Here are 100 books that Music Legends fans have personally recommended if you like
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I often (half-) jokingly say that I'm a failed musician. Growing up in Montreal in the eighties, music was my deepest joy. I sang in choirs for years, and even fancied myself the next great baroque singer (I guess I was a nerd.) Nerves, however, got the best of me, and I turned to the next best thing, writing. In my family, music is a meeting place, a shared language; my kids have taught me as much about music as I have taught them. Nothing pleases me more than to see on a playlist of theirs a tune that I listened to before their birth. Music is the golden thread of my life.
Indigenous singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie is a music legend in Canada. When illustrator Julie Flett decided to turn one of Sainte-Marie's iconic songs, Still This Love Goes On, in a picture album, it was like the song was brought to life in a whole new way. Readers (or the small children the book can be read to) are able to travel through Buffy's poignant lyrics and Julie Flett's moving, evocative illustrations and truly feel what the song is about. Plus, you can listen to the song while you look at the book and hear Buffy's haunting, heart-breaking voice. Seeingmusic while hearing it? Sounds like a perfect introduction to me.
"A love letter to family, home, and Indigenous traditions ... This story reminds readers of the joy we experience upon returning to those whom we love and who love us."-Kirkus
From Cree-Metis artist Julie Flett and Academy Award-winning icon Buffy Sainte-Marie comes a celebration of Indigenous community, and the enduring love we hold for the people and places we are far away from.
Based on Sainte-Marie's song of the same name, Still This Love Goes On combines Flett's breathtaking art with vivid lyrics to craft a stunning portrait of a Cree worldview. At the heart of this picture book is…
I often (half-) jokingly say that I'm a failed musician. Growing up in Montreal in the eighties, music was my deepest joy. I sang in choirs for years, and even fancied myself the next great baroque singer (I guess I was a nerd.) Nerves, however, got the best of me, and I turned to the next best thing, writing. In my family, music is a meeting place, a shared language; my kids have taught me as much about music as I have taught them. Nothing pleases me more than to see on a playlist of theirs a tune that I listened to before their birth. Music is the golden thread of my life.
A wonderful graphic novel for and about teens, Operaticfollows Charlie, a teen girl who must find "her song" for a school project, and embarks on an emotional journey about the meaning of music, friendship, love, and opera. The book, gutting and uplifting all at once, is also an homage to the great Maria Callas, while peppered with pop and rock references. A perfect book for readers 12 and up, by which I mean: up to 30, up to 45, up to 99 years old, as music ties us powerfully with our life story, no matter our age.
A story of friendship, first crushes, opera and the high drama of middle school told by award-winning Kyo Maclear in her debut graphic novel.
Somewhere in the universe, there is the perfect tune for you.
It's almost the end of middle school, and Charlie has to find her perfect song for a music class assignment. But it's hard for Charlie to concentrate when she can't stop noticing her classmate Emile, or wondering about Luka, who hasn't been to school in weeks.
Then, the class learns about opera, and Charlie discovers the music of Maria Callas. The more she learns about…
I love realm of the sensual. I sometimes call it The Magic Kingdom—the experience that sets us apart from our childhoods and teenage years. Intimacy—not just with people or lovers, but with the stuff we love as adults—is a compelling quest. For me, it lives in writing, cooking, singing, painting, befriending, loving—the things that lift my life out of the ordinary into time-stopping moments. Sharing it my writing, especially in my new fiction (Stay with Me, Wisconsinand my upcoming novelThe Seven Mile Bridge) has been an experience of helping us all get our hands and hearts and skin into the things we love and then abide there as long as life allows us.
Laurie Colwin is by far my favorite fiction writer. She died in 1992 at the age of 48, and Goodbye Without Leaving is one of my all-time favorite books of hers.
In it, Geraldine Coleshares—a privileged graduate student who is unmoved by her insulated and expectation-laden world—goes on the road as backup singer for Ruby Shakely and the Shakettes—an Ike and Tina Turner-type rock and roll band.
Her parents are horrified and will barely speak to her when she calls them from the road, but there’s nothing she loves more than to stand on stage in a day-glow fringed dress, singing her heart out.
When love finds her in the form of a straight-ahead lawyer who adores her and knows every rock n roll and rhythm and blues artist from the last century, she grudgingly lets him in, and though she knows she loves him, she resists marriage at every…
One of the most beloved novels from the critically acclaimed novelist Laurie Colwin, Goodbye Without Leaving explores a woman’s attempts to reconcile her rock-and-roll past with her significantly more sedate family life as a wife and mother.
