History & Criticism

The BBC Proms is the world's biggest and longest-running classical music festival and one of the jewels in the crown for the BBC. Held every summer at the Royal Albert Hall in London and across the UK, it is one of the strongest brand names in the music...

In Take a Sad Song: The Emotional Currency of "Hey Jude," James Campion dives deeply into the song's origins, recording, visual presentation, impact, and eventual influence, while also discovering what makes "Hey Jude" a classic musical expression of...

Have you ever been carried away by a piece of classical music? In this funny, evocative, personal book, previously published as 'Music for the People: The Pleasures and Pitfalls of Classical Music', Gareth takes us on a journey of musical discovery that...

Released in the U.S. in January 1968, "The Who Sell Out" was, according to critic Dave Marsh, 'a complete backfire...the album sold well, but not spectacularly [and was] ultimately a nostalgic in-joke'. Who but a pop intellectual could appreciate such a...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781451613575Author Alanna NashFormat PaperbackPage Count 448Imprint Simon & SchusterPublisher Simon & SchusterWeight(grams) 408gDimensions(mm) 211mm * 137mm...

***Nominated for the 2024 Penderyn Music Book Prize***A Times Book of the YearA Telegraph Book of the YearA Waterstones Book of the YearA Mojo Music Book of the YearA Classic Pop Book of the YearA Shindig Book of the YearAn Uncut Book of the Year...

Though "Nevermind" was Nirvana's most commercially successful album, and the record that broke them - and the grunge phenomenon - internationally, "In Utero" has increasingly become regarded as the band's best album, both by the critics and the band...

This book marks the tenth anniversary of The Grey Album. The online release and circulation of what Danger Mouse called his 'art project' was an unexpected watershed in the turn-of-the-century brawls over digital creative practice. The album's...

5/5 - CLASSIC POP 4/5 - THE TELEGRAPH Everyone has their favourite era of the Bee Gees' career, but so much is still unclear about this celebrated but often misunderstood band. This book will provide the perfect route in, pulling together every...

FULLY REVISED AND EDITED PAPERBACK EDITION Shortlisted for Penderyn Music Prize Detroit 67 is the story of Motor City in the year that changed everything. Twelve chapters take you on a turbulent year-long journey through the drama and chaos that...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780983955481Author Greg KadingFormat PaperbackPage Count 270Imprint One Time PublishingPublisher One Time PublishingWeight(grams) 408gDimensions(mm) 226mm *...

In The Politics of Vibration Marcus Boon explores music as a material practice of vibration. Focusing on the work of three contemporary musicians-Hindustani classical vocalist Pandit Pran Nath, Swedish drone composer and philosopher Catherine Christer...

A transporting voyage of archaeological discovery: Sound Tracks unearths instruments from around the world and across time, releasing the past's musical secrets for the first time. ‘A thrilling journey into the sonic richness of human experience’ PHILIP...

Berlioz was one of the towering figures of Romanticism: not only was he a great and revolutionary composer, but also the finest composer of his day and an outstanding critic and writer. Yet throughout his life he struggled for money and his music was...

Do you know which country won the very first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956? And can you name the five members of Kalush Orchestra, the 2022 contest winners? How about which iconic song ABBA won with in 1974?Celebrating the Eurovision Song Contest, this...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781683365907Author Ken CaillatFormat PaperbackPage Count 384Imprint Trade Paper PressPublisher Trade Paper Press

Oasis's incendiary 1994 debut album Definitely Maybe managed to summarize almost the entire history of post-fifties guitar music from Chuck Berry to My Bloody Valentine in a way that seemed effortless. But this remarkable album was also a social document...

Music fans tend to divide into two camps at the mention of Fleetwood Mac. There are those who think of the multi-million-selling five-piece that formed in the mid-1970s and released Rumours, the biggest selling album of all time. But there are those who...

From the author of the acclaimed Revolution in the Head, Ian MacDonald takes us on a journey through the music of the sixties and seventies. Starting with one of the most important assessments of Bob Dylan to appear in print for many years, these essays...

