{"id":1255543,"date":"2017-11-21T19:41:34","date_gmt":"2017-11-21T16:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1255543"},"modified":"2017-11-21T19:41:34","modified_gmt":"2017-11-21T16:41:34","slug":"pitchforks-16-favorite-music-books-of-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1255543","title":{"rendered":"Pitchfork\u2019s 16 Favorite Music Books of 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lists & Guides<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Pitchfork\u2019s 16 Favorite Music Books of 2017<\/h1>\n
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What we were reading\u2014from pioneers of noise, thrash, and trap in their own words, to critics wrestling with culture as a sign o\u2019 the times<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Pitchfork<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Graphic by Jessica Viscius<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Several years ago, Pitchfork compiled a list of our 60 favorite music books of all time. It had to be \u201cfavorite\u201d because there are so many books, covering so many different aspects of music, that singling out any 10 or 25 or 50 as \u201cbest\u201d seemed ludicrous. In 2017, we found ourselves in a similar position: In a year particularly packed with great books on an array of musical topics, how were we to pick the authoritative, capital-b Best? So we didn\u2019t. Instead we asked our staff and books contributors to make a case for their favorite music\u00a0book of the year.<\/p>\n

The answers we got ranged from a critical appraisal of sex in popular music, a history of the Walkman, a dissection of \u201cpeak rock stardom,\u201d juicy gossip from New York\u2019s early-2000s rock scene, pioneers of noise, thrash, and trap in their own words, and influential punks in the words of one of Pitchfork\u2019s own. (Full disclosure: Other authors on this list have written for Pitchfork as well.) Now, if you need us over the holidays, we\u2019ll be holed up reading.<\/p>\n

(All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.)<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"The<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The Force of Listening<\/em><\/h2>\n
By Lucia Farinati and Claudia Firth<\/div>\n

Hearing, Pauline Oliveros wrote, is involuntary. Listening is voluntary, and it produces culture. The late sound artist is one of several thinkers whose writings are listened to attentively, and expanded upon, in this fascinating short book by the London-based researchers Lucia Farinati and Claudia Firth. The Force of Listening<\/em> ruminates on the meaning and impact of listening, in a context that\u2019s near and dear to any Trump-fearing music obsessive: the space where art and activism intermingle. As The Wire<\/em>\u2019s reviewer put it, prompting me to buy the book: \u201cWhat are the politics of listening?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Force of Listening<\/em> doesn\u2019t state the answer to this question so much as embody it. It is arranged as a \u201cfree montage\u201d of interviews with artists, activists, and scholars; along with their own conversations, and the wisdom of Oliveros, Farinati and Firth draw on the etymology of the word \u201clisten\u201d as well as the the ideas of Hannah Arendt and 1970s feminist groups, plus the lessons of the Occupy movement. Though the results can be dense and academic, they\u2019re also bracing. Listening, the authors suggest, can be as powerful as speaking, and not only through words. They write, \u201cWe might need to allow for silences and hear things that are not necessarily spoken, spaces and silences between and beyond speech.\u201d I\u2019m still listening, which is to say, I\u2019m trying not to talk so much. \u2013Marc Hogan<\/p>\n

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The Raincoats<\/em>\u00a033 \u2153<\/h2>\n
By Jenn Pelly<\/div>\n

It\u2019s a good thing (Pitchfork editor) Jenn Pelly\u2019s 33 \u2153 book about the Raincoats\u2019 first album is so compact, because after tearing through it in 48 hours, I carried it around with me for weeks. I reread passages while listening to the record on the train, in bars, and curled up in bed with a cup of tea, hearing something new every time. So many well-meaning critics have condescended to this noisily textured post-punk classic, framing it as a work of na\u00efve brilliance. For Pelly, though, \u201cEach instrument is a character, singing. The melodic base, a trickster; the scratchy violin, a dramatist. The serrated noise guitar is lawless. The wandering drums dance.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The book is a seamless hybrid of criticism and reportage; Pelly spent time with the band and visited their old haunts. But what\u2019s extraordinary is that she doesn\u2019t seem to be recounting the Raincoats\u2019 early years so much as time-traveling back to the squats of late-\u201970s London and mind-melding with each of the four very different women who came together to make this strange, enchanting music. Over the years, The Raincoats<\/em>\u00a0has become a sort of talisman for feminist punks, a document that is somehow challenging and comforting at once. Pelly doesn\u2019t just describe that effect\u2014her writing recreates it. \u2013Judy Berman<\/p>\n