As a bored graduate student, Geraldine Colshares is plucked from her too-tame existence when she is invited to tour as the only White backup singer for Vernon and Ruby Shakely and the Shakettes. The exciting years she spends as a Shakette are a mixed blessing, however, because when she ultimately submits to a conventional life of marriage and children, she finds herself stuck…
I often (half-) jokingly say that I'm a failed musician. Growing up in Montreal in the eighties, music was my deepest joy. I sang in choirs for years, and even fancied myself the next great baroque singer (I guess I was a nerd.) Nerves, however, got the best of me, and I turned to the next best thing, writing. In my family, music is a meeting place, a shared language; my kids have taught me as much about music as I have taught them. Nothing pleases me more than to see on a playlist of theirs a tune that I listened to before their birth. Music is the golden thread of my life.
The McGarrigle Sisters are Montreal legends, and I was raised on a steady diet of their brutally honest folk music. It was only natural that I fall for the music of Kate McGarrigle's daughter, singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright (her father is American songwriter Loudon Wainwright) early on. Her memoir, Stories I Might Regret Telling You, is as compelling, lyrical and candid as her songs and stage presence are. A truly rock-and-roll story filled with adventure and struggle, Martha's journey is also a testament to women's resilience and a plea for leading a creatively fulfilling career without sacrificing family and intimate relationships. Obviously not aimed at teen readers (although I would have devoured it had it fallen into my hands at, say, sixteen), this book will crack any music-loving heart right open.
'With disarming candour and courage, Martha tells us of finding her own voice and peace as a working artist and mother. Her story is made more unique because of the remarkably gifted musical family she was born into.' EMMYLOU HARRIS
This is Martha Wainwright's heartfelt memoir about growing up in a bohemian musical family and her experiences with love, loss, motherhood, divorce, the music industry and more.
Born into music royalty, the daughter of folk legends Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III and sister to the highly-acclaimed singer Rufus Wainwright, Martha grew up in a world filled with such incomparable…
From Taylor Swift to Lauryn Hill, from Joan Baez to Beyonce, I find that the lyrics, performances, and melodies of women making music inspire my own creativity every day. I am not a musician; I am a writer, editor, and novelist! But I find music to be so accessible, so deeply meaningful, in a way that other art forms, even my own, are not. So naturally, I adore novels about music!
This one was just so fun to dip into and get lost in! An imaginary oral history of a 70s band that somehow manages to be a page-turner, a chaste love affair whose heat is all contained in the songs, lyrics, and performances. It’s a contemporary classic for a reason! Don’t miss it!
I’m a journalist whose work is often heard on NPR's national news magazines, and read in publications such as The New York Times, New York Magazine’s Vulture, BBC Culture, Wired, and Bandcamp. I'm most interested in stories about people, communities, and scenes that have been overlooked, forgotten, seen through a distorted lens, or perhaps never seen at all. I’m on a mission to get to a deeper understanding of what’s at stake in the way we see music and art- and the way we see ourselves.
Sinéad O’Connor rose to fame in the early 1990s, before social media, when tabloids made millions taking women down, as did the music press.
Back then there were few mechanisms to clap back, so much of what we thought we knew about her, before and after SNL, was warped by that perspective. Left with little sense of who O’Connor really was, we also had limited awareness of the great music she made long after she stopped making hits.
Unlike a lot of celebrity memoirs, O’Connor’s isn’t a victory lap or a bitter tell-all. Nor does it try to gloss over the difficult parts. Instead, it’s a chance for her to tell her story herself, and for us to finally see her for the brilliant and complicated artist she truly is.
From the acclaimed, controversial singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor comes a revelatory memoir of her fraught childhood, musical triumphs, fearless activism, and of the enduring power of song.
Blessed with a singular voice and a fiery temperament, Sinéad O’Connor rose to massive fame in the late 1980s and 1990s with a string of gold records. By the time she was twenty, she was world famous—living a rock star life out loud. From her trademark shaved head to her 1992 appearance on Saturday Night Live when she tore up Pope John Paul II’s photograph, Sinéad has fascinated and outraged millions.
Having spent seven years researching and writing about Prince (and another year updating the book), I spoke to as many people who worked and lived with him as I could. While my book is rich with information gleaned from interviews, alongside my own analysis, there were a few people who didn’t talk to me. Of the above, I did talk to Dez Dickerson, but the others were holding off (presumably because their own books were in the works). All the books below work as perfect compliments to mine and are all must-haves for any Prince fan’s purple library.
One of the few musicians who continued to interact with Prince (on and off) from the beginning to near the end of his career, Morris Day was well-placed to write an account of the musician. Written in collaboration with the excellent biographer and music writer, David Ritz, this is an interesting (if whacky) book.
