**'**A brilliant book by one of the best culture writers in the UK' MIRANDA SAWYER'A thrilling, immersive journey' ★★★★ RECORD COLLECTORSpanning seven decades and with over 150 new interviews, including Richard Hawley, Arctic Monkeys, Self Esteem, ABC, Pulp, Def Leppard, The Human League, Toddla T, Cabaret Voltaire, Warp Records, Clock DVA, Heaven 17 and many moreFrom dazzling electronic futurism to pioneeri...

**'**A brilliant book by one of the best culture writers in the UK' MIRANDA SAWYER'A thrilling, immersive journey' ★★★★ RECORD COLLECTORSpanning seven decades and with over 150 new interviews, including Richard Hawley, Arctic Monkeys, Self Esteem, ABC, Pulp, Def Leppard, The Human League, Toddla T, Cabaret Voltaire, Warp Records, Clock DVA, Heaven 17 and many moreFrom dazzling electronic futurism to pioneeri...

**A SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN & TELEGRAPH MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022****INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE MONTH****GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE DAY****FINANCIAL TIMES 'BEST SUMMER BOOKS 2022' PICK**'Incredibly moving.' - Guardian'Entertaining.' - Telegraph'Most books about pop stars focus on the way we turn average human beings into dem...

George Michael is an enigma. While he is one of the most open and vocal pop superstars on the planet, he also fiercely protective of his privacy. From the formation of Wham! In 1981 he immediately found fame and fortune beyond his wildest dreams. His music formed the soundtrack to the 1980s and he achieved all of this despite growing up in a dysfunctional family where his father openly proclaimed that George had no talent.Wham! split in 1986 but Michael went on to greater things as...

"A wise, breezy, supersmart memoir" from the legendary guitarist and cofounder of the seminal British band The Smiths ( The Guardian).Johnny Marr was born in 1960s Manchester to Irish emigrant parents and knew from an early age that he would be a musician. Forming his first band at thirteen, Marr spent his teenage years in public housing, playing guitar, devouring pop culture, and inventing his own musical style.It wasn't until the e...

Ticket to the World is a joyous, nostalgic celebration of 80s culture from one man at the centre of it all.New Year’s Eve, 1979. My family and I stand arm in arm around our Formica kitchen table, counting down to the new decade with each televised chime of Big Ben. We have no idea what is about to hit us, no idea of the seismic waves of change approaching.The 80s transformed life as we knew it. Music, style and culture exploded in a haze o...

From the bestselling author of The Psychopath Test comes a characteristically humorous story of a musician on the margins. In Frank: The True Story that Inspired the Movie, Jon Ronson reflects on his days playing keyboard for the Frank Sidebottom Oh Blimey Big Band. Frank Sidebottom, best known for performing with a big fake head with a cartoon face painted on it, was a cult favorite in the United Kingdom and is the subject of the new movie Frank, co-written by R...

A Rolling Stone Best Music Book of 2021“Thompson is a master showman . . . [Beeswing is] everything you’d hope a Richard Thompson autobiography would be . . . It’s both major and minor, dirge and ditty, light on its feet but packing a punch.”—The Wall Street JournalNow Featuring an Interview with Elvis CostelloIn this moving, immersive, and long-awaited memoir, beloved international music legend Ric...

The Cure emerged in the post-punk 70s and defied all expectations to launch a marathon career marked by hit records and a string of sell-out arena shows. Never Enough traces The Cure's roots in middle-class Crawley, Sussex, and tracks their gradual rise, revealing how their first major album Pornography, almost ended the band well before their multi-platinum career began. Also documents Robert Smith's escape into the Siouxie & The Banshees camp during the 80s, and his experimentation with ...

A music journalist and fan examines the life and work of the Scottish guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter.The book that fans of the Skids, Big Country and the Raphaels have been waiting for—a critical perspective not only of Adamson's music and its wider cultural influence, but also the excesses of fame and how the music business really works. Stuart Adamson: In A Big Country tells the story of how a teenager who was raised in a small Fife village released ...

These are the songs that we have listened to, laughed to, loved to and laboured to, as well as downed tools and danced to.Covering the last seven decades, Stuart Maconie looks at the songs that have sound tracked our changing times, and – just sometimes – changed the way we feel. Beginning with Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll Meet Again’, a song that reassured a nation parted from their loved ones by the turmoil of war, and culminating with the manic energy of ‘Bonkers’, Dizzee...

The story of the life and music of this pop superstar and a kaleidoscopic window into fame, homophobia, the 80s and 90s, creative genius, addiction, and why the love for George Michael has only grown in the years since his tragic death on Christmas Day 2016.There is no shortage of earnest books about the cultural significance of musicians like David Bowie, Bob Dylan, and John Lennon. But George Michael does not attract such attention. The music he produced is not g...