Read our excerpt from<\/em> The Raincoats 33 \u2153.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Personal Stereo<\/em><\/h2>\n
By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow<\/div>\n

In 2017, having music pumped into your ears through headphones while existing in public is a thoroughly normal thing to do. But as Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow outlines in the delightful Personal Stereo<\/em>, being able to do so is a relatively recent development. Sony\u2019s 1979 launch of the Walkman not only allowed listeners to create their own non-diegetic soundtracks\u2014it supplied a fetish item for the then-ascendant caste of yuppies and sparked kids-these-days hand-wringing from everyone from the religious right to the music business itself. The Walkman, you must understand, was a loaded format.<\/p>\n

Tuhus-Dubrow\u2019s entrant in Bloomsbury\u2019s Object Lessons<\/em> series takes the reader on a brisk tour of the device\u2019s journey from holiday wishlist to history\u2019s dustbin. (I have one next to my kitchen sink; it\u2019s a later model with digital tuning and a broken volume knob that I use as a still-reliable clock.) She details how it exploded the possibilities offered by transistor radios, and how that sparked skepticism from the old guard. With the replacement of a few key nouns, those worried columns could run as head-shaking polemics about smartphones. But Tuhus-Dubrow has empathy towards these tech screeds of the past, as evidenced by a declaration towards the end of the book: \u201cIf the Walkman gave us an ideal amount of control, its successors have given us too much.\u201d Her thoughtfulness imbues this chronicle of a once-modern, now-obsolete device with a mindfulness that isn\u2019t often seen in writing about technology. \u2013Maura Johnston<\/p>\n

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\"Dreaming<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World<\/em><\/h2>\n
By Rob Sheffield<\/div>\n

You already know how you feel about the Beatles. Who needs another book about them? Dreaming the Beatles<\/em> makes you feel like a fool for even asking that question. This is the definitive Beatles book, the only one that comes close to the rush of listening to Rubber Soul<\/em> or Revolver<\/em> for the first time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Sheffield\u2014who, full disclosure, is a friend of myself and many other Pitchfork contributors\u2014is full of wildly original insights on the Fab Four themselves. (Particularly Paul. The chapter titled \u201cPaul Is a Concept By Which We Measure Our Pain\u201d is a master class in how to write about one\u2019s heroes.) But, ingeniously, he spends most of the book focusing on the fan\u2019s-eye view of the band whose audience invented pop fandom as we know it. \u201cWhen I listen to Hollywood Bowl<\/em>, I do not imagine being one of the Beatles,\u201d Sheffield writes. \u201cI fantasize about being the girl in the upper-balcony cheap seats, ripping out my hair and shrieking, tapping into a ruinous eternal gnosis that not even the boys in the band could ever know.\u201d<\/p>\n

That ecstasy is what powers Dreaming the Beatles<\/em>, and it doesn\u2019t let up when the band splits; Sheffield cares as much about the second, third, and fourth waves of Beatlemania. With this endlessly delightful glass onion of a book, you\u2019re constantly torn between racing ahead to the next chapter and rereading the one you just sped through. It\u2019s a 318-page-long \u201cyeah, yeah, yeeeeah<\/em>.\u201d \u2013Simon Vozick-Levinson<\/p>\n

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The Autobiography of Gucci Mane<\/em><\/h2>\n
By Gucci Mane with Neil Martinez-Belkin<\/div>\n

