an irresistible rush of a book. —R.S.

James Campion, ‘Take a Sad Song: The Emotional Currency of “Hey Jude”’

A fascinating deep dive into the cultural history of one song: “Hey Jude,” the Beatles’ biggest hit and in many ways their weirdest. It’s a seven-minute song, half of it giving up to the most indelible “na na na na” chant this side of “A Long December.” Paul McCartney wrote “Hey Jude” in a time of turmoil for both the world and the band, yet it’s been consoling and uplifting people ever since. Campion, who has written studies of Warren Zevon and Kiss, brings fresh insights to the question of why this one Fabs tune keeps resonating so widely over the years. You might have heard it so many times you can hum every “na na na na” in your sleep, but Take a Sad Song makes it feel brand-new — and makes it all sound better-better-better. —R.S.

Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan, ‘Faith, Hope and Carnage’

“Music has the ability to penetrate all the fucked-up ways we have learned to cope with the world,” Nick Cave says to his friend the journalist Seán O’Hagan early on in Faith, Hope and Carnage . The same could be said of death. The book, a 304-page conversation conducted during the early days of Covid, is styled in a stark Q&A format, but it is incredibly moving, hopeful, and at times very funny. While Cave muses about the power of art and tells “fucked up” tales of rock-star  shenanigans , the book’s power is its quiet but deep reflection on the obliteration of loss — particularly the death of his 15-year-old son Arthur in 2015. Crushingly, in May, after the book was published, Cave’s son  Jethro Lazenby , 31, died. “Each life is precious and some of us understand it and some don’t. But certainly everyone will understand it in time.” Cave has no pat answers, but in opening himself up to the questions, he and O’Hagan provide more solace then scores of bestselling self-help books . —L.T.

Dan Charnas, ‘Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm’

In Dilla Time , journalist and New York University professor Dan Charnas delivers an authoritative biography and a provocative thesis: The enigmatic producer James “Dilla” Yancey invented a new metric structure of rhythm before passing away in 2006 at the age of 32. While Charnas illustrates his analysis with musical notations and Detroit city maps, he constructs a portrait of a quiet, wildly creative man from Conant Gardens whose life, lusts, and health were centered around his love for hip-hop culture. Elegantly written and deeply sourced, Dilla Time o ffers a story of a brilliant artist whose influence persists long after his death . —M.R.

Jarvis Cocker, ‘Good Pop Bad Pop: An Inventory’

As the slinky, pervy poet of Pulp, Jarvis Cocker wiggled his way into rock history with Nineties Britpop classics like “Common People.” But with Good Pop Bad Pop , he gives a delightful symposium from one of pop culture’s wisest, funniest philosophers. Cocker spends the book clearing out clutter from his tiny attic loft — old clothes, photos, ticket stubs, his first guitar. It’s a clever way to walk through his life story as a gawky kid, an obsessive music fan, an intellectual indie poseur. But he keeps returning to the eternal mystery: Why does pop trash play such a crucial role in our lives? As Cocker writes, “The idea that a culture could reveal more of itself through its throwaway items than through its supposedly revered artefacts was fascinating to me. Still is.” —R.S .

Joe Coscarelli, ‘Rap Capital: An Atlanta Story’

New York Times reporter Joe Coscarelli‘s Rap Capital offers a vivid account how rap music in Atlanta rose from the city’s Black community and created an industry stronghold for a generation of Black entrepreneurs. Through vignettes with the eclectic cast of characters that make the scene tick — rappers and businesspeople alike — Coscarelli paints a vivid portrait of the city’s unique wealth of talent and the opposing tensions inherent to Black wealth in America. The book’s concern with 2013 until 2020 lands right as the forces of racism and capitalism confronted the dawn of the streaming era. Throughout the book, Coscarelli makes complex business realities of the rap world feel colloquial. Streaming figures and social media followings all coalesce with the impressively sourced account of key moments in Atlanta rap lore. An essential history of one of rap’s most dynamic and influential movements. –J.I.

Bob Dylan, ‘The Philosophy of Modern Song’

The songs Bob Dylan analyzes, from vintage country, blues, and R&B artists up through the Clash and Cher, aren’t remotely modern, and the philosophy is too male-centric. But in this idiosyncratic, sometimes maddening, and often wondrous and funny set of essays, he zeroes in on why certain songs and records work so well, and he sprinkles those observations with historical nuggets and even a few peeks behind the Dylan curtain (his views on divorce and touring). His riffs on the characters in the Eagles’ “Witchy Woman” and Gregg Allman’s “Midnight Rider” are proudly uncouth, to say the least, and his takes on genuinely modern pop won’t make him any new fans. But the book adds up to a deeply personal tribute to the days when folk, country, and blues were the concrete-floor foundations of music, even if that era is now largely behind us. —D.B.

Michael Hann, ‘Denim and Leather: The Rise and Fall of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal’

Starting in May 1979, when the British rock weekly Sounds coined the term in a headline for a piece about a triple bill of Iron Maiden, Samson, and Angel Witch, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, as the London-based author Michael Hann argues, was when “metal as it came to be understood was codified.” A former Guardian music editor, Hann’s generous oral history starts with that canonical May ’79 show and ends when flagship NWOBHM band Def Leppard issued the studio-buffed, deca-platinum Pyromania in 1983. Denim and Leather taps into an enormous store of goodwill. This was a fan’s subculture, built on fanzines and tape trading, and the biggest stars are often the biggest fans, from Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott extolling the glam canon to Metallica’s Lars Ulrich recounting his famous 1981 trip to the U.K. to see Diamond Head, where he realized: “I could go back to America and do this myself.” —M.M.

Hua Hsu, ‘Stay True: A Memoir’

New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu met his best friend Ken in the 1990s when they were undergrads at UC Berkeley. It was a time when the music you liked was inextricably linked to your identity and personality, and Hsu sees it as a sign of “personal growth” that he can get along so easily with a Pearl Jam fan. “Yet the more we hung out, the less certain I was of these distinctions,” he writes. Ken was killed in a carjacking three years after meeting Hsu, and this gorgeous, generous-hearted memoir is both a fond remembrance of a pivotal friendship and a vivid reflection on coming of age in the Nineties. —M.M.

Steven Hyden, ‘Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation’

Steven Hyden is a brilliant rock chronicler, whether he’s writing about great bands or terrible ones. But with Long Road , as Eddie Vedder would say, he’s unleashed a lion. It’s a cultural/personal biography of Pearl Jam, the Nineties’ most popular rock heroes. What a weird story: Seattle punk dudes hit the big time, speak out about feminism and abortion rights, rebel against Ticketmaster, go in and out of style, yet refuse to die, with a Deadhead-level following. Hyden writes as a lifelong fan who’s listened to all 72 live albums from their 2000 tour. But Long Road is his opinionated account of why the music matters, how the music reflects the times, and how Pearl Jam’s story sums up all the ideals, dreams, and failures of Gen X. —R.S.

Greil Marcus, ‘Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs’

Greil Marcus on Bob Dylan is basically a sure thing, like Scorsese directing De Niro. Folk Music is The Irishman of this combination — elegiac, rough, languid, looking for new stories in the past, but finding old stories changing shape. The legendary music critic adds seven new essays to his Dylanology, which includes definitive studies like The Old Weird America and Like a Rolling Stone. In the finest and funniest chapter, Marcus discusses Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman,” revealing why it’s secretly the same song as “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.” Almost 50 years after the classic Mystery Train (which isn’t officially about Dylan, but argues with him on every page), Marcus keeps chasing America’s greatest songwriter down the highway. It’s cultural criticism as a long-running detective story — and a musical love story . —R.S .

