History & Criticism

In this intimate and open account—nothing like any rock-and-roll memoir you’ve ever read—Alex Van Halen shares his personal story of family, friendship, music and brotherly love in a remarkable tribute to his beloved brother and band mate.

David Byrne’s incisive and enthusiastic look at the musical art form, from its very inceptions to the influences that shape it, whether acoustical, economic, social, or technological, is now updated with a new chapter on digital curation.

An epic achievement and a huge delight, the entire history of popular music over the past 50 years refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance music, and pop....

Joel Selvin tells the definitive story of the Rolling Stones' infamous Altamont concert in San Francisco, the disastrous historic event that marked the end of the idealistic 1960s....

After more than two decades of research and travels, Christophe Lebold, who befriended the poet and spent time with him in Los Angeles, delivers a stimulating analysis of Cohen’s life and art.

On the evening of July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan took the stage at Newport Folk Festival, backed by an electric band, and roared into his new rock hit, "Like a Rolling Stone"....

A companion to the #1 music podcast on Spotify, this book takes listeners through the greatest hits that define a weirdly undefinable decade....

From 1965 to 1995, the Grateful Dead flourished as one of the most beloved, unusual, and accomplished musical entities to ever grace American culture....

A fascinating behind-the-scenes account of the making of Bruce Springsteen’s ground-breaking album, Born to Run.

From the author of the definitive biography of Frank Sinatra, the story of three towering artists—Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans—and how they came together to create the most iconic jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue.

An unsparing investigation into Spotify’s origins and influence on music, weaving unprecedented reporting with incisive cultural criticism, illuminating how streaming is reshaping music for listeners and artists alike.

An audiobook reflecting on the meaning of the revolutionary band Nirvana, their leader Kurt Cobain, and the band's personal, musical and cultural contexts in the '90s.

Bestselling authors Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour tell the no-holds-barred history of the iconic music festival.

Guitar sleuth and music-history detective Deke Dickerson tells the true tales behind 48 rare-guitar and amplifier finds that will make any player or collector green with envy.

Fleetwood Mac's classic 1977 Rumours album topped the Billboard 200 for 31 weeks and won the Album of the Year Grammy....

Legendary rock journalist Mick Wall delivers definitive insight into America's bestselling band of all time, exploring their meteoric rise to fame and the hedonistic days of the '70s music scene in LA, when American music was taking over the world....

Tune In is the first volume of All These Years - a highly-anticipated, groundbreaking biographical trilogy....

Ted Gioia's History of Jazz has been universally hailed as a classic - acclaimed by jazz critics and fans around the world....

A stunning, in-depth look at the power and poetry of one of the most consequential rappers of our time....

Revised and updated with new material for fans of the band and this beloved rock classic, Hammer of the Gods is the gold-standard biography of the band Led Zeppelin.

I Want My MTV tells the story of the first decade of MTV, the golden era when MTV's programming was all videos, all the time, and kids watched religiously to see their favorite bands....

Without Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen might not be who he is today. The natural follow-up to Springsteen’s hugely successful album The River should have been the hit-packed Born in the U.S.A....

This is the never-before-told story of the musical revolution that happened right under the nose of the Reagan '80s - when a small but sprawling network of bands, labels, fanzines, radio stations, and other subversives reenergized American rock....

The follow-up to The McCartney Legacy, Volume 1, the most complete work on the life and work of Paul McCartney ever published. Volume 2 continues to paint the portrait of one of the world’s greatest musicians, his work post-Beatles, and his life from 1974 to 1980.

An energetic and explosive oral history examining emo’s pop culture takeover from 1999-2008, featuring exclusive interviews with My Chemical Romance’s Mikey Way and Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz and Patrick Stump....

Cazzu es una de las traperas más importantes de Latinoamérica. No es casual que la llamen La Jefa. No es casual que su perreo moleste a muchos, interpele a tantas, y no deje indiferente a nadie. Durante años, Cazzu se enfrentó a una pregunta: “¿Cómo se siente tener éxito en un género musical tan machista?”. Y como le ocurre a casi cualquier mujer virtuosa y con notoriedad, le pidieron que diera explicaciones. Pero ¿por qué se lo preguntaban más a ella que a los hombres? Y, sobre todo, ¿es realmente machista el reggaetón?