The Autobiography of Gucci Mane<\/em>, written with Neil Martinez-Belkin, is a captivating dive into the mind of Radric Davis. Across 270 pages, Gucci peels back the layers of a persona he spent over a decade crafting, breaking down his history of misdeeds and transgressions and detailing the prison stint that changed him. There are candid glimpses into sentencing hearings, private looks into public meltdowns, explanations for altercations. The book provides incredible insight into one of the most influential rappers of the last decade, detailing a volatile and fascinating life via anecdotes that range from hilarious to harrowing. There are asides about the Atlanta rap scene at large and a clear-eyed account of how Gucci helped to shape its sound and vision. The Autobiography of Gucci Mane<\/em> is a great entry point for anyone looking to see what all the hype is about, but there are plenty of tidbits for longtime fans, too. By the end, every reader will have a greater understanding of Gucci Mane, the man and the musician. \u2013Sheldon Pearce<\/p>\n

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When Genres Collide: Down Beat, Rolling Stone, and the Struggle Between Jazz and Rock<\/em><\/h2>\n
By Matt Brennan<\/div>\n

Matt Brennan\u2019s When Genres Collide<\/em> isn\u2019t just the most music-crit nerd book on this list, it\u2019s the most music-crit nerd book on any<\/em> list. But if you love learning not just about music and the lives of its creators, but also the framework in which music is discussed and understood (and I\u2019m guessing that describes many Pitchfork readers), this book is for you. In the broadest sense, Brennan\u2019s book is an overview of trends in American popular music criticism in the 20th century. Focusing on the most significant jazz publication of the century (Down Beat<\/em>) and the one that popularized rock and pop criticism in the U.S. (Rolling Stone<\/em>), Brennan digs deep to find what was valued and when, how distinctions between genres were drawn, what was held up as \u201cart music\u201d (in the 1940s, bebop; in the \u201970s, guitar-based rock) and what was dismissed as merely \u201cdance music\u201d (in the \u201940s, early R&B; in the \u201970s, disco). Decade by decade, Brennan shows how the assumptions that guide our understanding of musical quality developed, and, in a fascinating tangent, he even uncovers who may have been the first \u201cpoptimist\u201d critic: Down Beat<\/em>\u2019s first R&B columnist, the pioneering but now forgotten Ruth Cage. \u2013Mark Richardson<\/p>\n

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Good Booty:\u00a0Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music<\/em><\/h2>\n
By Ann Powers<\/div>\n

With its recent Turning the Tables series\u2014a list of 150 greatest albums by women and companion essays\u2014NPR Music has provided a substantive catalyst in our rethinking of canons. The project also feels like an extension of NPR Music critic Ann Powers\u2019 Good Booty<\/em>, an overview of pop and eroticism so monumental, it\u2019s been in the works for more than two decades and could reasonably be subtitled A People\u2019s History of American Music<\/em>. By rooting her centuries-traversing sweep through race, sex, and pop in the violence of American history, Powers \u201crecast[s] history in terms that are more inclusive, and less dominated by old ideas of artistic genius or great works.” That means extending the story of rock\u2019n\u2019roll to its groupies, casting Madonna and her fans as a story of \u201cutilitarian imagination,\u201d and highlighting the \u201cerotic desire\u201d in the teenage voices behind songs we think we know, like the Shirelles\u2019 \u201cWill You Love Me Tomorrow.\u201d Beginning with slaves who carried rhythms in their bodies because their instruments were taken away, and landing at Lemonade<\/em>, Powers offers a compellingly anti-patriarchal framework for thinking about popular music. It\u2019s a history that feels refreshingly present. \u2013Jenn Pelly<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Read our interview with Ann Powers about<\/em> Good Booty.<\/p>\n

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Jason Molina: Riding with the Ghost<\/em><\/h2>\n
By Erin Osmon<\/div>\n

In her lovingly rendered biography of Jason Molina, the songwriter behind the mystic alt-country projects Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co., Erin Osmon never once positions her subject\u2019s untimely death from alcoholism-related illness as the inevitable conclusion to a lifetime of writing sad songs. Many of Molina\u2019s songs are mournful, but Osmon digs beneath the weary vocals and wounded slide guitars to uncover the spark of hope nestled within each one. That\u2019s how Molina saw them, anyway: hopeful. Even in his bleakest recordings, he never once succumbed to fatalism. Osmon finds that Molina also manifested an optimism about humanity in his personal life, funneling it into his collaborative, spontaneous artistic process.<\/p>\n

