Synopses & Reviews
As much fun to argue with as to quote, is a monumental work of musical history, tracing the story of pop music through individual songs, bands, musical scenes, and styles from Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock around the Clock" (1954) to Beyoncé's first megahit, "Crazy in Love" (2003). It covers the birth of rock, soul, R&B, punk, hip hop, indie, house, techno, and more, and it will remind you why you fell in love with pop music in the first place.
Review
"Rich with musical history lived, worked, and felt, with dozens more chapters and digressions that pay pop its due... is smart, funny, surprisingly deep for just how broad it is, but, most of all, for stars and songs great and small, it is full of love." Joshua Joy Kamensky
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"A landmark celebration, rumination and encapsulation of just about everything worth knowing--and arguing--about the pop landscape... A book for the ages." Los Angeles Review of Books
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"[Stanley is] as clear-eyed about music as he is crazy in love with it." Matt Damsker USA Today
Review
"An immensely entertaining pop-music survey course. [Stanley] is engagingly opinionated and often very, very funny... The assemblage of irresistible, bite-size histories of top-of-the-charts stars is joyful, smart, and addictive, just like the best pop songs, and a must for music fans everywhere." Mikael Wood Los Angeles Times
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"[Stanley] provides an intriguing view of the shifting ground of pop music." Booklist, Starred review
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"Bob Stanley loves and finds surprising connections between a thousand kinds of pop. He makes me want to run to the nearest record store--and move in." Publishers Weekly
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" ties together the disparate strands of pop's shape-shifting history to create a vivid living document of the music of our lives." Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields
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"This book will be remembered and deserves to be." Greg Milner, author of Perfecting Sound Forever
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"Quixotic and kaleidoscopic, serves up erudite irreverence on every page. Like its sprawling subject, it invites everyone in for a listen." Robert Christgau Barnes & Noble Review
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"Tells the story of American and British pop music almost as engagingly as the songs themselves." Chris Vognar Dallas Morning News
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"Zips through decades of dance tunes and teenage heartthrobs with an affectionate ebullience... As good 'a story of pop music' as a fan could hope for." Glenn Gamboa Newsday
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"[An] exuberant celebration of the silly and the sublime... [Stanley's] writing delights and surprises, and his description of the music makes you want to dance to it." Ryan Little Washington Post
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"{A] Roller-coaster ride through pop history... encourages readers to look deeper into offshoots of 'pop' and performers they might not be so familiar with." Sarah Larson The New Yorker
Review
"An ambitious undertaking... Stanley's bold positions connect pop's many dots in fresh and fascinating patterns." Bob Ruggiero Houston Press
Synopsis
A monumental work of musical history, Yeah Yeah Yeah traces the story of pop music through songs, bands, musical scenes, and styles from Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock around the Clock" (1954) to Beyonc 's first megahit, "Crazy in Love" (2003). Bob Stanley--himself a musician, music critic, and fan--teases out the connections and tensions that animated the pop charts for decades, and ranges across the birth of rock, soul, R&B, punk, hip hop, indie, house, techno, and more. Yeah Yeah Yeah is a vital guide to the rich soundtrack of the second half of the twentieth century and a book as much fun to argue with as to quote.
Synopsis
"Breezy, opinionated and totally delicious."--David Kirby,
About the Author
Bob Stanley has worked as a music journalist, a DJ, and a record label owner and is the cofounder and keyboard player for the band Saint Etienne. He lives in London.