Showing results for "LOVE" in History & Criticism

Non-fans regard Céline Dion as ersatz and plastic, yet to those who love her, no one could be more real, with her impoverished childhood, her (creepy) manager-husband's struggle with cancer, her knack for howling out raw emotion. There's nothing cool about Céline Dion, and nothing clever. That's part of her appeal as an object of love or hatred — with most critics and committed music fans taking pleasure (or at least geeky solace) in their lofty contempt.

Rob Sheffield, the Rolling Stone columnist and bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape offers an entertaining, unconventional look at the most popular band in history, the Beatles, exploring what they mean today and why they still matter so intensely to a generation that has never known a world...

This book charts the emergence of Kate Bush in the early-to-mid-1980s as a courageous experimentalist, a singularly expressive recording artist and a visionary music producer. Track-by-track commentaries focus on the experience of the album from the listener’s point of view, drawing attention to the art and craft of Bush’s songwriting, production and sound design.

The definitive, no-holds-barred oral history of 1990s alt-rock festival Lollapalooza―told by the musicians, roadies, and industry insiders who lived it—includes a foreword by Kim Thayil of Soundgarden! From the New York Times bestselling authors of Nothin’ But A Good Time. In Lollapalooza...

Weaving together more than a hundred interviews with Davis's bandmates, family members, friends, and peers, this book powerfully reconstructs Davis's extraordinary life and career. Washita Love Child thoroughly and finally restores the "red dirt boogie brother" to his rightful place in rock history, cementing his legacy for generations to come.

A lively introduction to opera, from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century There are few art forms as visceral and emotional as opera -- and few that are as daunting for newcomers. A Mad Love offers a spirited and indispensable tour of opera's eclectic past and present, beginning with...

Paul Morley had stopped being surprised by modern pop music and found himself retreating into the sounds of artists he loved when, as an emerging music journalist in the '70s, he wrote for NME. But not wishing to give in to dreary nostalgia, endlessly circling back to the bands he wrote about in the past, he went searching for something new, rare and wondrous - and found it in classical music.

February, 1940. After a decade of worldwide depression, World War II had begun in Europe and Asia. With Germany on the march and Japan at war with China, the global crisis was in a crescendo. America's top songwriter, Irving Berlin, had captured the nation's mood a little more than a year before with his patriotic hymn "God Bless America."

Nelson George's chronicle of Motown Records' rise and fall remains a classic account of an essential American music company and its dynamic founder, Berry Gordy Jr. Gordy's uncanny instinct for finding extraordinary talent - from performers and musicians to songwriters and producers - packed the label's roster with a who's who of historic artists and hitmakers.

Die Königin des Rock'n'Roll. "Liebe hat mein Leben gerettet. Davon will ich erzählen." Tina Turner, die Königin des Rock 'n' Roll, wird bald 80 Jahre alt. Unter dem Eindruck einer lebensbedrohlichen Erkrankung, die sie aufgrund einer wunderbaren Wendung überwinden konnte, schildert sie erstmals ihre ganze Geschichte. "Private Dancer", "Simply the Best", "I Can't Stand the Rain" - jeder, der Tina Turners Musik hört, ahnt etwas von ihrer Energie. Ihr Lebenswille und nie versiegender Mut brachten sie aus der Enge der Kindheit in Tennessee auf die Bühnen der Welt.

In this sweeping history of popular music in the United States, NPR’s acclaimed music critic examines how popular music shapes fundamental American ideas and beliefs, allowing us to communicate difficult emotions and truths about our most fraught social issues, most notably sex and race. In...

Nearly 20 years in the making, Can't Buy Me Love is a masterful work of group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism. That the Beatles were an unprecedented phenomenon is a given. Here Jonathan Gould seeks to explain why, placing the Fab Four in the broad and tumultuous panorama of their time and place, rooting their story in the social context that girded both their rise and their demise.

George Harrison and Eric Clapton shared a legendary and tumultuous friendship that shaped not only their respective lives and careers, but the shifting face of rock itself in the early 1970s. All Things Must Pass Away traces that friendship from its earliest roots in 1964, when Beatles-averse blues-rocker Eric met George backstage at the Hammersmith Odeon, through the messy trials of Clapton's affair with Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd, to the turn of the century, as the two elder statesmen of rock traded honors during Harrison's final days.

Stephen Catanzarite takes a close look at what many consider to be U2's most fully formed album through the prisms of religion, politics, spirituality, and culture, illuminating its previously unexplored depths, arguing that it's a concept album about love and the fall of man.

A whimsical guide to the conduct of a romance interwoven with the history of classical music, which is, surprisingly, not as nice as you might think.... The history of classical music is littered with murder, sado-masochism, adultery, bigamy, fraud, riches, poverty, nervous breakdowns, bizarre habits, gluttony and terrible, terrible toilet humour (Mozart was the prime exponent of the latter).

Award-winning photographer and author of My Last Supper Melanie Dunea traces the through-lines from country music’s gritty roots to the chart-topping chanteuses of today. My Country presents beautiful, imaginative, and revealing depictions of icons ranging from Taylor Swift to Wynonna Judd to Little Jimmy Dickens alongside interviews that reveal the stars’ musical roots and inspirations, their defining moments, and what makes country music the heart and soul of America.