Through interviews with his friends, his bandmates, and his widow, Osmon paints Molina in a light rarely cast by his music alone. The anecdotes she relays expose his good-humored side: his first date with the woman he\u2019d marry was a trip to the grocery store for cream soda, and the couple later named their cat after a typo Molina had made writing an email on a European keyboard. Osmon also unearths the roots of Molina\u2019s signature imagery\u2014the crosses, moons, and animals that populated his lyrics and his homemade album art. Even in its harrowing final chapters about Molina\u2019s illness and death, Riding with the Ghost<\/em> avoids using the tropes of artistic tragedy as a crutch. Instead, it allows the details of Molina\u2019s life to emerge without embellishment or sentimentality, as stark and poignant as one of his songs. \u2013Sasha Geffen<\/p>\n

Read our excerpt from<\/em> Jason Molina: Riding with the Ghost.<\/p>\n

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They Can\u2019t Kill Us Until They Kill Us<\/em><\/h2>\n
By Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib<\/div>\n

We\u2019ve arrived at a point in time\u00a0when debates about pop culture and debates about identity politics are inexorably connected. That is what makes Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib\u2019s They Can\u2019t Kill Us Until They Kill Us<\/em>, just one of two books the Ohio poet put out this year, essential. Whether he\u2019s exploring the charisma of Chance the Rapper, describing the appeal of the Afropunk festival, or tracing his long relationship with the music of My Chemical Romance, Willis-Abdurraqib unites familiar sounds with fresh observations about music and the state of contemporary America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Willis-Abdurraqib has a poet\u2019s eye for innovations in form, including an experimentally-structured meditation on Whitney Houston and vignettes about the life of Marvin Gaye, which punctuate the book. As part of an essay about Twenty One Pilots, Willis-Abdurraqib riffs on an earlier piece by the legendary music writer Lester Bangs, paying homage to his over-the-top style but placing it in a different context. What Bangs and Willis-Abdurraqib share are an attention to small societal details and a penchant for incisive critiques; both make They Can\u2019t Kill Us Until They Kill Us<\/em> essential, gripping reading. \u2013Tobias Carroll<\/p>\n

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The Most Beautiful: My Life\u00a0with Prince<\/em><\/h2>\n
By Mayte Garcia<\/div>\n

The Most Beautiful: My Life\u00a0with Prince<\/em>\u2014written by Prince\u2019s first wife, Mayte Garcia\u2014is memoir as meditation: a thoughtful, reverent retelling of their relationship, from the moment the two first met until Prince passed away in 2016. This book is not some cheap, supermarket celebrity tell-all, but rather a dignified (and, at times, irreverent and hilarious) recounting of a love story. Garcia accomplishes bringing the reader right into the heart of Paisley Park, all purple paint and cloud ceilings and doves living in the atrium.<\/p>\n

Garcia is also funny and sarcastic, and her stories are highly readable: There\u2019s a good balance of mystical, inscrutable Prince-ness, as well as frank accounts of the birth and loss of their son, Amiir, and the impact of their deep grief on their relationship. Garcia treads a very careful line between detail and discretion, and the result is enough of the former to keep you enthralled, but doesn\u2019t veer into any kind of prurient over-sharing that would make a reader feel guiltily voyeuristic. Those books will undoubtedly show up at some point, but for now, Prince fans can enjoy indulging in The Most Beautiful<\/em>. \u2013Caryn Rose<\/p>\n

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Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars<\/em><\/h2>\n
By David Hepworth<\/div>\n

The founder, editor, and\/or publisher of just about every British rock magazine worth reading over the past 40 years (Smash Hits<\/em>, Q<\/em>, Mojo<\/em>, The Word<\/em>), David Hepworth\u2019s fourth book is very likely his testament. With deep knowledge and deceptively easy style, Uncommon People<\/em> examines 40 rock stars at crucial historical junctures\u2014less for them individually (though that too) than for the actual condition of rock stardom. He takes devastating stock of Led Zeppelin\u2019s 1979 Knebworth concert, as their patented rock-god moves faltered in the teeth of punk: \u201cIn the era of the Jam and Stranglers, this looked almost like historical reenactment.\u201d He notes how solo folk singer Bob Dylan, playing his first New York dates in 1961, could go unfettered by bandmates who \u201cwould never have let him get away with inventing himself and also inventing a life in which he could star.\u201d And as for the Beatles\u2019 announcement of Apple Corps on \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d in 1968, Hepworth argues that this signaled the deeper split between Paul McCartney and John Lennon: \u201cOne was trying to start a company. The other just wanted to give away $2 million.\u201d Lots of rock books ask, in essence, \u201cWho are these people?\u201d Few deliver answers this nuanced, thorough, and indelible. \u2013Michaelangelo Matos<\/p>\n

