History & Criticism

The epic, rollicking, up-and-down life of Muddy Waters—who went from Mississippi farmhand to musical legend, invented electric blues, and created the template for the rock-and-roll band and its wild lifestyle—is chronicled with rare vividness in Robert Gordon’s widely praised biography....

Here Comes the Night is both a definitive account of the New York rhythm and blues world of the early '60s, and the harrowing, ultimately tragic story of songwriter and record producer Bert Berns....

For millennia, the sacred drummers of pre-Christian Mediterranean and western Asia were women. In this inspiring book, Layne Redmond, herself a renowned drummer, tells their history.

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.

A monumental, revealing narrative history about the legendary group of artists at the forefront of West Coast hip-hop: Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur....

In this, the first book to take a big-picture view of the entire post punk period, acclaimed author and music journalist Simon Reynolds recreates a time of tremendous urgency and idealism in pop music.

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....

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....

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....

With astounding access to all the key players of the time, including members of Green Day, The Offspring, Rancid, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and many others, music writer Ian Winwood at last gives the significant, substantive, and compelling story of '90s punk rock its due....

On June 4, 1984, Columbia Records issued what would become one of the best-selling and most impactful rock albums of all time. An instant classic, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. would prove itself to be a landmark not only for the man who made it, but rock music in general.

Under the Big Black Sun explores the nascent Los Angeles punk rock movement and its evolution to hardcore punk as it's never been told before....

In this first of a groundbreaking multivolume set, THE MCCARTNEY LEGACY, VOL 1: 1969-73 captures the life of Paul McCartney in the years immediately following the dissolution of the Beatles, a period in which McCartney recreated himself as both a man and a musician....

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.

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

Grunge Is Dead weaves together the definitive story of the Seattle music scene through a series of interviews with the people who were there....

Waylon Jennings. Willie Nelson. Kris Kristofferson. Three renegade musicians. Three unexpected stars. Three men who changed Nashville and country music forever....

In a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects ten songs recorded between 1956 and 2008 and then proceeds to dramatize how each embodies rock 'n' roll as a thing in itself in the story it tells, inhabits, and acts out....

Here is the extreme story of the indestructible LA group, from their early funk days to eventual success as one of America’s top-selling bands.....

"A dauntingly ambitious, obsessively researched" (Los Angeles Times) global history of music that reveals how songs have shifted societies and sparked revolutions....

A down-and-dirty chronicle of the birth and evolution of the Seattle grunge scene—from backyard skateboard ramps and underground hardcore clubs to worldwide phenomenon—as told by one of its founding fathers and lead guitarist of legendary alternative rock band, Mudhoney....

Filled with interviews with key players such as Snoop Dogg, Ice-T, and dozens more, as well as breakout bios of notorious characters, lists, and more, The History of Gangster Rap is the be-all-end-all book that contextualizes the importance of gangster rap as a cultural phenomenon....

Acclaimed critic and TtT co-founder Ann Powers and contributor Alison Fensterstock draw from every Turning the Tables season and the full 50-years of NPR archives to bring a vibrant, entertaining history of women in folk, rock, rap, hip hop, salsa, bubblegum pop, and much more.

Spray Paint the Walls tells Black Flag’s story from the inside, drawing on exclusive interviews with the group’s members, their contemporaries, and the bands they inspired....

John Eliot Gardiner takes us as deeply into Bach’s works and mind as perhaps words can. The result is a unique book about one of the greatest of all creative artists....

The year 1972 saw the beginning of a five-year span in which Stevie Wonder released five groundbreaking, critically acclaimed albums, garnering him more than half a dozen Grammys and more than 10 million albums sold, securing his place as one of the most important American musicians and songwriters in history. For the first time, uncover the untold story of an extraordinary artistic journey that shaped the greatest creative era in popular music history.

Although Greenwich Village takes up less than a square mile in downtown New York, rarely has such a concise area supported and nurtured so many groundbreaking artists and genres. Musician used the Village’s smokey coffeehouses and clubs to chronicle the tumultuous Sixties, rewrite jazz history, and take rock & roll into eclectic places it hadn’t been before. Based on new interviews with surviving participants, previously unseen and unheard archives, and author David Browne's years immersed in the scene, Talkin’ Greenwich Village lends the saga the epic, panoramic scope it has long deserved.

NPR’s launch of the multi-platform series Turning the Tables in 2017, suddenly pushed more women onto “Best of” lists and into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame. With How Women Made Music, acclaimed critic and TtT co-founder Ann Powers and contributor Alison Fensterstock draw from every Turning the Tables season and the full 50-years of NPR archives, to bring a vibrant, entertaining history of women in folk, rock, rap, hip hop, salsa, bubblegum pop, and much more.

Known as opera’s “disrupter-in-residence,” director Yuval Sharon has never adhered to the art form’s conventions. In his many productions in both the United States and Europe, he constantly challenges the perception of opera as aloof by urging, among other things: performing operas in “non-places,” such as parking lots; encouraging the use of amplification; and shuffling the traditional structure of classic works, like performing Puccini’s La bohème in reverse order, ending not with the tubercular heroine Mimi’s death but with her first falling in love.

Dieses Hörbuch ist nicht nur eine Sammlung von Taylor Swifts wichtigsten Messages – es ist eine Inspiration für alle, die glauben, dass Musik mehr ist als nur Melodie. Sie ist die Kraft, die uns antreibt, die uns zeigt, dass wir niemals alleine sind. 89 Taylor Rules ist eine Einladung, die Dinge mit Taylors Augen zu sehen – kraftvoll, leidenschaftlich und authentisch – und deine Eintrittskarte in ihre inspirierende Welt. Taylor Swift ist zurzeit eine der erfolgreichste Sänger:innen weltweit und steht für Empowerment, Stärke und Authentizität.