Seven Books That Will Change How You Listen to Music
· The Atlantic
Last February, I saw a concert that brought fresh meaning to the cliché “my soul left my body.” In a packed room at Radio City Music Hall, I sang the Swedish pop star Robyn’s hit “Dancing on My Own” along with her and the Talking Heads front man David Byrne, and genuinely felt as though I was floating outside of my own skin. If you’re lucky, you’ve experienced something similar, and know just as well as I do that the right song can unlock physical sensations that feel uncannily like magic.
Though many people can instinctively understand music’s intrinsic power—recognizing a beat that makes you want to dance, or getting goose bumps from a tune you thought you’d forgotten—articulating why you like it can be much harder, at least without the right knowledge. As a longtime music lover who is neither a gifted musician nor a music critic, I found myself in exactly this position when I began drafting my novel. I wanted my main characters, who are composers and pianists, to speak about their art as if they knew what they were talking about. So I embarked on a self-directed crash course in musicology, taught mostly through books.
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The seven titles that follow make up a syllabus on how to think about music. These works are not comprehensive, but they span a wide variety of literary and auditory genres. All of them changed how I wrote about and listened to music by giving me a new appreciation for its neuroscientific and cultural effects—and by showing me what it means to make a life as a musician.
Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres, by Kelefa Sanneh
It could be argued that the ideal audience for a song consists of people who can appreciate its pedigree—all of the influences that combined to inspire that specific work. Although many aficionados may be able to exercise that skill in one or two genres, rarely does a listener possess the encyclopedic knowledge for more than that. So you can think of Sanneh’s book as a cheat sheet of sorts—but one that’s deeply researched and tightly edited, which is what you would expect from a professional music journalist and critic. Sanneh charts the genesis, rise, and cultural importance of rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance, and pop, while sharing anecdotes from his lifelong engagement with music along the way. I found the dance section to be particularly enlightening: It documents the genre’s gestation during the disco era; explains how house music emerged (and got its name) from the Warehouse, a Chicago club; and details how the larger genre migrated to Europe and then boomeranged back to the United States, rebranding itself as electronica.
Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove, by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and Ben Greenman
Thompson’s memoir as primer (the title is a play on Spike Lee’s film Mo’ Better Blues) is as meta as promised: Some sections, for example, are just reproductions of emails between Thompson’s co-author and their editor; others are witty and insightful Q&As between Thompson and Rich Nichols, the co-manager of his band. But even if you’re unfamiliar with the Philadelphia-born musician or his Grammy-winning hip-hop group, the Roots, this is an entrancing story of the hip-hop scene in Philly and, later, the country as a whole, told by someone who has been there for many of its pivotal moments. Thompson speaks to his experience not only as a drummer, but also as a producer, arranger, and DJ, demonstrating an extraordinarily wide perspective on the business. You’ll learn how an artistic community can lift members up, but also—sometimes brutally—tear them down.
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American Diva: Extraordinary, Unruly, Fabulous, by Deborah Paredez
In pop-culture parlance, diva has lost most of its positive sheen (the Italian word originally meant “goddess”) and instead refers to a prima-donna type: a person who is too much of everything. While these traits can be off-putting, they are also, Paredez argues, a show of strength—an attribute that has not always been regarded kindly in women, especially women of color. The author, a self-proclaimed “diva devotee,” aims to return both the term and the artists labeled by it to their rightful renown in this combination of memoir, criticism, and music history. Household names such as Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner get their due, as well as others whose talent, determination, and, yes, fractiousness cement their place in the canon, including the otherworldly Grace Jones, the salsa queen Celia Cruz, and the triple threat Rita Moreno. Paredez reframes what might be pejoratively called diva behavior as, instead, the actions of women with the confidence to know that they matter. Readers will come away with a deeper understanding of artistic brilliance, even when its avatars may be difficult or messy.
Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett
An oft-quoted maxim holds that writing about music is like dancing about architecture—meaning it’s practically impossible to describe one art form using an entirely different creative language. Perhaps this is what has made Patchett’s novel an enduring favorite: She achieved this impressive feat, even though Bel Canto’s plot doesn’t actually revolve around music. A loose fictionalization of a 1990s hostage crisis in a Peruvian embassy, it follows a multinational group held captive at the home of an unnamed South American vice president. Roxanne Coss, the opera world’s most celebrated soprano, is one of the unlucky souls trapped inside—and without giving too much of the story away, her eventual performances connect human beings on both sides of this conflict in a way that only music can. Patchett’s description of Coss’s voice, which is so beautiful that those listening wanted to “cover her mouth with their mouth, drink in,” is so vibrant that I can almost hear her songs myself.
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How Music Works, by David Byrne
Byrne’s book could be called a memoir or a manual, but whether you’re primarily interested in the New Wave pioneer’s career or actually attempting to start yours, the depth of knowledge he shares on the music industry makes this a worthy read. Byrne’s chapters range widely: One covers how the structure of performance spaces can inform the type of music played within; another provides a thorough examination of the development of recording technology (and its effect on music). Perhaps the most revelatory section is the one concerning money: The singer documents in granular detail how much he spent and earned for one record, pulling back the curtain on a process that’s ordinarily very hush-hush. You’ll finish with a greater respect for all that musicians do, whether they’re superstars or just starting out in the back of a bar.
I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine, by Daniel J. Levitin
Nothing on this list will change how you literally hear music as much as this book, written by a cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, and musician. Music can be used to alleviate symptoms of many neurological conditions, he shows, such as Parkinson’s disease, dementia, and Williams syndrome. The author doesn’t just rely on feel-good anecdotes: He describes in digestible, engaging detail how the brain is affected by the various treatments he profiles. In a chapter on movement disorders, Levitin explains rhythmic auditory stimulation, a technique for music-based therapy in which patients walk while synchronizing their steps to a steady beat. Although the treatment was developed for Parkinson’s, it has been shown to improve movement in patients with stroke, traumatic brain injuries, and cerebral palsy, most likely because it encourages the brain to find “alternative routes in the cortical-thalamo pathway.” But perhaps the most salient sections are those that deal with music’s positive effects on all human brains, not just those that are injured or impaired. Many of us have long felt that music is medicine; this book grounds that belief in concrete examples.
[Read: Can music be used as medicine?]
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
Although oral-history books focused on pop culture are fairly common today, the format was revolutionary in 1996, when the first edition of Please Kill Me was published. And because this is an annal of punk music, it features a cast who would describe themselves in a similar way. Hearing from dozens of musicians, producers, and journalists in their own words (and in their own words alone) makes this experiment successful: Interviewees include luminaries such as Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, and members of the Ramones. As the subtitle promises, their answers are shared with all the vulgarity, pettiness, and arrogance intact. The sheer number of voices that McNeil and McCain had to curate and edit is impressive enough, but more incredible is the fact that they cohere into a narrative by turns tragic, hilarious, and touching. Please Kill Me paints a portrait of a scene that’s far more than spikes and leather jackets, although copious photographs help immerse the reader in the glittering, safety-pinned world of punk.