rock biographies 2023

Recently Visited

Top Categories

Children's Books

Discover Diverse Voices

More Categories

All Categories

New & Trending

Deals & Rewards

Best Sellers

From Our Editors

Memberships

Communities

Amazon Hot New Releases

Our best-selling new and future releases. updated frequently., new releases in rock band biographies.

• ← Previous page
• Next page →

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Registry & Gift List
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

The Best Music Books of 2023

By Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Our favorite books this year (listed here in alphabetical order) included memoirs from Britney Spears, Geddy Lee, Geezer Butler, Tariq Trotter of the Roots, and other iconic artists, as well as two great additions to the Beatles library, a groundbreaking biography of Lou Reed, and fascinating histories of goth, 2000s emo, and Sixties girl groups.

‘Into the Void,’ Geezer Butler

In Black Sabbath, Geezer Butler was the “Quiet One” in the Seventies’ loudest band, playing wah-wah bass rumbles and poeticizing paranoia for Ozzy Osbourne as the group’s chief lyricist. In Into the Void , he opens up about formative moments (learning that he didn’t just hate eating meat, but was actually a “vegetarian,” a word he learned on tour at an Asian restaurant), he tells unexpected stories behind the band’s most well-known lyrics (“Iron Man” is actually about Jesus Christ taking vengeance instead of forgiving), and he peels back the curtain on Sabbath’s decades of breakups and makeups. It’s entertaining and enlightening, and along with Osbourne’s and Tony Iommi’s memoirs, the book provides a welcome, alternate gospel on the birth of heavy metal. — K.G.

‘But Will You Love Me Tomorrow: An Oral History of the Sixties Girl Groups,’ Laura Flam and Emily Sieu Liebowitz

Too often, the girl groups who defined the pop charts in the early Sixties have been historicized in terms of the male producers (and sometimes the male-female songwriting teams) who called the shots. This feast of an oral history puts the focus back on the young women who sang those hits. First-time author Laura Flam and poet Emily Sieu Liebowitz have combined 100 new interviews with a slew of finely combed secondary sources. These singers know their strengths, and not just vocally, as when Nedra Talley-Ross of the Ronettes explains the group’s “eye makeup was exaggerated, our hair was exaggerated, because it was like, see me in the balcony. You had to project your voice, but you had to project your look too.” — M.M.

’60 Songs That Explain the Nineties,’ Rob Harvilla

The Nineties may well have been the most musically overstuffed decade ever, somehow packing the rise and fall of alt-rock, the golden age of hip-hop, the rise of teen pop, and so much more (Björk! Pavement! TLC!) into 10 short years. It’s a story so complex and contradictory that it’s all but impossible to convey linearly, so veteran journalist Rob Harvilla wisely chooses a more freewheeling approach in his new book, which adopts the premise of his entertaining podcast of the same name. Outkast lives next to the “Macarena” in his chronicle, which ends up invoking the feeling of wandering down a dorm hall where every room is playing something new, different, and great. —B.H.

‘Lou Reed: The King of New York,’ Will Hermes

Critic and historian Will Hermes (a contributing editor at Rolling Stone ) had unique access to Lou Reed’s archives at the New York Public Library, and emerged with the definitive biography of one of the most hard-to-pin-down rock icons of all time. The account of Reed’s childhood on Long Island and college days at Syracuse is revelatory, and the section on Reed’s tenure inventing punk rock in the Velvet Underground is definitive. Hermes perfectly situates Reed’s life and work within a historical and social context — as a reflection of bohemian life in Reed’s beloved New York City, as a pathfinding articulation of gender nonconformity, as a paragon of uncompromising creative independence, and as a beacon for generations of outsiders longing to find meaning beyond anyone else’s system. —J.D.

‘Leon Russell: The Master of Space and Time’s Journey Through Rock & Roll History,’ Bill Janovitz

Books about brilliant, self-sabotaging weirdos are usually far more entertaining than superstar biographies, and Bill Janovitz’s definitive bio of the monumentally influential pianist and singer Leon Russell is no exception. As Janovitz (also the frontman of Buffalo Tom) makes clear, Russell is a Zelig-like figure in the story of classic rock: a session musician on classics like the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man”; a key influence on Elton John and many others as a solo artist; the driving force behind the epochal Mad Dogs and Englishmen Tour, live album, and film with Joe Cocker; and a collaborator with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and others. But the book gets most interesting as Russell passes the peak of his career and spends decades drowning in his own eccentricities — and finally has a late-in-life comeback with the help of Elton John, who repaid him for the inspiration. —B.H.

