Much of the best contemporary writing about music challenges ideas of objectivity, especially when including creative nonfiction in the form of personal narrative. Such writing often combines the personal, the political, and the historical in new and inventive ways that reveal the interconnectedness of these categories.
Since publishing this piece ranking contemporary books that blend music writing and personal narrative at PopMatters last year, a boom of contending titles has been published to shake up the field further and challenge the authority of “objective” writing about music.
A few contenders did not make the list: I didn’t find Jeff Tweedy’s World Within a Song as compelling as these titles, and some superior books didn’t make the list because they were less music-focused–for example, the Cure’s Lol Tolhurst’s excellent Goth: A History has much about the history of goth music, but in some ways it’s more about the goth subculture and surrounding movements, including in art and literature as well.
These books are ranked not only for quality but also for the sophistication with which they blend music writing, including criticism and history, with personal narrative. They combine vulnerable personal reflection with historically grounded analysis, with some using critical theory and one being downright hilarious. All are worth reading.
5. Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell by Ann Powers (Dey Street Books, 2024)
NPR’s Ann Powers is a crucially important critic, and this book on Joni Mitchell’s status as a cultural icon combines illuminating and incisive analysis of Mitchell’s music with investigations into surrounding scenes and collaborations, including the 1970s Laurel Canyon scene and jazz fusion. Powers incorporates personal narrative with parallels in her own life, and in writing Traveling, she wanted to maintain distance from her subject, which benefits the book as a whole. There’s far less hero-worship than expected, with Powers reckoning with Mitchell’s use of blackface in the late 1970s, and though I found the integration of music and personal narrative less sophisticated than that in the other books on this list, this winding reflection on the world(s) that made Joni Mitchell is very much worth reading.
4. Hip-Hop Is History by Questlove with Ben Greenman (AUWA Books, 2024)
As drummer for the Roots and director of the Grammys’ 50th-anniversary salute to hip-hop, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson further asserts his knowledge and authority in this book, where he weaves together a cohesive narrative on the genre’s first half-century. There’s a lot on the music and artists with which Questlove shares personal ties, including De La Soul and J Dilla. Still, his takes on different artists are sensible and well-considered: he’s insightful about his biases and skepticism, and his reflections on the genre’s associations with technology and drugs of different eras help contextualize hip-hop. Questlove admits his comparative lack of knowledge about more recent hip-hop, but the book is also funny and playful, especially in its epilogue from hip-hop’s projected centennial in 2073. The combination of authority, insight, personal narrative, and humor make Hip-Hop Is History an excellent survey that deserves a spot on this list.
3. I Sing to Use the Waiting: A Collection of Essays about the Women Singers Who’ve Made Me Who I Am by Zachary Pace (Two Dollar Radio, 2024)
Poet Zachary Pace’s debut essay collection, I Sing to Use the Waiting, reflects on some of the female singers that have influenced their queer identity. Pace engages with issues such as Madonna’s spirituality, Cat Power’s bootleg performances, Cher’s movie roles, Rihanna’s relationship to the colonial history of Barbados, and Joanna Newsom’s vocabulary to create a book that is wide in scope yet highly personal and lyrical. They incorporate queer theory and psychoanalytic theory to inform readings of different voices, and some of the most devastating essays focus on Whitney Houston, Pocahontas (the person and the 1995 Disney movie), and Pace’s familial relations. Though less ambitious than the other books on this list, I Sing to Use the Waiting deserves special recognition for the quality of its prose and the sharpness of its ideas.
2. 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s by Rob Harvilla (Twelve, 2023)
The most striking thing about critic and podcaster Rob Harvilla’s 60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s is its humor: this is easily the funniest music book I’ve ever read. I can’t count how many times I laughed out loud when listening to the audiobook. However, it’s also unusually insightful, personal, and sharp, and it is full of excellent research on the 1990s music that impacted Harvilla’s life, including in fatherhood. Descriptions of well over 100 songs are quite strong, as Harvilla self-effacingly blasts through critical cliches about “badass” women and “selling out”. Though I would’ve appreciated more analysis of ‘90s country music, 60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s is a great book that rewards careful analysis and quick reading.
1. My Black Country: A Journey through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future by Alice Randall (Atria/Black Privilege Publishing, 2024)
It was tough for me to pick a book as number one for this list, but Alice Randall, the first Black woman to co-write a #1 country hit, Trisha Yearwood’s “XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl)”, has written a fantastic, moving memoir with the strongest integration of music history and personal narrative of any of the books listed here. Her prose is elegant and evocative, rich in place and atmosphere, with exceptional insight into the history of country music and Black participation therein. Randall writes passionately about her First Family of Black Country, including early figures like Lil Hardin and later superstars like Charley Pride. She recounts her journey in the country music industry, facing racism and sexism. Her recuperative work, discovering and highlighting erased Black country figures, makes clear the indisputable significance of Black people in country music. This is one of the best, most illuminating music memoirs I’ve ever read.