Marissa R. Moss, ‘Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be’

The first book from Rolling Stone contributor Marissa R. Moss is a masterful mix of musical criticism, interventionist history, and in-depth reporting that illuminates profound new insights about 21st century country music and its ongoing and ever-present structural gender inequities. Particularly revelatory are the well-researched, narrative-upending accounts of the Texas backstories of its three protagonists: Mickey Guyton, Maren Morris, and Kacey Musgraves. “This book is the story of how country’s women fought back against systems designed to keep them down,” Moss writes in the book’s introduction. “About how women can and do belong in country music, even if their voices aren’t dominating the airwaves.” By interrogating country music’s recent history while pointing toward a possible brighter future for the genre, Her Country is an urgent and vital history that comes at a much-needed time for an industry searching for its identity . —J.B.

Margo Price, ‘Maybe We’ll Make It: A Memoir’

Most musicians wait until their twilight years to tell their life story, but Margo Price has already lived many. Inspired by Patti Smith’s Just Kids , the 39-year-old country star’s memoir chronicles her tumultuous life pre-fame — you won’t find any rock & roll decadence here. Instead, you’ll get an account of a struggling musician and her partner encountering substance abuse, trauma, and poverty, with a relentless drive to survive and create music. It’s as heart-wrenching and unflinchingly honest as Price’s songs — you might rip through it in just one sitting. “I’m not proud of all of it,” Price tells us in an upcoming interview. “But the way I figure, we’re all going to die. I want to be real with people.” —A.M.

Richard T. Rodríguez, ‘A Kiss Across the Ocean: Transatlantic Intimacies of British Post-Punk & U.S. Latinidad’

One of music’s long-running romances: the bond between British 1980s New Wave stars and their Latinx fans in the U.S. What is it about Adam Ant, Siouxsie, Boy George, or the Pet Shop Boys that inspires such devoción thousands of miles away? A Kiss Across the Ocean explores the question, with Rodríguez drawing on his own experience as a fan — growing up as a queer Latino teenager, in the hostility of Southern California, identifying with “these fabulously made-up creatures.” He examines why young fans keep hearing their own Latinidad in the glam weirdness of outsiders like Soft Cell, Bauhaus, Scritti Politti, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It’s an intriguing study of how music builds connections between different communities, and how pop desire translates over time and space. —R.S.

Jim Ruland, ‘Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records’

Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn started SST Records to put out his band’s music — because nobody else wanted it. Yet SST became the most legendary of American punk labels, the one every outlaw band wanted to be on. (Until they saw their royalty checks — or didn’t.) Jim Ruland tells the whole messy saga in his un-put-downable Corporate Rock Sucks . You might expect it to focus on the big names: Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, The Minutemen. But it covers every record by every obscure punk band in the story, upholding the legacy of Saccharine Trust and Würm. All these years, fans always wondered why the hell SST released so many Zoogz Rift albums, but it turns out most of the SST crew wondered the same thing. (“Sweet Nausea Lick” is still a banger, though.) A classic story: It begins with punk ideals, then ends with everyone hating each other and lawyering up. But in between, a heroic shitload of music. —R.S.

Danyel Smith, ‘Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop’

Danyel Smith — a writer, magazine editor, and host of the excellent podcast Black Girl Songbook — weaves together a unique memoir that mixes in the story of musical icons like Whitney Houston,  Maria Carey , and Aretha Franklin, as well as less celebrated artists like Marilyn McCoo, the Dixie Cups, and Deniece Williams. “I weep because I want Black women who create music to be known and understood as I want to be known and understood,” Smith writes early on. For readers of  Shine Bright , mission accomplished. —L.T. 

RJ Smith, ‘Chuck Berry: An American Life’

Chuck Berry did more than anyone to establish the lyrical and musical parameters of rock and roll. RJ Smith, author of the definitive James Brown biography The One , brings Berry to vivid life, doubly impressive given his subject’s legendary caginess. He lays the terrain so adroitly — from Berry’s St. Louis youth to his multiple imprisonments — that when tiny bombs go off, he doesn’t have to explain that they’re bombs; they resonate. Smith is also first-rate on the electric guitar’s galvanic effect on music and the culture at large. “You have to remember, we didn’t have anything to compare it to,” he quotes Phil Chess as saying of “Maybellene.” “This was an entirely different kind of music.” —M.M.

Jann S. Wenner, ‘Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir’

Jann Wenner founded Rolling Stone as a 21-year-old Berkeley dropout in 1967 and conducted some of its most memorable interviews, including revelatory chats with John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Bono. But most music fans knew little about his incredible life until this year, when he published Like a Rolling Stone . It’s a fascinating behind-the-scenes journey through five decades of American musical and political history, a frank look at the challenges all magazine publishers face in the age of the internet, and a chance for Wenner to confront some of his deepest regrets. “This book is about my own nine lives and about my failure to observe posted speed limits,” he writes. “Our readers often referred to Rolling Stone as a letter from home. This is my last letter to you.” —A.G.

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The 15 Best Music Books of 2022

Lavishing sustained attention on music is one way to show that you love it – here at Pitchfork, where we are perhaps a little biased, it is our favorite way – and each year brings a flood of great new music books giving the opportunity to do just that. The best music books, whether they are history, cultural criticism, memoir, or some hybrid of all three, give you new ears with which to listen. What follows is a list of favorites from 2022, picked by Pitchfork staffers and contributors. (If a few of the entries seem familiar, that’s because they are excerpted from past  Book Club entries.) Happy reading!

The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music

In 2018, Stereogum senior editor (and former Pitchfork staffer) Tom Breihan began reviewing every single No. 1 pop hit in American chart history for a column called The Number Ones. What began as a series of breezy capsule reviews quickly snowballed into a series of sprawling histories examining the cultural conditions that allowed each song to achieve this peculiar, highly specific honor. Each No. 1 song in America, Breihan was discovering, was an unrepeatable convergence of culture and luck. In the meantime, his column had become a reference guide, a repository, and—in the comment section— a community. Finally, it has become a book, consisting of 20 original essays, each one centered around a particular No. 1 hit. Each one illustrates what Breihan calls “BC/AD moments,” or harbingers or catalysts for cultural sea change, and he has bound them together so that the story each one tells leads, however indirectly, into the next. For long-time readers of Breihan’s work, either at Stereogum or on this site, the tone will be instantly familiar: affable, conversational, and always funny, with surprising insights and ear-catching phrasings gliding in from every direction. —Jayson Greene

Faith, Hope and Carnage

Faith, Hope and Carnage is an astoundingly intimate book-length conversation on art and grief spanning the duration of the pandemic years. In dialogues with the Irish journalist and critic Sean O’Hagan, Cave’s recent full-lengths,  Ghosteen ,  Skeleton Tree,  and  Carnage , serve as keyholes to his broader creative philosophies. Cave discusses writing through improvisation and hallucination, his intensifying relationship to religion, how small acts of kindness reverberate, and how vulnerability creates “invincibility.” He offers song-based revelations (like the process of writing “Into My Arms” in rehab) and chronicles friendships (like his truly surprising kinship with Coldplay’s Chris Martin). The book ultimately uncovers his life’s discursive attunement: with collaborator Warren Ellis, with God, and, through  Ghosteen , with his late son, Arthur, who died in 2015. (Cave’s son Jethro passed away in May, as this book went to press.) As with Cave’s music, you might flinch, but you will feel alive. —Jenn Pelly

Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla

After his untimely death from lupus-related complications in 2006, just after his 32nd birthday, J Dilla became recognized as one of the most important producers in hip-hop history. With his meticulous knowledge of records and wily command over drum machines, the man born James Dewitt Yancey created intricate, sample-based productions that defied the rigid structure of the grid and altered how musicians of all stripes thought about time. “What Dilla created was a third path of rhythm,” writes journalist, record executive, and professor Dan Charnas in his biography of the artist, resulting in a “new, pleasurable, disorienting rhythmic friction and a new time-feel: Dilla Time.” Charnas’ book,  Dilla Time, is a fascinating, immersive look at Dilla’s impact both during his lifetime and beyond: the producer’s relationships and upbringing, his musical interventions, and the contentious dispute over who gets to control his posthumous legacy. —Cat Zhang