He was the King of Rockabilly, and one of rock and roll's true pioneers. A groundbreaking guitarist, singer, and songwriter, Carl Perkins inspired countless musicians in country, rock, and pop music. Now acclaimed music writer Jeff Apter recounts Carl Perkins's remarkable life story—the triumphs, tragedies, and career highlights that include some of the most pivotal moments in music history.

Fascinating, far-reaching, and definitive, THE LAST GREAT DREAM is the ultimate guide to a generation-defining countercultural movement, an Underground 101 course for newcomers and aficionados alike.

Joe Bonomo strikes a three-chord essay on the power of adolescence, the durability of rock & roll fandom, and the transformative properties of memory. Why does Highway To Hell matter to anyone beyond non-ironic teenagers? Blending interviews, analysis, and memoir with a fan's perspective, Highway To Hell dramatizes and celebrates a timeless album that one critic said makes "disaster sound like the best fun in the world."

Though Nevermind was Nirvana's most commercially successful album, and the record that broke them—and the grunge phenomenon—internationally, In Utero has increasingly become regarded as the band's best album, both by the critics and the band members themselves. Instead of sticking to the "grunge pop" formula that made Nevermind so palatable to the mainstream, Nirvana chose instead to challenge their audience, producing an album that the band's creative force, Kurt Cobain, said truly matched his vision of what he had always wanted his band to sound like.

By 1976, Elton John was the best-selling recording artist and the highest-grossing touring act in the world. With seven #1 albums in a row and a reputation as a riveting piano-pounding performer, the former Reggie Dwight had gone with dazzling speed from the London suburbs to the pinnacles of rock stardom, his songs never leaving the charts, his sold-out shows packed with adoring fans. Then he released Blue Moves, and it all came crashing down.

Jonathan Lethem treats Fear of Music (the third album by the Talking Heads, and the first produced by Brian Eno) as a masterpiece—edgy, paranoid, funky, addictive, rhythmic, repetitive, spooky, and fun. He scratches obsessively at the album's songs, guitars, rhythms, lyrics, packaging, downtown origins, and legacy, showing how Fear of Music hints at the directions (positive and negative) the band would take in the future.

Through a series of interviews with a wide range of people connected to Pink Floyd in their earliest days (including Nick Mason, Peter Jenner, Jenny Fabian, Storm Thorgerson, Duggie Fields and Peter Whitehead), John Cavanagh paints a vivid picture of how this remarkable debut album was created. He brings to life the stories behind each track, as well as Pink Floyd's groundbreaking live performances of the time.

Breaking the global record for streams in a single day, nearly 10 million people around the world tuned in to hear Kendrick Lamar’s sophomore album in the hours after its release. To Pimp a Butterfly was widely hailed as an instant classic, garnering laudatory album reviews, many awards, and even a canonized place in Harvard’s W. E. B. Du Bois archive. Why did this strangely compelling record stimulate the emotions and imaginations of listeners?

In The Master of Drums, biographer Elizabeth J. Rosenthal crafts a celebratory, honest, and exhaustively researched portrait of a twentieth-century music legend. When he died, Gene Krupa may have left behind a world of grieving friends, colleagues, fans, students, and progeny, but as The Master of Drums proves, his dynamic musical and cultural influences live on.

In this wickedly entertaining and thoroughly informed homage to one of rock music's towering pinnacles, Erik Davis investigates the magic—black or otherwise—that surrounds this album. Carefully peeling the layers from each song, Davis reveals their dark and often mystical roots—and leaves the listener to decide whether [FOUR SYMBOLS] is some form of occult induction or just an inspired, brilliantly played rock album.

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.

Seemingly granted ‘classic album’ status within days of its release in 1997, OK Computer transformed Radiohead from a highly promising rock act into The Most Important Band in the World – a label the band has been burdened by (and has fooled around with) ever since. Through close musical analysis of each song, Dai Griffiths explores the themes and ideas that have made this album resonate so deeply with its audience, and argues that OK Computer is one of the most successfully realized CD albums so far created.