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My Riot: Agnostic Front, Grit, Guts & Glory<\/em><\/h2>\n
By Roger Miret with Jon Wiederhorn<\/div>\n

There was a time in the early \u201980s when Agnostic Front were arguably the most important hardcore band in the world. The New York group helped pioneer the thrash sound that bands like Metallica and Anthrax would take worldwide\u2014and for much of it, vocalist Roger Miret was front and center. In his memoir My Riot: Agnostic Front, Grit, Guts & Glory<\/em>, Miret weaves Agnostic Front into his own story, which begins in Cuba; fleeing the Castro regime with his family, Miret grew up poor in New Jersey, making soup from pigeons he caught in the park and watching his mother suffer abuse at the hands of her partners. And as one of the few Latinos in the burgeoning New York hardcore scene, he was uniquely positioned to maintain diplomacy between the hardcore kids and the Puerto Rican street gangs that ran their turf in the Lower East Side. Throughout the book, co-authored by Jon Wiederhorn (who also co-wrote biographies with Anthrax\u2019s Scott Ian and Ministry\u2019s Al Jourgensen), Miret maintains a matter-of-fact tone as he relays gritty, surprising tales, from beating down halfway house residents outside CBGB to clothing the homeless in Agnostic Front Ts. My Riot<\/em> is a frank appraisal of a life filled with mistakes, triumphs, and the transcendentalism of the stage. \u2013Matthew Ismael Ruiz<\/p>\n

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Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011<\/em><\/h2>\n
By Lizzy Goodman<\/div>\n

In Pitchfork\u2019s interview\u00a0with Meet Me in\u00a0the Bathroom<\/em>\u00a0author Lizzy Goodman, she recalled getting pushback about her decision to write a book about a scene that had only recently run its course. But speaking as someone who was only 6 years old when Is This It<\/em> was released, I will say that Goodman\u2019s oral history feels essential to understanding this moment in rock. Between stories chronicling the rise of Interpol and gushing quotes about the raw immediacy of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Meet Me in the Bathroom<\/em> captures the electric undercurrent of New York during the nascent days of bands that would soon garner fans worldwide. Many critics justifiably pegged the book as a tell-all tome about the Strokes but, in reality, the main character is the city\u2014albeit a seedier version, one that has long since faded away. Meet Me in the Bathroom<\/em> is a rich document of the people and places that shaped the music that convinced so many young people (myself included) to move to New York. Or maybe it\u2019s 600 pages of now-famous musicians misremembering things through a substance-fueled haze. I can\u2019t be sure. Unlike James Murphy, I wasn\u2019t there. \u2013Noah Yoo<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Read our interview with Lizzy Goodman about<\/em> Meet Me in the Bathroom.<\/p>\n

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Hadley Lee Lightcap<\/em><\/h2>\n
By Sam Sweet<\/div>\n

Like the writer Sam Sweet, I have a habit of imprinting certain songs on the places I drive through while listening to them. As Sweet puts it, in his former home of Memphis, Ol\u2019 Dirty Bastard\u2019s \u201chunchbacked riddims somehow suited the midnight panorama of Highway 7.\u201d When he arrived in his adopted city of Los Angeles, it was the little-known, short-lived \u201990s band Acetone whose music suited these \u201cdeep lonely canyons that separate the city from the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n