Rap Capital: An Atlanta Story

Despite its sweeping title,  The New York Times reporter Joe Coscarelli’s Atlanta rap book is more the story of Quality Control Music, the ATL-based label founded by Kevin “Coach K” Lee and Pierre “P” Thomas that dominated the last decade, than of the city as a whole. Fascinated by the rise of QC and all within their orbit, Coscarelli uses the label as a lens through which to explore how the high life of 2010s Atlanta worked out for some and not for others. For its first third, Coscarelli traces the label’s history, from the Freaknik festival to the birth of the Gucci Mane and Jeezy rivalry, before getting down to what you can tell really interests him: contrasting the careers of artists who made it big (Lil Baby and Migos) with those who fell by the wayside (Marlo and Lil Reek), in a combination of interwoven profile-like scenes and interviews. Some go smoother than others: Marlo’s section is written too much like a crime novel, but Lil Reek’s is captivating and gutting.  Rap Capital makes for occasionally scatter-brained reading, but the shifting framework keeps you glued. —Alphonse Pierre

This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music

Edited by Irish writer Sinéad Gleeson and Sonic Youth founder Kim Gordon, these essays by 16 female critics (including Pitchfork Contributing Editor Jenn Pelly) are intended to challenge the idea that music is made and written about by men. Many pieces expertly employ feminist analysis, from Juliana Huxtable’s piece on how noise music and Linda Sharrock’s vocals are a “rupture of…Eurocentric formulations of sound, speech, musicality, and written language,” to Jenn Pelly’s descriptions of Lucinda Williams’ “mini-manifestos for female life.” But more often, the poignancy of the pieces comes from the way these 16 writers generously offer us so much of themselves. Reading these essays, it is striking how much music serves as a form of memory and solace. It provides a tie to a home left behind, it serves as a document of a friend’s vibrance, and it preserves a version of a mother long lost to mental illness. These essays are so moving because each of these writers hears themself fully in the music they love. They remind us that we can, too. — Vrinda Jagota

Queer Country

When music and queer studies scholar Shana Goldin-Perschbacher first started research for  Queer Country in 2004, most people she spoke to about the project reacted with bafflement: Did queer country artists even  exist ? It had been over a decade since k.d. lang left the genre to find greater acclaim and commercial success as a torchy pop singer, and the spectacular  backlash against the Chicks (née Dixie Chicks) a year prior had cemented the country music industry’s reputation as a bastion of conservative values. Now, what started as an underground scene appears to be reaching critical mass, with dedicated  radio shows ,  zines , and even a  gay country star in Brothers Osborne frontman T.J. Osborne (who isn’t alone in  Nashville’s mainstream ).  Queer Country  sketches out a rough history of this movement, spotlighting the contributions of lang and Lavender Country pioneer Patrick Haggerty, along with lesser-known figures including non-binary and trans musicians Rae Spoon, Joe Stevens, and Mya Byrne. It also features close-reads of contemporary stars like Lil Nas X, Orville Peck, Brandi Carlile, and Trixie Mattel, drawing a vivid portrait of a movement at a point of breakthrough. —Will Groff

Needles and Plastic: Flying Nun Records, 1981–1988

New Zealand produced a staggering amount of great independent rock music in the 1980s, and most of it came from Flying Nun, a Christchurch-based label that made immediate waves when early releases by the Clean hit national pop charts. Founder Roger Shepherd had turned, as author Matthew Goody puts it, “what seemed like a good idea in the pub one night to an established label in less than a year.” Shepherd’s DIY approach makes Flying Nun’s early history hard to sort, but Goody does a great job capturing its ’80s heyday, before the label moved north to Auckland.  Needles & Plastic  is structured by order of releases, but it’s far more than a catalog. Goody tells detailed stories about each record and artist, from the Chills to Tall Dwarfs to the Bats, and unearths a sparkling wealth of photos and ephemera, building a rich document of how exciting and resourceful this scene was. “There was an underlying love of making music and sharing it with people that drove almost everyone to get involved,” Goody writes. “And no one seemed to have a care in the world about any kind of reward or recognition that might come along the way.” – Marc Masters

Hua Hsu’s  Stay True is a coming-of-age memoir that brings music, memory, identity, and grief into a mid-1990s tableau of indie-pop mixtapes, late-night record stores, and Xeroxed zines. The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Hsu enters UC Berkeley as a malcontent who forges an improbably deep friendship with Ken, his opposite in almost every way: a well-adjusted frat brother who wears Abercrombie and listens to Dave Matthews, whose Japanese-American family has been in the U.S. for generations. But Hsu’s growing kinship with Ken contributes to the writer’s personal debunking of stereotypical binaries, and his realization that what constitutes “cool” is often more complicated than it seems. When, only three years later, Ken is murdered in a carjacking, Hsu writes to not forget his friend’s kindness and curiosity, his late-night theories, the particular pitch of his laugh. Hsu, also a literature professor at Bard College, spent years as a music critic before joining  The New Yorker in 2017, and music is the oxygen of  Stay True , a book that already feels like a crucial addition to the music-critical memoir tradition.— Jenn Pelly

Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be

When journalist Marissa Moss moved to Nashville and started reporting on the music scene, she quickly observed how the institution of country music maintains a status quo that prioritizes the comfort and success of men with “big cowboy hats and even bigger egos.” Women in country music were (and still are) expected to temper their rage and remain apolitical lest they get “Chicked,” or face the industry-wide fallout that the Chicks endured when they spoke out against George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. Moss became fascinated with the rulebreakers of the genre—not the men of outlaw country, praised for their bravado and fearlessness, but the women who succeeded in such a hostile environment without sacrificing their integrity. Her book,  Her Country, follows three pioneers— Maren Morris, Kacey Musgraves, and Mickey Guyton— over the course of 20 years as they grew up, pursued their dreams, and changed the genre in the process. The book is deeply researched: You’ll find quotes that Kacey Musgraves’ grandmother gave a local newspaper when she sang at Bush’s inauguration, as well as first-person accounts from Morris and Guyton about pivotal moments in their careers. And of course, as she tells these women’s stories, Moss contextualizes them in relation to all the women who paved the way before them: The song about birth control that got Loretta Lynn banned from the radio, the poignant lyrics that Dolly Parton wrote about class struggle. The book is an exhaustive history of the kind of industry—and world—that the white men of country music have always hoped to maintain and the women who wouldn’t let them. — Vrinda Jagota

Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records

The temptation to idolize SST Records as an unbreakable bastion of punk rock is real, but Greg Ginn would happily be the first one to put a crack in its sparkling legacy. Back in 1978, the Black Flag co-founder started the record label as a way to release his band’s music. Then things began snowballing, and as the Los Angeles scene began to expand, so did the label’s output—Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Soundgarden—alongside the police department’s surveillance of their headquarters. Thus SST Records transitioned from a backyard project into a juggernaut, helping punk bands transition into alt-rock staples, even as the label’s accounting practices came under fire. With  Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records , author Jim Ruland organizes a plethora of original interviews, newspaper clippings, and battered flyers into an ode to the label that helped rock evolve. Across 14 in-depth chapters, the book catalogs how SST moved beyond hardcore, fed college radio its meat and potatoes, and impacted regional scenes by amplifying their artists – often at the expense of the pockets of its bands. These anecdotes will likely become a go-to resource for punk archivists looking beyond the impact of  Damaged  or  Double Nickels on the Dime . – Nina Corcoran

Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop

In  Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop , Smith articulates just how profoundly music shapes our understanding of self. Each chapter treats an icon of mononymous fame—Aretha, Donna, Whitney, Mariah, Janet, Gladys, and so on—as a lens for Smith’s own story, kaleidoscoping cultural criticism and meticulous reporting on their lives with reflections on Smith’s own. In a chapter on Gladys Knight, she unpacks her own childhood traumas while exploring the societal expectation for teenage girls to trust the decisions of their elders. In writing about Aretha and Whitney, she lays out the long tradition of sleazy men in the music industry swarming around female artists, waiting to see what they can take from them.  Shine Bright is by turns warmly conversational and brilliantly analytical, achieving the rare feat of illuminating new contours of some of the greatest artists of all time.— Puja Patel

A Book of Days

When Patti Smith joined Instagram in 2018, it was a perfect match. The punk legend, poet, and celebrated memoirist is also a longtime photographer: The format immediately served her daily art practice, sharing snapshots and epigrammatic captions that consistently feel generative and soul-steadying.  A Book of Days is an aesthetic diary inspired by her approach to Instagram. Though she misses the “atmosphere” of her Polaroids, she writes in the introduction, her embrace of technology “has enabled me to unite with the exploding collage of our culture.” Each page corresponds to a date on the calendar, pairing a photograph (from her Polaroids, archive, and cellphone) and text to offer daily inspiration. Some celebrate birthdays for the likes of Joan of Arc or Joan Baez. Others depict coffee, sunglasses, notebooks, or headstones. “Here are my arrows aiming for the common heart of things,” Smith explains. “Each attached with a few words, scrappy oracles.”— Jenn Pelly

Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It

Normal people tend to regard stans in one of three ways: amused by their histrionic slang (“your fave could never”), impressed by their organizational dexterity, or horrified by their willingness to launch full-scale harassment campaigns. The relationship is one of intrigue and suspicion, not recognition, and so even those who self-identify as “chronically online” don’t always quite get stans’ motivations, content to see them as just a curious part of the online ecology. That’s where Kaitlyn Tiffany, internet culture writer at The Atlantic, steps in. Her book,  Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet As We Know It , dives into the trenches of online fandom—the deep-fried memes, the bizarro and sometimes dangerous conspiracy theories—drawing from scholarly research and her own personal history loving One Direction. It traces how fandom has shaped our modern-day internet: becoming our “dominant mode of commerce,” infiltrating our speech. The book’s balance of first-person experience and scholarly analysis, humor and rigor, makes it an irresistible read.— Cat Zhang

And the Category Is…: Inside New York’s Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community

During one of the interviews in culture writer and Lambda Fellow Ricky Tucker’s new book, voguer and educator Benji Hart quotes the Ballroom icon Jonovia Chase: “Ballroom is not fantasy; it's the real world reimagined.” Balls open space and time for Black, brown, queer, and trans performers to remix reality, forging networks of community and kinship through imaginative movement. In  And the Category Is... , Tucker blends reportage, memoir, and criticism into a work that’s just as hybrid and polyphonic as the culture it captures. The book touches on Ballroom’s complex interactions with mainstream culture via media properties like  Paris Is Burning ,  Pose , and  Legendary , finding the edges where capitalism packets marginal lives into consumable bites. Through an interview with the DJ MikeQ, Tucker also explores the unmistakable sound of the ball, the way that a responsive live mix can feed and be fed by a voguing routine, DJ and dancer mutually electrified. Just as a DJ cuts up a song and funnels it into a new, live current, voguers collapse and expand the world, breaking out of habitual movement, resculpting the real.— Sasha Geffen

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The Florida Room

The “Florida room”—also known as a sunroom or a solarium—is a glass-walled living space at the back of the main home that serves as a middle ground between the indoors and outdoors. NYU professor Alexandra T. Vazquez uses this off-center social zone as a guiding metaphor in  The Florida Room,  theorizing her vibrant book about the musics of Miami as “a spatial imaginary, a vestibule, an addition to the main house of writings about place.” As Vazquez identifies unexpected resonances and collaborations—snaking her way through singer Betty Wright, the Indigenous rock group Tiger Tiger, and Miami bass’s Luke Skyywalker Records—her prose is lively and darting, as if refusing to let a central narrative congeal. It's a loving and rich account of somewhere that exists both in real life and the imagination, too abundant to be contained. — Cat Zhang

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7 Best Music Biographies From 2022

“If you want to release your aggression, get up and dance. That’s what rock and roll is all about.”

Musicians are often revered as the coolest people on the planet by many of us. They possess the exceptional ability to interlace notes and symphonies that can evoke a wide range of emotions, from sorrow to ecstasy. Their works become timeless pieces, deeply ingrained in both our memories and the annals of society. And, because of that, people have become fascinated with the lives and times of the people behind the songs. Join us at What We Reading for our top music biographies from 2022!

Chuck Berry: An American Life – R.J. Smith

Chuck Berry, the legendary musician behind hits like Johnny B. Goode , Maybellene, You Never Can Tell, and Roll Over Beethoven blazed a trail in the music industry and is widely considered the inventor of Rock and Roll . Despite his monumental impact, his life was full of contradictions and motivations that continue to intrigue readers to this day. In the biographical masterpiece, Chuck Berry: An American Life , author R.J. Smith takes readers on a fascinating journey into the remarkable life and times of one of North America’s greatest performers.

Through interviews, archival research, and legal documents, Smith paints a vivid picture of Berry’s life and legacy, revealing the profound impact he had on societal norms and attitudes. With compelling storytelling and meticulous attention to detail, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of music and its cultural significance.

Shine Bright – Danyel Smith

Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop is a deeply personal exploration of identity and the profound impact of Black female musicians on cultural norms. Author Danyel Smith skillfully focuses each chapter of the book on different Black female artists, highlighting how they have become powerful weapons in the fight for social change and enduring forces in shaping her life.

Through a warmly conversational and unapologetically powerful lens, Smith delves into the biggest challenges facing society and how these remarkable artist s have grown to challenge them. With insightful analysis and a deeply personal perspective, Shine Bright shines a light on the pivotal role that Black women have played in the evolution of pop music and the broader cultural landscape. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of music, identity, and social change.

Dilla Time – Dan Charnas

Dan Charnas’ Dilla Time is a fascinating tale that blurs the line between musician biography and cultural history resource. The book takes readers on a journey through the life and times of James DeWitt Yancey, better known as ‘J Dilla,’ a hip hop producer who pioneered a new sound for popular music despite never recording a big hit with the public.

Through over 150 interviews with friends, colleagues, and industry admirers, Charnas explores Dilla’s gifted childhood, his collaborations with the likes of Michael Jackson , his untimely death at just 32, and the enduring legacy that has led musicians from jazz to rap to study his techniques and deep understanding of sound.

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The McCartney Legacy, Volume 1: 1969-73 – Allan Kozinn And Adrian Sinclair

The McCartney Legacy, Volume 1 , expertly weaves together hundreds of interviews, meticulous research, and previously unseen documents to take readers on a personal and professional journey with Paul McCartney in the years immediately following the dissolution of The Beatles .

Beatles historian Allan Kozinn and award-winning documentarian Adrian Sinclair delve deep into McCartney’s life, examining how he redefined himself as both a man and an artist. With a keen eye for detail and a deep understanding of McCartney’s musical evolution, the authors offer a compelling portrait of a legend conquering bouts of depression and self-doubt to establish a legacy that continues to influence the music industry to this day.

Check out more great biographies from 2022 !

Queer Country – Shana Goldin-Perschbacher

Dr. Shana Goldin-Perschbacher’s Queer Country is a music biography that delves into the world of queer and transgender country musicians. Drawing from her extensive knowledge in interdisciplinary popular music studies and identity studies at Temple University, the author uncovers the contributions of these artists to the music industry, explores why they have been overlooked by the mainstream, and highlights the growing connection between their identities and acceptance in society.

Through the book, readers gain a deeper understanding of the rich history and cultural significance of queer and transgender country music and the artists who have helped shape it.

