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Top of the pile
83
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
85/100Critics
81/100Scholars
Author:
Bob Stanley
Publisher:
Pegasus Books
Date:
September 6, 2022
A history bringing together all musical genres to tell the definitive narrative of the birth of Pop from 1900 to the mid-1950s.
What The Reviewers Say
Stanley steers well clear of these classical pioneers (even those, such as Kurt Weill, who dipped a lot more than a toe into popular music), but does an inspired job of identifying and describing all the tangled roots of pre-rock popular music. He’s not pompous enough to put forward anything as scholarly as a thesis — but a sort of thesis emerges anyway. It’s that, for the first time in history, technology became the driving force behind music’s development.
... feels vastly broader in scope, by necessity encompassing everything from music hall to Muddy Waters. Because Stanley continues the stories of pre-rock’n’roll stars long after the rise of rock’n’roll a book that begins in Victorian London ends, more or less, in the present day: a huge timespan to cover, even in 600 pages.
... vying for the title of best music book of the year.
... the author manages to ruminate on 50-plus years of pop music. And that is quite an achievement, given that he presents reams of information in an engrossing way..