For some years now, in his All Night Menu book series, Sam Sweet has excavated the strange, hidden histories of seemingly innocuous settings in L.A. and profiled the characters who once populated them. In Hadley Lee Lightcap<\/em>, which takes its title from the names of the three members of Acetone (and coincides with Light in the Attic\u2019s re-release of the band\u2019s catalog), Sweet draws on 10 years of interviews with the two surviving members for a book that\u2019s something between a band biography and a novel. It doesn\u2019t matter that you\u2019ve never heard of Acetone; by this book\u2019s end, you\u2019ll be caught up in the band\u2019s beautifully moody drift, which Sweet indelibly links to the landscape of their origins.\u00a0\u2013Rebecca Bengal<\/p>\n

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Art Sex Music<\/em><\/h2>\n
By Cosey Fanni Tutti<\/div>\n

If Viv Albertine\u2019s 2014 memoir Clothes Music Boys<\/em> offered a woman\u2019s revelatory perspective on punk, then Cosey Fanni Tutti\u2019s Art Sex Music<\/em> does the same for industrial, the genre she helped invent as part of Throbbing Gristle. This wasn\u2019t, she explains, just an unsettling sound but a way of life, a form of liberation that took her from a schoolgirl oppressed by her domineering father in Hull to an internationally recognized artist of the avant-garde: a way \u201cto be independent, active, thorough, and committed.\u201d TG were defiantly underground until the mainstream caught wind; for this ethos, and their explicit exhibition at London\u2019s ICA, they were deemed \u201cwreckers of civilization\u201d by Tory politicians in 1976.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Outside of the band, this dynamic underpinned Cosey\u2019s revolutionary artworks. She started out making mail art, compiling collages from porn magazines and sending them through the post. But she realized that for her work to be truly authentic, she couldn\u2019t rely on images of other women\u2019s bodies, and started putting her own into the frame: in her own erotic photo shoots, in commercial pornography films and magazines, and as a dancer. \u201cMy life is my art,\u201d she writes. \u201cMy art is my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cosey is a funny, lucid writer, who describes bathing her infant son in one breath and participating in a faux lesbian act the next with no distinction between the satisfaction they gave her. Her self-assurance and sheer dedication to her work show up her bandmate and early lover Genesis P-Orridge (who uses the pronoun h\/er) as a charlatan. Though Cosey unsparingly describes h\/er attempts to kill her by throwing a cinderblock from a balcony, the accounts of h\/er mewling petulance might be more damning to P-Orridge\u2019s supposedly transgressive reputation. Art Sex Music<\/em> is a book for the ages\u2014it doesn\u2019t just illuminate Cosey\u2019s personal liberation but how her work loosened Britain\u2019s staid mores, too. \u2013Laura Snapes<\/p>\n

Read our interview with Cosey Fanni Tutti about<\/em> Art Sex Music.<\/p>\n

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The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums<\/em><\/h2>\n
By Will Friedwald<\/div>\n

Often, the Great American Songbook is viewed either in terms of composers or singers, which makes a certain amount of sense. These were songs written at a time when there was no such thing as a definitive recorded version of them, and there wouldn\u2019t be until after World War II. So until then, these arrangements existed in the mass subconscious, ready to be interpreted by countless singers live.<\/p>\n

In this massive and needed book, vocal expert Will Friedwald uses the best-known versions of these songs as the gateway to assembling a canon of The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums<\/em>. As a list, it\u2019s useful and surprising: There are more Louis Armstrong albums than Frank Sinatra ones, and he finds space for the notorious oddball Tiny Tim. Where the book excels, though, is in providing context to this music that\u2019s so common, people rarely know its origins. What Friedwald attempts to do is provide a background for some of our most ubiquitous music\u2014and while he can occasionally be a bit exacting, his thesis is a powerful corrective in an age when we listen without information. \u2013Stephen Thomas Erlewine<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: https:\/\/pitchfork.com\/features\/lists-and-guides\/pitchforks-16-favorite-music-books-of-2017\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lists & Guides Pitchfork\u2019s 16 Favorite Music Books of 2017 What we were reading\u2014from pioneers of noise, thrash, and trap in their own words, to critics wrestling with culture as a sign o\u2019 the times By Pitchfork November 21, 2017 Graphic by Jessica Viscius Several years ago, Pitchfork compiled a list of our 60 favorite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-1255543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-pitchfork-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1255543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1255543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1255543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1255543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}