Charlie’s Good Tonight – Paul Sexton

Charlie’s Good Tonight , the 2022 music biography by Paul Sexton, brings to life the incredible story of Charlie Watts, the legendary drummer of The Rolling Stones.

Despite being overshadowed by his bandmates for years, Sexton’s research and close friendship with Watts have enabled him to craft a compelling narrative that spans the musician’s life, from his humble beginnings to his rise to superstardom in the 1970s and beyond. Along the way, readers are treated to a wealth of behind-the-scenes stories, insights into the band’s dynamics, and an intimate portrayal of Watts’ personality and character.

Rap Capital: An Atlanta Story – Joe Coscarelli

In Rap Capital: An Atlanta Story , Joe Coscarelli takes readers on an immersive journey through Atlanta’s rich history and deep connection with rap music. Drawing on his extensive knowledge and firsthand experiences, Coscarelli delivers a captivating account of the music scene’s intricate web of people and politics, exploring issues of race, class, money, and salvation.

Through hundreds of interviews and ride-alongs, he introduces readers to the talented and resilient Black American men and women who navigate broken school systems and institutional racism, while grappling with the constant threat of incarceration. Coscarelli’s epic biography of Atlanta’s rap music is a powerful tribute to the city’s enduring cultural influence.

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Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).

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The Best Music Books of 2022

If you want to know the feeling of constantly failing… well, yes, you can read any number of musicians’ memoirs about their early years, but you can also try to keep up with the vast number of music books released every year. It’s like trying to keep up with multiple TV series at the same time, or the number of lies a certain former president tells every day — you keep up as best you can and hope you’re not missing a blockbuster. Of course, the upside is there are many, many great books released this year, and although we’re sure we are missing many of them, below are the best music books of 2022 that we actually managed to read.

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“Moonage Daydream: The Life and Times of Ziggy Stardust” — David Bowie with Mick Rock (reissue) Despite its title, this book is not a direct companion to Brett Morgen’s sprawling David Bowie documentary released earlier this year — instead, it’s a long-overdue reissue of the lavish coffee-table book of Bowie’s epochal “Ziggy Stardust” era of 1972-73. Originally released in a pricey edition of just 2,500, it includes more than 600 photos taken by Bowie’s personal photographer at the time, the late Mick Rock, along with lengthy, fascinating commentary written by Bowie himself, which provides unequalled insight into the person, persona and master plan from a man who often did his utmost to avoid providing it. Throughout, there are stellar details and aside like this one about the lightning-bolt Ziggy logo: “I was not a little peeved when Kiss purloined it. Purloining, after all, was my job.” But most of all it’s a feast for the eyes: Bowie’s lurid costumes, makeup and stage presentation did much to light up the monochrome of early ‘70s Britain, and it evokes the period and the persona as much as any film. Absolutely essential for any fan. — Aswad

“The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music” — Tom Breihan Based on “The Number Ones,” Stereogum senior editor Tom Breihan’s ongoing column reviewing U.S. No. 1 pop hits, his new book of the same name looks at how 20 top tracks affected the culture, and/or changed the game, musically and sociologically. Ripe with opinion and spiced by peppery humor, Breihan’s new essays find the Beatles and the Beach Boys sitting comfortably next to fellow “Number Ones” Bon Jovi and Soulja Boy. Breihan ponders the co-dependency between Bob Dylan and the Byrds when it came to “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and touches on George McCrae’s disco-era smash, “Rock Your Baby,” as a track intentionally written to top the charts. Breihan’s book also lovingly looks into deserving artists (e.g., Dylan, Bruce Springsteen) who have never topped the singles charts. — Amorosi

“Faith, Hope and Carnage” — Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan Nick Cave is certainly capable of authoring starkly surreal fiction as he has in novels “And the Ass Saw the Angel” (1989) and “The Death of Bunny Munro” (2009), and in non-fiction writings such as “The Sick Bag Song” (2015). Yet, since 2015, Cave has undergone personal and spiritual transformations based on the passing of two of his sons, and the outpouring of emotion and support from fans and others. With that, Cave’s usual catalog of violence-driven characters and dire narratives now include more intimate metaphorical clues to his inner-life. In a series of interviews with Irish journalist-friend Sean O’Hagan — presented in Q&A format — Cave becomes an open narrator and a bold-faced conversationalist. He talks up the creative process with elements of hallucination and improvisation in the mix. But it is earnestness, hurt, and joy that come through during these fireside chats as Cave discusses finding religion and rehab in unexpected, moving ways. — Amorosi

“A Song for Everyone: the Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival” — John Lingan The sad story of Creedence Clearwater Revival has been told many times in the half century since the band split up, from “Behind the Music” to singer-songwriter-frontman John Fogerty’s 2016 autobiography. This extensive volume, which Fogerty declined to be interviewed for, looks at things largely from the perspectives of the band’s rhythm section, bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford (the fourth member, Fogerty’s brother Tom, died in 1990). This account offers a strong history of the Bay Area band’s early days — they first began playing together in middle school — and follows as they develop a local reputation and as Fogerty increasingly asserts his dominance, eventually insisting on writing and singing all of the songs, playing lead guitar and even working as their manager. The latter decision in particular proved to be ill-advised, as 21-year-old Fogerty was no match for the aggressive business brain of Fantasy Records chief Saul Zaentz; he ended up making a very bad deal for himself and spent many decades railing against the unfairness of a situation of his own making.

“Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla” — Dan Charnas J Dilla — a.k.a Jay Dee, a.k.a. James Dewitt Yancey — was a pioneering hip-hop producer who never worked on a “hit” record, although his discography includes collaborations with or remixes of songs by greats like D’Angelo, A Tribe Called Quest, the Roots, Common, Busta Rhymes, the Pharcyde and many others. He died in 2006 of a rare blood disease at the age of just 32, with few except musicians and dedicated hip-hop fans aware of the pioneering work he had done. Yet in the years since his death, awareness of his brilliance and his innovations with rhythm and production — which often sounded like random accidents but are acknowledged by many musicians as genius — has spread dramatically: Questlove, one of the first and certainly the most vocal of his disciples, says Dilla’s work “was so perfectly imperfect that it redefined the way I thought about art.”

Longtime hip-hop journalist Dan Charnas, author of the definitive history of the hip-hop business “The Big Payback” and an associate professor at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, not only teaches regular classes on Dilla’s work, he dedicated four years of his life to writing the 450-page “Dilla Time.” It’s no ordinary book: equal parts biography, musical analysis and cultural history, it delves deep not only into Dilla’s history and music but also into the histories of rhythm and his hometown of Detroit; the three elements even come together in a mind-melting chapter that compares Detroit’s street plan with rhythm theory. “Dilla Time” is not a lean-back read — the segments on the science of rhythm can have readers tapping armrests, trying to follow his labrynthine explanations — but it’s among the deepest studies of the genre to date, and truly brings Dilla the flowers he long deserved. — Aswad

“Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Meant to Be” — Marissa R. Moss The subject of women in country music is almost too big for one book and Marissa R. Ross knows it, so for her where-we’re-at snapshot of the gender divide in the genre, she settles in on three artists — Mickey Guyton, Maren Morris and Kacey Musgraves — as her key go-tos, or come-back-tos. So in effect, you’re getting three nearly complete biographies for the price of one… even as her frame is constantly widening to survey other major figures in the music, too (like Margo Price, who gets enough due here that Moss’ book makes a pretty nice complement to that singer’s own memoir, also featured in this list). Moss has been so outspoken in her coverage of women’s issues for Rolling Stone Country and other outlets that you know she’s not going to suddenly turn dry and dispassionate in her writing on those subjects here. But once she’s laid out the list of obstacles women still face in just getting the proverbial seat at the table — a snapshot of the state of institutional sexism in and around 2022 that we very much need — she’s able to also, at leisure, provide exactly what you’d hope a book such as this would expend much of its time on: the joy and righteousness of how these women rose to the top, from winning talent contests and even yodeling competitions as girls to asserting themselves as great, mature artists in the present day, against almost impossible odds. They are all, as a Musgraves album title once cheekily put it, “pageant material” — and Moss’ book is a terrific pageant of bona fide heroines unto itself. — Willman