Of all the recordings to emerge from the Athens-via-Denver collective called Elephant 6, Neutral Milk Hotel’s second album is the one that has worked its way under the most skins. Magnet magazine named it the best album of the 1990s, and Creative Loafing recently devoted a cover story to one fan’s quest to understand why band leader Jeff Mangum dropped out of sight soon after Aeroplane’s release.

In this unique collection, Literary Witches co-creator Katy Horan unearths the true and fictional stories behind twenty traditional murder ballads, exploring the beauty and horror of the art form through stories, lyrics, and original interpretations. The audiobook includes covers of various folk songs by Okkervil River’s Will Sheff, Marissa Nadler, and Lizzie No.

A decade and a half ago, Illmatic launched one of the most storied careers in hip hop, and cemented New York’s place as the genre’s epicenter. With this in-depth look at the record, Matthew Gasteier explores the competing themes that run through Nas’s masterpiece and finds a compelling journey into adulthood.

In the 36 years since its release, Sell Out, though still not the best selling release in The Who’s catalog, has been embraced by a growing number of fans who regard it as the band’s best work, one of the few recordings of the late 1960s that best represents the ambitious aesthetic possibilities of the concept album without becoming mired in a bog of smug, self-aggrandizing, high art aspirations. Sell Out, powerfully and ecstatically, articulates the nexus of pop music and pop culture.

The question of control for Black women is a costly one. From 1986 onwards, the trajectory of Janet Jackson’s career can be summed up in her desire for control. Control for Janet was never simply just about her desire for economic and creative control over her career but was, rather, an existential question about the desire to control and be in control over her bodily integrity as a Black woman.

The recording sessions for Let It Be actually began as rehearsals for a proposed return to live stage work for the Beatles, to be inaugurated in a concert at a Roman amphitheater in Tunisia. In this thoroughly researched book, Steve Matteo delves deep into the complex history of these sessions.

Despite its polarizing reception from critics at the time of its release, Sandinista! is often considered one of the greatest albums of all time. Nevertheless, critics and fans have spent over 40 years debating whether the album would be better as a 12-track LP. This book entertains that idea and considers what is lost or gained in the process.

This book celebrates Madvillainy as a representation of two genius musical minds melding to form one revered supervillain. A product of circumstance, the album came together soon after MF DOOM's resurgence and Madlib's reluctant return from avant-garde jazz to hip-hop.

Here, Rob Trucks talks to Lindsey Buckingham, as well as members of Animal Collective, Camper Van Beethoven, the New Pornographers, Wolf Parade, and the USC Trojan marching band in order to chart both the story and the impact of an album born of personal obsession and a stubborn unwillingness to compromise.

This title offers a superb investigation of what is arguably Johnny Cash's greatest album, focusing on his enduring mythology. When Johnny Cash signed to Rick Rubin's record label in 1993, he was a country music legend who, like his fellow Highwaymen Willie, Waylon and Kris, remained a fondly regarded yet completely marginalized Nashville figure, unheard on the radio and unseen on the charts. Cash's odyssey from oldies act to folk hero pivots on his first American Recordings album, a document of almost unbearable solitude and directness.

Mouse Tracks: The Story of Walt Disney Records chronicles for the first time the fifty-year history of the Disney recording companies launched by Walt Disney and Roy Disney in the mid-1950s, when Disneyland Park, Davy Crockett, and the Mickey Mouse Club were taking the world by storm. The book provides a perspective on all-time Disney favorites and features anecdotes, reminiscences, and biographies of the artists who brought Disney magic to audio.

From a Los Angeles hospital bed, equipped with little more than a laptop and a stack of records, James “J Dilla” Yancey crafted a set of tracks that would forever change the way beatmakers viewed their artform. The songs on Donuts are not hip hop music as “hip hop music” is typically defined; they careen and crash into each other, in one moment noisy and abrasive, gorgeous and heartbreaking the next.