To tell the story of Morris Day is to tell the story of Prince. Not because they were inseparable or because their paths never diverged, but because, even when their paths did diverge, they always intersected again. Each artist lifted the other up, pushing one another to be something bigger and better than they thought themselves capable of. There was plenty of one-upmanship and some (un)healthy competition, but the respect Day and Prince had for one another never wavered, from the time they met in junior high until His Royal Badness's untimely death in 2016.
As a Gex Xer who came of age in the 80s, I haunted record stores, collected albums, and listened to music to gain insight into the bands I loved. As a musician I’ve always been fascinated by the creative process of songwriting. I’m intrigued by the interpersonal dynamics that make and break bands. I’m drawn to the business side of the music industry and the way iconic bands and music were marketed to us. The five books I’ve recommended are my personal favorites for highlighting how the music so many Gen Xers love was created and how years later it can still move us and give meaning to our everchanging lives.
The first time I heard Two Hearts Beat As One by U2 was glorious! I was entranced by the driving drums and the bass line and inspired by Bono’s lyrics, which spoke to my burgeoning interest in how to be cool. And U2 was cool in the 80s. And Bono was one of the coolest musicians I looked up to back then.
His memoir goes deep into explaining where his bravado and “cool” come from. It was a darker and more complicated place than I expected. Having recently endured the death of my own mother, shortly before I read this book, I was moved to read about how the death of his mother impacted him and motivated him.
I came away with even more respect for Bono’s life philosophy and his commitment to his family, his bandmates, and his ongoing craft as a musician.
One of the greatest rock memoirs ever written and a Sunday Times bestseller now out in paperback - the honest, irreverent and powerfully entertaining life story of the U2 front-man.
Bono - artist, activist and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2 - has written his autobiography- honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he's lived, the challenges he's faced and the friends and family who have shaped and sustained him - now out in paperback.
'When I started to write this book I was hoping to draw in detail what I'd…
I am a fourth-generation Asian New Zealander who always felt ‘other’ growing up. When I was little, I hated being asked ‘where are you from?’ because I wanted to be seen as ‘just’ a New Zealander. This frustration shaped a lot of my race and identity journey, and I started reading books about other people’s personal experiences because it made me feel seen. These books also helped me recognize the richness and humanity behind my family’s story. I hope this beautiful list of books will resonate with your experiences or give you insight into a new corner of the world.
I love this book because Zauner tells her story in a vivid and relatable way. I resonated with Zauner’s identity crisis, her complex relationships with family members, and her single-minded determination to be an artist. Heart-wrenching, honest, and funny at the same time, I could not put this book down.
The New York Times bestseller from the Grammy-nominated indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unflinching, deeply moving memoir about growing up mixed-race, Korean food, losing her Korean mother, and forging her own identity in the wake of her loss.
'As good as everyone says it is and, yes, it will have you in tears. An essential read for anybody who has lost a loved one, as well as those who haven't' - Marie-Claire
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer,…
I’ve always been fascinated by the stories of outsiders. I’m probably attracted to the topic because I come from a couple of misfits who reared me in a small town in the deeply conservative South. My mom is an irreverent, Socialist, Croatian immigrant with half a dozen kids, and my dad a curmudgeonly polyglot who loves books more than people. First as a journalist, then as a historian, I’ve long studied the economies and cultures created by those systematically marginalized or merely with a healthy disdain for the mainstream—enslaved people, queers, disenfranchised women, downtrodden artists, poor immigrants. The books here all capture things that make our society beautifully textured, diverse, and resilient.
Thanks to this book, I know that a great biography can also serve as a penetrating lens into an era. Yes, this is a book about Janis Joplin, but I do not value it because I care particularly much about the tragic specifics of her life, as much as I respect her music.
I love this book because it serves as a deep dive into the links between the often tritely-considered 1960s triumvirate: sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Echols does not lightly throw around the word “counterculture”—that’s a big pet peeve of mine—but takes the reader on a tour of the making of a clear and specific cultural divide that’s still very much with us today.
No mistake, though; it is also an empathetic tale of a sensitive and era-defining musician.
The undisputed queen of sex, drugs and rock n' roll was also the voice of a generation who, when she overdosed on heroin at the age of twenty-seven in October 1970; became the posthumous icon of bad girl femininity for millions around the world. Drawing on hundreds of interviews Echols renders Joplin in all her complexity, revealing how this sweet-voiced girl from Texas recreated herself, first as a gravely-voiced bluesy folksinger, and then as rock n' roll's first female superstar. Echols examines the roots of her musicianship and her efforts to probe the outer limits of life; declaring herself the…