“Maybe We’ll Make It” — Margo Price Price had a hardscrabble upbringing as the daughter of an Illinois farming family that was just made to be grist for country songs — and eventually it was, when she released her Third Man Records debut, titled, yes, “Midwest Farmer’s Daughter” (the nod to Loretta’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” being very much intentional). Yet it wasn’t till the mid-2010s that she really pursued country music, almost as an inadvertently successful afterthought, in the wake of the many years that she and husband Jeremy Ivey spent trying to get any kind of traction with their now-defunct rock band Buffalo Clover. Although Price’s account of her childhood is more than absorbing, some of the rock musicians who’ll pick up her memoir might be forgiven for skipping ahead to the chapters where she delves into Buffalo Clover’s ups (there were a few) and downs (numbering seemingly in the thousands). How many musicians won’t relate to the following: Spending thousands to go to SXSW, just to play for a handful of disinterested non-VIPs? Saving money while touring by crashing with venue waitresses, who may or may not want to crawl into the same bed? Bonding by binging? Intra-band romances and affairs that can make a group “like Fleetwood Mac, without the success”? Helping out friends by playing full sets on the drums while eight months pregnant? (OK, maybe everything  about Price’s road stories isn’t quite so relatable.) Her stoic attitude about being a working musician as well as poet makes Price seem like “one of the boys,” until harrowing pregnancy stories intervene. You remember the saying about how Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels? Price has some of the same tales to tell as her male counterparts, but with emergency C-sections, too. The book essentially wraps up with her breakout 2016 “Saturday Night Live” performance, leaving you hankering for a sequel this sharply remembered, keenly written and marvelously self-perceptive. — Willman

“Rap Capital” Joe Coscarelli

If ever a history was too big and too small at the same time, it’s this one. In his first book, the ace New York Times reporter Coscarelli puts a microscope on the thriving and enormously influential Atlanta hip-hop scene. His reportorial writing style is densely packed and starts off moving very quickly, with brief and concise histories of Atlanta and its Black music scene, while setting up a side narrative about Lashawn Jones, who eventually becomes the mother of top Atlanta rapper Lil Baby. But after 50 or so pages, he zooms into microfocus on Baby and the Quality Control label — home to Migos, Young Thug and others — while touching only in passing on the huge number of other artists involved in the scene and even the label, particularly female artists. There is also the problem of attempting to write a history while the subject matter is still very much current: The months-long imprisonments of Young Thug, Gunna and other members of the YSL collective get just a passing mention (as they took place just before the book’s publication), and Takeoff’s tragic and appallingly senseless murder was still in the future. Despite its excessive length and selective focus, “Rap Capital” does add up to a definitive history of the city that has spawned so much of the past decade’s best hip-hop. — Aswad

“Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop” — Danyel Smith An outsized percentage of recent music books are hamfisted “But enough about the Beatles/ Prince/ Beyonce, here’s more about meeee”- type attempts at merging a personal memoir with the history of an artist. It’s a very, very difficult approach to pull off, but with “Shine Bright,” Danyel Smith — former Vibe editor, longtime journalist and podcaster — has done it brilliantly. A unique combination of history, criticism and personal memoir that was nearly a decade in the making, Smith weaves the stories of foundational Black female musicians ranging from Mahalia Jackson, Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin through Gladys Knight, Jody Watley, Mariah Carey and more — and her personal observations of Whitney Houston, whom she interviewed extensively, are especially poignant and moving. While those histories are fascinating and deeply researched, Smith’s ability to interweave them with social and cultural context and particularly her own history not only as an entertainment and culture journalist but as a Black woman from East Oakland — and to be conversational and analytical at the same time — is masterful. “Shine Bright” is one of the most rewarding and deeply engaging music books to come along in years. (Disclaimer: Smith and this writer were colleagues at Billboard in 2011-2012.) — Aswad

“Sun Ra: Art on Saturn: The Album Cover Art of Sun Ra’s Saturn Label” — Sun Ra and Chris Reisman Growing up in Philadelphia, working at the legendary 3rd Street Jazz, I was privy to visits from Sun Ra, the local Afrofuturist and avant-garde bandleader, carrying boxes of hand-drawn and self-painted album sleeves for his Saturn label records. The inventiveness of handcrafted covers, in league with the kaleidoscopic free jazz and quirky parade music within each sleeve, is what makes Chris Reisman’s colorful catalog so awesome. Like finding art aficionados clinging to their Banksys, hunting down Ra collectors with pieces of Saturn as their own is as much fun as seeing the tribal cartoon cover art (executed by Sun or whoever happened into the communal Ra House in Philly) and listening to the merry, experimental music. Editor-writer Reisman, Ra archaeological excavator Irwin Chusid, and fellow scholars John Corbett and Glenn Jones write about the “outsider” aesthetic of Ra’s album art and music within each sleeve, and pen playful essays about their hero. With that, “Sun Ra: Art on Saturn” is a true treasure, a jazzbo’s necessity and a joy to behold. — Amorosi

“Charlie’s Good Tonight: The Authorized Biography of Charlie Watts” — Paul Sexton For longtime followers of the Rolling Stones, the concept of a Charlie Watts biography is almost comical: Unlike the band’s frontline, he doggedly avoided the spotlight, hated interviews and was renowned for short, terse comments even to his friends — combined with the vast number of books about the band, it’s not exactly ideal biographical fodder. But Sexton has been writing about the Stones for decades and had a solid relationship with Watts, who died last year at 80, and here manages to keep the spotlight on a man who steadfastly avoided it, focusing on his near-peerless musicianship, his love of home and family, his obsessive fashion sense (he even designed a fabric pattern) and collections of everything from horses to American Civil War regalia, and of course his retiring but extremely gentlemanly personality. — Aswad

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2022 in Review: The Best Music Books of the Year

For the second part, we put on our reading glasses and dug into the year’s best books for fans of classic rock and related music. The first segment of our survey is devoted to memoirs and biographies (arranged alphabetically by subject), including important new books on (or by) Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Bono, Eagles , Doobie Brothers, Charlie Watts and others. The second part is a guide to new books on various music-related topics, arranged by title. And then, at the end, we’ve listed other assorted new releases of 2022 that may interest you.

There are no rankings for these titles because they’re all worthy.

Click on the links in the titles for more information on a specific book. All of these titles are available as physical books; many are also downloadable digitally.

Bios, Memoirs and Artist-Related (Alphabetical by Subject Name)

Related: What were the best music books of 2021?

The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1: 1969-73 —by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair Set against the backdrop of the Beatles splintering over both business and creative issues, the book covers a period in which McCartney recreated himself, both as a man and as a musician. Says the book announcement: “This is an in-depth and revealing exploration of his creative life beyond the Beatles—featuring hundreds of interviews with fellow musicians, tour managers, recording engineers, producers, filmmakers, and more.”

Non-Artist-Related (Alphabetical by Title)

And Don’t Forget These (Alphabetical by Author)…

New Highway: Selected Lyrics, Poems, Prose, Essays, Eulogies and Blues —by Dave Alvin This anthology of writings by the celebrated Americana pioneer is a companion piece to his considerable musical output, and presents a cross-section of his work.

Music + Revolution: Greenwich Village in the 1960s —by Richard Barone Written by the frontman of the Bongos, the book comprehensively chronicles the rise of folk music, and then rock, in downtown New York City at the time of Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, the Lovin’ Spoonful and others

The book’s cover photo was taken by Eric Swayne

Pattie Boyd: My Life in Pictures —by Pattie Boyd A visual trove of photographs, letters, diaries and more from the \fashion model, photographer and wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton.

