Showing titles in Music

While there are many books about writing, none deal firsthand with the intersection of songwriting, storytelling, and vocation, along with nuts-and-bolts exploration of the great mystery of creativity. In Adorning the Dark, Andrew describes six principles for the writing life: serving the work, serving the audience, selectivity, discernment, discipline, and community. Through stories from his own journey, Andrew shows how these principles are not merely helpful for writers and artists but for anyone interested in imitating the way the Creator interacts with his creation.

Lawrence is the greatest pop star who never made it, his dreams of glory thwarted over the past five decades by bad luck and self-sabotage. At sixty-one, he set off on a new mission: to escape poverty, obscurity and the humiliation of kids at the bus stop laughing at him by writing a smash hit. But what is the cost of a dream? In Street-Level Superstar, bestselling author and journalist Will Hodgkinson follows Lawrence as he rebuilds his life.

An astonishing and astonishingly entertaining behind-the-curtain history of Hollywood s transformation over the past five decades as seen through the agency at the heart of it all, from the #1 bestselling co-author of Live from New York and Those Guys Have All the Fun. In 1975, five young...

'An attempt to retell an oft-told tale, this time informed by a desire to suck the hot air out of the more inflated earlier versions . . . this late-arriving history is perhaps the most reliable, and certainly the most entertaining, of all' Guardian Few bands are as shrouded in the murky haze of...

READ BY ANDREW RIDGELEY For the first time, Andrew Ridgeley - one half of one of the most famous bands in the world - tells the inside story of Wham! and his life-long friendship with George Michael. It is 1975, Watford, and two teenagers, George and Andrew, meet for the first time. Bonding over...

Have you ever thought about the creative process that boiled inside geniuses like Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorák, Strauss, Brahms, Mendelssohn, or Liszt-or any composer, for that matter?What goes through a composer's mind when a musical composition is being set to paper? Are those magical weeks or months spent in an agonizing creative blur of ideas first tried and then discarded, or it a matter of pure inspiration?

This selection of essays from K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2016) brings together the best of Fisher's political writing. In K-Punk: Music, Fisher seamlessly blends political theory with music analysis, discussing the impact of neoliberalism and related political ideologies on the music industry and major music events such as Glastonbury.

A group biography of '90s punk rock told through the prism of Green Day, The Offspring, NOFX, Rancid, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and more Two decades after the Sex Pistols and the Ramones birthed punk music into the world, their artistic heirs burst onto the scene and changed the genre...

Brought to you by Penguin. The story of the phenomenon that is Kraftwerk, and how they revolutionised our cultural landscape 'We are not artists nor musicians. We are workers.' Ignoring nearly all rock traditions, experimenting in near-total secrecy in their Düsseldorf studio, Kraftwerk fused...

The all-access biography and unprecedented look at the life, career, and legacy of a pint-sized kid from Long Island who became a music legend. “A funny, revealing, and poignant look at [Billy] Joel’s long career.”—Boston Globe Exhibiting unparalleled intimate knowledge, Fred Schruers...

In his groundbreaking book ‘Musical Truth,’ DJ-turned author/ researcher Mark Devlin showed how the true nature of the corporate music industry tells a very different story to what’s conveyed on its glossy, glamorous surface. The manipulations run so deep, however, that the full story couldn’t be told in just that first book. Here, in Volume Two, he continues to guide listeners through the dark labyrinth of machinations.

Brought to you by Penguin. **A Financial Times Book of the Year** FOREWORD READ BY SIR PAUL McCARTNEY A landmark account of Paul McCartney’s triumphant musical reinvention in the 1970s and the rise of one of the decade’s most iconic bands This is the story, in their own words, of a band that...

The first true heartbeat of Unrequited Infatuations is the moment when Stevie Van Zandt trades in his devotion to the Baptist religion for an obsession with rock and roll. Groups like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones created new ideas of community, creative risk and principled rebellion. They changed him forever. While still a teenager, he met Bruce Springsteen, a like-minded outcast/true believer who became one of his most important friends and bandmates. As Miami Steve, Van Zandt anchored the E Street Band as they conquered the rock and roll world.

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Traveling from New York to Los Angeles, Stockholm to Korea, John Seabrook visits specialized teams composing songs in digital labs with novel techniques, and he traces the growth of these contagious hits from their origins in early '90s Sweden to their ubiquity on today's charts. Featuring the stories of artists like Katy Perry, Britney Spears, and Rihanna as well as expert songsmiths like Max Martin, Ester Dean, and Dr. Luke, The Song Machine will change the way you listen to music.

'Brilliant...an absolute classic' Paul Ross 'Harrison usefully tracks the brothers' post-Oasis careers and the toxifying feud between them' Ludovic Hunter Tilney, Financial Times 'Harrison...goes further than most in getting to the core of who the Gallaghers are' Shaun Curran, TheiPaper ***...

January 1970: the Beatles assemble one more time to put the finishing touches on Let It Be; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are wrapping up Déjà Vu; Simon and Garfunkel are unveiling Bridge Over Troubled Water; James Taylor is an upstart singer-songwriter who's just completed Sweet Baby James. Over the course of the next twelve months, their lives---and the world around them---will change irrevocably.

No singer has been more mythologized and more misunderstood than jazz legend Billie Holiday, who helped to create much of the mystique herself with her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues - and this authentic biography sets the record straight.

In 1992, the Screaming Trees were expected to become the next big band to come out of the Seattle music scene during the heyday of grunge. Except it never happened. It wasn't because the band didn't have great songs—indeed, the Trees were revered for their ability to write a great song that was both artistically original and commercially viable, which is no easy task. Other Seattle bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden were fans of the Screaming Trees, playing shows with them and collaborating on albums, long before their own bands broke through into the mainstream.

Malcolm James McCormick began making music at a young age and by 15 was already releasing mixtapes. One of the first true viral superstars, his early records earned him a rabid legion of die-hard fans. But despite his undeniable success, Miller was plagued by struggles with substance abuse and depression, both of which fueled his raw and genre-defying music yet ultimately led to his demise. Traveling deep into Miller's inner circle, Most Dope tells the story of a passionate, gifted young man who achieved his life's ambition, only to be undone by his personal demons.