When Twin Peaks debuted on the ABC network on the night of April 8, 1990, thirty-five million viewers tuned in to some of the most unusual television of their lives. Centered on an eccentric, coffee-loving FBI agent's investigation into the murder of a...

Superbly researched and vividly written, The Devil's Music is one of the only books to trace the rise and development of the blues both in relation to other forms of black music and in the context of American social history as experienced by African...

Ginger tells his story for the first time. It's often harrowing but outrageously honest as he journey's from war-torn south London to his adopted home in South Africa's beautiful Western Cape - where he has his own polo club. Along the way he tells of...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781739659905Author David VernonFormat PaperbackPage Count 412Imprint Candle Row PressPublisher Candle Row Press

This epoch-making record of the late '80s effortlessly combines dense swathes of guitar noise and dance music. This turned out to be their last record, guitarist and studio maestro Kevin Shields having set their standards so high it was impossible to...

Mark Katz surveys the age-old interrelationship between music and technology, from prehistoric musical instruments to today's digital playback devices. This Very Short Introduction takes an expansive and inclusive approach meant to broaden and...

'I was 22 years old, a hard-on with a pulse: wretched, vice-ridden, too much to burn and not enough minutes in a hour to do so'The action begins in West Des Moines, Iowa, where Corey Taylor, frontman of heavy metal bands Slipknot and Stone Sour,...

In 1989, Bob Mould took a left turn. Already legendary before his 30th birthday for his noise-and-nuance work in Husker Du, Mould had recently walked away from his old band. He re-emerged with his debut solo album: Workbook. Filled with chiming acoustic...

Glasgow has always been known for its live music, and at the heart of any music community it is the live venues and buildings that are important, and play host to local and touring acts. One of the main reasons for Glasgow's continued blossoming as a...

Why did Pythagoras pause outside a Blacksmith's workshop? Can the nature of Harmony really be understood visually? Why do harmonies leave gaps or 'commas' when added together? In this charming little book Anthony Ashton uses a Victorian device called a...

Early Jazz is one of the seminal books on American jazz, ranging from the beginnings of jazz as a distinct musical style at the turn of the century to its first great flowering in the 1930s. Schuller explores the music of the great jazz soloists of the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781438492681Author Hank DavisFormat PaperbackPage Count 362Imprint Excelsior EditionsPublisher State University of New York PressWeight(grams)...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780312304270Author Brett MilanoFormat PaperbackPage Count 230Imprint St. Martins Press-3PLPublisher St. Martins Press-3PLWeight(grams) 318gDimensions(mm)...

The foremost composer under the reign of Elizabeth I and James I, William Byrd (c. 1540 - 1623) produced countless masses, motets, polyphonic songs, and works for keyboard and instrumental consort, all of which rank among the most unique and inspired...

Carole King's Tapestry is both an anthemic embodiment of second-wave feminism and an apotheosis of the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter sound and scene. And these two elements of the album's historic significance are closely related insofar as the...

Affectionately known as 'Koss', Paul Kossoff's playing touched people. It still does today, more than forty years after his sad and untimely death at the age of twenty-five. This authorised biography pays fitting tribute to a much-loved and widely...

A Telegraph Book of the YearA Guardian Book of the YearA Shindig Book of the Year A Virgin Radio Book of the YearAwarded the certificate of merit in the 2023 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards for ExcellenceIn 1970, pop was in trouble. The...

Dividing the sum total of human musical achievement, from Beethoven to The Beatles, Busta Rhymes to Bach, into just six fundamental forms, Levitin illuminates, through songs of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion and love, how music has been...

Originally formed by singer-songwriter Ian Anderson in psychedelic 1968, the band Hethro Tull has been recording its own kind of rock and roll and touring the globe for more than three decades. This is a history of the band through the present, written...

This important and controversial book has come to be regarded as a modern classic. Originally published in 1959, it has exerted a profound influence on all subsequent discussion in the field of musical aesthetics. The author's thesis is that the main...

FOREWORD BY JACQUELINE CROOKSSolid Foundation is the definitive history of Jamaica's holy music: reggae in all its forms, from the earliest ska and rock steady pioneers to the dancehall and reggae revival stars of the twenty-first century. Woven together...