Confessions—Stories to Rock Your Soul —by Nadine Condon Thirty years working with rock music legends like Jefferson Starship culminated in Nadine’s Wild Weekend, a four-day music festival in San Francisco. Why then, did Nadine, the “Godmother of Rock,” leave the exciting music business to pursue an anonymous career in hospice?

The Hag: The Life, Times, and Music of Merle Haggard —by Marc Eliot The bio of the country great is augmented by deep research, including over 100 new interviews, plus sharp detail and ample anecdotal material.

Rock’s in My Head —by Art Fein Journalist, producer, record company staffer, TV host and more, Art Fein draws on 10,000 pages of a journal he began keeping in the early 1970s, chronicling his rock ’n’ roll adventures.

The Who: Concert Memories from the Classic Years, 1964-1976 —by Edoardo Genzolini Not another bio, but rather the reflections of the band’s fans. “The reader will be thrown into untold stories, hundreds of previously unpublished photographs, and uncirculated recordings clarifying the misinformation, myths, and legends,” says the advertising copy.

Arrow Through the Heart: The Biography of Andy Gibb —by Matthew Hild The first bio of the late younger brother of the Bee Gees “draws upon extensive research, rare archival interviews with Andy Gibb and members of his family, and interviews conducted by the author with nearly 50 of Andy’s friends and associates.”

The Lives of Brian: A Memoir —by Brian Johnson The memoir follows the usual arc—growing up in a small town, starting his own band—and then goes into hyperdrive as the author ultimately replaces Bon Scott, the lead singer of one of the world biggest rock acts, AC/DC.

Nightfly: The Life of Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen —by Peter Jones New bio of one-half of the acclaimed Steely Dan, including his solo career.

(Photo © Elliott Landy. Used with permission)

Photographs of Janis Joplin On the Road & On Stage —by Elliott Landy The 196-page book features iconic images of the music legend as well as 100 never-before-published photos, all from the acclaimed photographer. The photographs are accompanied by Joplin’s candid thoughts taken from conversations and interviews.

God Only Knows: The Story of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys and the California Myth —by David Leaf This substantial update of the 1978 bio is an intimate look at Wilson’s life and career, told through the eyes of those who were there.

The Rolling Stones 1972 50th Anniversary Edition —by Jim Marshall The collection presents Jim Marshall’s images as they were meant to be seen: at a larger size and in the rich, high-contrast tones photographer he favored. The original content is enhanced with never-before-seen proof sheets and two new essays by photographer and film director Anton Corbijn and Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe.

Mirror in the Sky: The Life and Music of Stevie Nicks —by Simon Morrison The book “examines Stevie Nicks as a singer and songwriter before and beyond her career with Fleetwood Mac, from the Arizona landscape of her childhood to the strobe-lit Night of 1000 Stevies celebrations.”

Bowie at 75 —by Martin Popoff The author examines David Bowie’s life through 75 significant career achievements and life events, including all 27 studio albums.

Goodnight Boogie—A Tale of Guns, Wolves & The Blues of Hound Dog Taylor —by Matt Rogers The first in-depth biographical study of the Blues Hall of Famer, whose life was as compelling as his music.

Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands —by Linda Ronstadt and Lawrence Downes In this sequel to her memoir, the singer “evokes the magical panorama of the high desert, a landscape etched by sunlight and carved by wind, offering a personal tour built around meals and memories of the place where she came of age.”

For the Records—Close Encounters With Pop Music —by Gene Sculatti One of the nation’s first rock critics recounts his experiences with the music that has moved him, from early childhood up through the past year, illuminated by personal recollections and cultural observations.

Gary Moore: The Official Biography —by Harry Shapiro Through extensive and revealing interviews with family members, friends and fellow musicians, biographer Harry Shapiro takes readers right to the heart of the guitarist’s life and career.

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4 Comments so far

Man, that’s a LOT of cool books. I would have liked a bit more from the Arista book. But it was cool nonetheless.

I hope no one here bought the “signed” Dylan book. Ironic that another 60s icon turned into the very thing that a lot of artists from that era raged against.

It takes a lot to laugh . . .

Check out BABYSITTING A BAND ON THE ROCKS! A wonderful insider view into the craziness of the late 70s/early 80s classic rock concert world. On Amazon and all other online booksellers.

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The Best Music Books of 2022 (So Far)

Whether you want to understand the social structures that shaped one of the best MCs, or the addiction that's haunted so many performers—or if you just want to celebrate the women who've shaped popular culture—there’s a book for that.

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There’s been some solid music released this year . Spitters like Cordae, the Dreamville squad, Benny The Butcher, Nas, Pusha T, Vince Staples, Earl Sweatshirt, and many others have released standout projects, keeping the bar high. Yes, we love examining, twisting and breaking down lyrics, beat selection, and even album artwork. But we're also music history nerds. We love to read books written by or about our favorite artists.

Lucky for us, this year has also brought about fun and informative reads . Whether you want to understand the social structures that shaped one of the best MCs to ever handle a microphone, or the addiction that's haunted so many vocalists—or if you just want to celebrate the women who've shaped popular culture—there’s a book for that. Below, we compiled the best music books of 2022, so far.

It Was All a Dream: Biggie and the World That Made Him

Journalist Justin Tinsley is the latest documentarian to add to the tree of life after the death of The Notorious B.I.G. Back in May, Tinsely unveiled a well-researched biography of the late-wordsmith and hip-hop legend. Using interviews with those close to Biggie, Tinsely goes an extra mile by examining the sociological terrain like poor schools, Ronald Reagan, and the War on Drugs.

Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm

J Dilla is probably your favorite producer’s favorite producer. Dan Charnas, author of The Big Payback , shines a well-deserved light on Dilla’s life and musical career with Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla . Charnas stitches together cultural history, musicology, and biology to chronicle Dilla’s journey from his childhood in Detroit to his rise as a Grammy-nominated producer to the rare blood disease that caused his untimely death.

Roc Lit 101 Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop

Veteran journalist Danyel Smith adds another line to her resume—not to mention also to the fabric of American culture—with the recent release of Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop, which delves into the achievements of Black women in music. Mixing cultural history, criticism, and memoir, you'll be hard pressed to find a read as fun or informative on the subject as this.

Enter the Blue

For readers who appreciate a dive into fiction, Enter the Blue should find a spot on your bookshelf. In a search to save her teacher who lay comatose after collapsing during a performance, Jessie Choi finds herself meeting jazz legends, learning about the storied history of Blue Note Records—a jazz record label created by Alfred Lion in 1939—and, along the way, she's forced to face her deepest fears.

DJ Screw: A Life in Slow Revolution (American Music Series)

DJ Screw single handedly created a hip-hop culture in Houston. Screw’s invention has inspired superstars like Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and A$AP Rocky. And via interviews from family, friends, and Chopped and Screwed nerds, he finally gets his due.

Most Dope: The Extraordinary Life of Mac Miller

Most Dope works as a reminder of Mac’s passion for hip-hop and his gifts as a MC. But the new book from music journalist Paul Cantor absolutely soars as a cautionary tale about drug addiction.

Didn't We Almost Have It All: In Defense of Whitney Houston

Gerrick Kennedy dives into the life of one of the all time great vocalists, Whitney Houston, examining a journey rife with addiction, abuse, and fame. It's hardly a story untold at this point, but for fans of Houston it'll fit nicely on the shelf.

Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story, in Music Lessons

In Jermey Denk’s stirring new memoir, the genius-piano player details his own coming of age. Using music as a metaphor, Denk unveils universal truths about life, exploring his own piano studies, Julliard PhD, relationships, and sexual identity through the lens of diligent practice.

Ugly Beauty: Jazz in the 21st Century (Culture, Society & Politics)

Here, Phil Freeman answers probing questions like, Has streaming lessened the value of music? What meaningful musical traditions are left to explore? Are there any sounds that are truly off-limits? For those who find their minds mulling over similar queries, your first stop ought to be here.

