Showing titles in History & Criticism

Dieser Pop-Splits ist Eric Claptons Song "Tears in Heaven" gewidmet und beantwortet die Frage, wie man musikalisch über den Tod des eigenen Kindes hinwegkommt...

Der Titel ist Teil des Pop-Splits "Tears in Heaven - 21 traurige und schöne Geschichten".

For the first time, Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the story of the precipitous rise and fall of the recording industry over the past three decades, when the incredible success of the CD turned the music business into one of the most glamorous, high-profile industries in the world - and the advent of file sharing brought it to its knees.

This Is Our Music, declared saxophonist Ornette Coleman's 1960 album title. But whose music was it? At various times during the 1950s and 1960s, musicians, critics, fans, politicians, and entrepreneurs claimed jazz as a national art form, an Afrocentric race music, an extension of modernist innovation in other genres, a music of mass consciousness, and the preserve of a cultural elite. This original and provocative book explores who makes decisions about the value of a cultural form and on what basis.

Beloved music critic Tom Breihan's fascinating narrative of the history of popular music through the lens of game-changing #1 singles from the Billboard Hot 100. When Tom Breihan launched his Stereogum column in early 2018, “The Number Ones”—a space in which he has been writing about every...

Paul McCartney and John Lennon described him as the Beatles' "favorite group", he won Grammy awards, wrote and recorded hit songs, and yet no figure in popular music is as much of a paradox, or as underrated, as Harry Nilsson. In this first ever full-length biography, Alyn Shipton traces Nilsson's life from his Brooklyn childhood to his Los Angeles adolescence and his gradual emergence as a uniquely talented singer-songwriter.

The music of Yes indelibly shaped the original sound of progressive rock. But the true tale of this landmark band goes well beyond headline-making albums like Fragile and Close to the Edge. In this book, Kevin Mulryne tells the absorbing story of the final Yes album of the 1970s, Tormato, uncovering myriad fascinating twists and turns for the first time.

In October 1942, SS guards at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp violently disbanded a rehearsal of a secret Jewish choir led by conductor Rosebery d'Arguto. Many in the group did not live to see morning, and those who survived were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only one of its members survived the Holocaust. Yet their story survives, thanks to Aleksander Kulisiewicz. An amateur musician, he was not Jewish, but became friends with d'Arguto in Sachsenhausen. D'Arguto tasked him with a mission: to save the musical heritage of the victims of the Nazi camps.

The History of Gangster Rap is a deep dive into one of the most fascinating subgenres of any music category to date. Sixteen detailed chapters, organized chronologically, examine the evolution of gangster rap, its main players, and the culture that created this revolutionary music. From still-swirling conspiracy theories about the murders of Biggie and Tupac to the release of the 2015 film Straight Outta Compton, the era of gangster rap is one that fascinates music junkies and remains at the forefront of pop culture.

The story of Stax Records unfolds like a Greek tragedy. A white brother and sister build a record company that becomes a monument to racial harmony in 1960’s segregated south Memphis. Their success is startling, and Stax soon defines an international sound. Then, after losses both business and personal, the siblings part, and the brother allies with a visionary African-American partner. Under integrated leadership, Stax explodes as a national player until, Icarus-like, they fall from great heights to a tragic demise.

In this audio-original production, author Richard Fawkes traces the development of the musical, highlighting composers and lyricists including Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim. Presented by the vivacious singer Kim Criswell, star of Cats, and including nearly 100 famous musical extracts.

The '80s were about big ideas writ large - new money, new style, gender fluidity, gay pride, attritional politics, the 'special relationship', nuclear fear, AIDS, cocaine, ecstasy, tabloid royalty, the rise of urban pop and ultimately geopolitical chaos. Using a big narrative approach, Dylan Jones' history of the decade in pop frames the decade through some of its most important and popular hits, choosing records that either epitomised their time or ushered in a new cultural shift.

The story of two outsiders and obsessives whose collision prompted an evangelistic alliance on the furthest frontiers of underground music. Steve Davis first met Kavus Torabi - guitarist with Gong, Guapo, Cardiacs and Knifeworld - in the mid-2000s at a gig by French underground rock legends Magma. Over the next few years, this unlikely duo's shared affinity for visionary psychedelic music would become the foundation of not only a firm friendship, but also the most infectiously inclusive broadcasting style since the much-mourned death of John Peel.

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.

White Limozeen (1989) was a commercial recovery after Dolly Parton's first major failure two years previously with the release of Rainbow. This book is a case study in how an album is sold and a persona constructed. The album had a complex relationship to the country music genre at a time when the genre was in the middle of major sonic and cultural shifts, and it represents how country music saw itself. This question of identity was especially relevant since White Limozeen was produced by Ricky Skaggs, the bluegrass prodigy who was in the middle of his own genre-widening experiments.

This audiobook is not meant to be a band biography; it's a condensed guide of fun facts and information. If you are curious about what happened to that band you heard on the radio the other day, then download this audiobook!

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.

Perhaps more than any other Greatest Hits compilation, Abba Gold has come to define a band’s career on one disk. More than that, its release in 1992 heralded the critical rehabilitation of a group which had, since its demise a decade earlier, become little more than a memory of trashy costumes and cheesy tunes to many people. Here, Elisabeth Vincentelli charts the circumstances surrounding the birth of Abba Gold, looks at the impact it had on the music world, and tells the stories behind some of the greatest pop songs ever recorded.

From the Stooges and MC to Grand Funk Railroad and Ted Nugent, to the White Stripes, Eminem, and Kid Rock, and whole casts of other great bands and performers, Detroit has always produced louder, more rumbling, more subversive rock music than any city in the world. In Detroit Rock City, listeners get to hear the stories straight from the participants themselves: the singers, the guitar slingers, the fans, the reporters, the promoters, even the guys who hand-made amps to be louder and crunchier than the competition’s.

In this of-the-moment essay collection, celebrated music journalist Andrea Warner explores the ways in which Céline Dion, Shania Twain, Alanis Morissette, and Sarah McLachlan became bona fide global superstars while revolutionizing ’90s music. In an era when male-fronted musical acts dominated radio and were given serious critical consideration, these four women were reduced, mocked, and disparaged by the media and became pop culture jokes, even as their albums were topping the charts and demolishing sales records.

Fleetwood Mac’s iconic album Rumours is more popular and acclaimed now than ever and attracts listeners across generations—Don’t Stop celebrates the album’s unlikely creation, surprising longevity, and enduring cultural impact. On January 1, 1975, struggling young singer-songwriter...