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15 of the best music books of 2022, including Nick Cave and Brian Johnson 

15 of the best music books of 2022, including Nick Cave and Brian Johnson

Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure, Adelle Stripe and Lias Saoudi 

At some point in the last decade, it felt like the divisive Fat White Family, were the next big thing in music. And then suddenly they weren’t. Saoudi was the frontman of the London-based misfits, and writes a curious memoir with Stripe — who describes them as “a drug band with a rock problem” — that regularly feels like too much information but also completely, painfully honest.

Paper Cuts: How I Destroyed the British Music Press and Other Misadventures, Ted Kessler

Kessler was editor of Q magazine when the lights were turned off in summer 2020. It felt like a full stop for the music press — Kessler had seen it all. And written about a lot of it too. He charts his own personal, familial journey alongside increasingly wild tales in the offices of the NME and the like. He takes us to Cuba with Shaun Ryder and Bez’s post-Happy Mondays band Black Grape, tells us how Radiohead bore a grudge over a cover feature that never was (in an era when an NME cover was everything), and peppers in tales of Paul Weller and Mark E Smith.

This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music, edited by Sinéad Gleeson and Kim Gordon

Sonic Youth founding member Gordon comes together with Irish writer Gleeson for a collection about the female experience in and out of music, with contributions from the likes of Anne Enright, Leslie Jamison, and Maggie Nelson. Gleeson herself writes about Moog synthesisers and ‘The Genius of Wendy Carlos’, who composed the music for the Shining, but is now rarely spotted out and about. “The price of being an artist who connects with so many is an audience’s desire for ownership; for visibility and engagement, which they have no right to,” writes Gleeson.

Faith, Hope and Carnage, Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan 

Cave’s teenage son Arthur died in 2015 and he has wrestled with its aftermath ever since. Faith, Hope and Carnage is his coming to terms with it, trying to make sense of life itself, via a series of interviews (over 40 hours’ worth) with O’Hagan, a Guardian journalist. Cave says his audience saved him, and as he ruminates on art, music, and creativity, he offers something all-encompassing. “The world is enlivened by the creative process. It enhances the way I see things and makes the world more sufficient, or even abundant,” says Cave. The book was completed before another son, 31-year-old Jethro, died in May 2022, which O’Hagan talks about in the aftermath. Devastating.

Exit Stage Left: The Curious Afterlife of Pop Stars, Nick Duerden 

What happens to the stars we once idolised, and the one-hit wonder who could’ve been the next big thing, after their moment in the spotlight has dimmed? Duerden talks to a cast that includes Happy Mondays, Robbie Williams, Róisín Murphy, Franz Ferdinand, Bob Geldof, David Gray, and Snow Patrol, to find out more. For the late 90s, early 00s RnB group Damage, their rise was put to one side when another boyband with seemingly better commercial appeal was ‘discovered’: Westlife. Paul Cattermole, formerly of S Club 7, says all acts in pop music plateau at some point. “You will be tested on that plateau. The question is: Do you have the temerity to bust through it?” 

The Road to Riverdance, Bill Whelan 

The problem with a book titled like this is that once you reach your destination, Riverdance, it proves all too fleeting. Whelan, who composed that irrepressible anthem and the music for the subsequent world-conquering show, spends only 30 pages or so on Riverdance. The road to it begins in working-class Limerick in the middle of the 20th century as Whelan chronicles his life. It’s a story of a changing Ireland as much as it is a music book, but tales of Kate Bush, Van Morrisson (“you could feel the energy radiating from his squat Belfast frame”), and of course Michael Flatley and Jean Butler more than suffice.

A Likely Lad, Pete Doherty

“I was so desperate to make fantasy real that performance was the only way,” says Doherty in this authorised biography with Simon Spence, who tells us that the Libertines frontman has a remarkable recall — that’s lucky for the reader. Written after some 60 hours of interviews, Doherty talks of trying to escape from the Priory with a Libertines Glastonbury set looming, time in Pentonville Prison, being Kate Moss’ new ‘junkie lover’, and his brief run-ins with Amy Winehouse (“I could see how fragile she was”).

Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids? An Indie Odyssey, Nige Tassell 

A simpler time, NME readers in 1986 could send away for a cassette that would help define a certain jangly 80s indie sound, which actually hamstrung many of the featured acts when Madchester and rave hit a couple of years later. Impossibly romanticised since, C86 is to music nostalgia what Italia ‘90 is to football. Tassell has tracked down all 22 acts who featured on the tape, from Primal Scream to Stump. The latter’s drummer Rob McKahey says they were a “very lazy band” and that their recording of Buffalo was “atrocious. I don’t know how it was even allowed on there.”

Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, Bono 

Perhaps the best thing you can say about Bono’s autobiography is that it challenges preconceptions. Of course it’s earnest, and with 40 chapters in over 550 pages, it’s thorough. From his parents to his wife (“I had to accept that she could never be known”) to his bandmates, he’s tender, touching on religion and faith and admitting to the regular criticisms: “I can be over-the-top in standing up for what I believe in, how very wearying that must be.”

The Lives of Brian, Brian Johnson

Overfamiliar with the working men’s clubs in northern England in the 1970s, plying his trade with a variety of acts, Johnson got a call from AC/DC to audition to replace their late singer, Bon Scott. Then they released Back in Black and were one of the biggest bands in the world. Johnson’s autobiography, which he apparently wrote freehand, charts a wild rock n roll life. He left the band relatively recently due to hearing loss but soon make a raucous return in 2020. What a story.

Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer: The Guitarist who Changed the Sound of American Music, Philip Watson

The Cork-based author says the jazz musician’s work is like a journey through the landscape of the American west: Mythic, expansive, cinematic, and dreamlike. Frisell was in thrall to the greats, but this biography, with access to friends, family, and associates, is a rolodex of encounters with people from Chet Baker to Ginger Baker to Norah Jones. What sets it apart are the listening sessions, where the likes of Paul Simon, Martin Hayes and the late Dennis Cahill, and Justin ‘Bon Iver’ Vernon respond to Frisell’s work.

The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond, Chris Blackwell 

Founder of Island Records, home to the likes of Bob Marley, Grace Jones, Nick Drake, and U2, to name but a few, Blackwell has a great story to tell. Son of an Irish Guards officer and a Jamaican heiress (fascinating in itself), he grew up on the Caribbean island and helped introduce the Wailers to the masses. But despite the successes, he admits to misses too — he’s turned down the likes of the “insipid” Elton John, Pink Floyd, and Madonna.

Crazy Dreams, Paul Brady 

Like Whelan’s memoir, Brady’s story begins in an Ireland of a very different era. Having taught himself how to play guitar, he achieved relative success with the Johnstons ballad group, later joining Planxty and proving a hard worker. His encounters with a vast array of musicians are catnip — Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Carole King, and Tina Turner all feature — while Bono also stars. “I am not proud of being one of those at the time who were mistakenly convinced U2 would never happen,” Brady writes.

Let's Do It: The Birth of Pop,  Bob Stanley 

A prequel to Stanley’s absorbing story of modern pop Yeah Yeah Yeah, Let's Do It aims to tell the definitive story of the birth of pop itself, going back to the invention of the 78rpm record. Some 650 pages long, Stanley has delved into the archives of the British Library and gives an account of “the entertainment industry at a time, between the American Civil War and the beginning of a civil rights movement, when racism was not only endemic but overt”. One to impress your friends with.

Why Patti Smith Matters, Caryn Rose

Smith herself released a new book recently, A Book of Days  — over 365 images charting her aesthetic and inspired by her Instagram page — but it is Rose’s short biography (or a book about Smith’s work, because it is her work that matters, explains the author) that we’ll plump for here. Rose calls Smith a hero, a goddess, a field marshal, a saint. You will be left in no doubt about her oeuvre afterwards.

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