‘My Effin’ Life,’ Geddy Lee

Turns out Geddy Lee’s voice as a writer can also reach unprecedented heights: Rush’s frontman, bassist, and keyboardist wrote a revealing, funny, utterly singular rock memoir, complete with a harrowing chapter on his parents’ experience as Holocaust survivors that likely features more extensive historical research than every other music autobiography put together. Fans will appreciate his generosity in doling out deep Rush lore, including the making of their classic albums, synth-era battles with guitarist Alex Lifeson over their direction, and some surprises about their drug use, but it’s his deeply felt chronicling of his early life — from facing antisemitism at school to finding his identity as a musician in the wake of his father’s early death — that lingers. —B.H.

‘Kleenex/Liliput,’ Marlene Marder and Grace Ambrose

LiLiPUT were one of the most fiercely original punk bands — Swiss women chanting in fractured English, in a herky-jerky swirl of avant-garde playground bangers and experimental art-funk. The Zurich band started out calling themselves Kleenex, until the lawyers came knocking, then became LiLiPUT halfway through their career. (Kurt Cobain listed “anything by Kleenex” on his famous list of 50 favorite albums.) But despite a string of brilliant Rough Trade singles — “ Ain’t You ,” “ Split ,” the irresistible “Ü” — they were barely known in the U.S. before breaking up in 1983. Kleenex/LiLiPUT tells their story in collage form, based on the diaries of the late guitarist Marlene Marder, photos, fanzine interviews, and an appreciation by Greil Marcus. Like LiLiPUT’s music, the book is messy, unruly, yet alive with excitement. — R.S.

‘1964: Eyes of the Storm,’ Paul McCartney

“We were a tightknit group, so only one of us would have been able to get these kinds of photographs,” writes Paul McCartney beneath photos he took of George Harrison snoozing and a thickly bespectacled John Lennon pondering the day in the back of a car. And he’s right: What makes his photo diary, 1964, so special is the intimacy of his photos of the biggest rock band in history right at Beatlemania’s flashpoint. McCartney subtitled the book “Eyes of the Storm” because of the fans who greeted them, the paparazzi who trailed them, and the security who looked after them. The most interesting aspect of exploring McCartney’s pics, taken in Liverpool, Paris, New York, and Miami, is that the band sometimes looks tired but never overwhelmed. They knew they were where they needed to be in history, right down to a chaotic shot that inspired a scene in A Hard Day’s Night. — K.G.

‘Sonic Life: A Memoir’ Thurston Moore

Read Kim Gordon’s dishy 2015 book, Girl in a Band , for an interior look at her marriage to and divorce from her Sonic Youth bandmate Thurston Moore. Read Moore’s book, which is really more of a musicology than a memoir, for a microscopic look at how his interests in punk, art, and guitar experimentalism fueled his contributions to one of alt-rock’s most daring bands. Although he dedicates about a paragraph and a half of the nearly 500-page book to his divorce, and he certainly could have revealed more personal stories about his other bandmates, Moore’s memories of being a New York band on SST, the Year Punk Broke, and the horror he felt following Kurt Cobain’s death document turning points both in his life and in the evolution of underground rock with vivid detail. — K.G.

‘Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors From the Songs of Steely Dan,’ Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay

Steely Dan’s stock is even higher today than it was in the 1970s, when they were having hit records. Critic Alex Pappademas and illustrator Joan LeMay deliver the perfect celebration of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s unique hermetic grandeur, honoring their oblique mystique while also getting at the real human beings lurking beneath the pristine tunes and cynical worldview. Each chapter is a revelatory riff on a different character in a Dan song — from Peg to Rikki to Mr. LePage to the Gaucho — with LeMay’s artwork just as smart and fun as the writing. They get into topics like the band’s secret hip-hop influence, their “famously overdetermined guitar solos,” and the dialectical nature of their relationship with fellow El Lay rock royals the Eagles. People have been trying to untangle the riddle of Steely Dan’s greatness for decades. No one’s ever done it better. — J.D. 

‘Where Are Your Boys Tonight? The Oral History of Emo’s Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008,’ Chris Payne

In Where Are Your Boys Tonight? former Billboard staffer Chris Payne delivers an oral history of the bizarre moment when emo music went mainstream in the early to mid-2000s. Payne makes sense of third-wave emo’s takeover by tracing the intimate history of the genre/subculture’s rise from the suburbs of Long Island and New Jersey. Silent Majority frontman Tommy Corrigan and former Saves the Day bassist Eben D’Amico pay homage to the shows in sweaty basements and packed VFW halls that paved the way for arena tours; Geoff Rickley from Thursday and Chris Carraba dissect their pivotal MTV appearances; heavy-hitters Pete Wentz, Hayley Williams, and Mikey Way bust myths and reveal the wildest of nuggets from their early days in the scene’s most successful bands. —M.G.

‘This Must Be the Place: Music, Community, and Vanished Spaces in New York City,’ Jesse Rifkin

Combining academic rigor with unacademic language, first-time author Jesse Rifkin has written a great New York music book unlike any other. What sets This Must Be the Place apart isn’t just its scope — Rifkin tracks 60 years’ worth of New York music history, from Washington Square Park’s open-air hootenannies to Williamsburg’s unlicensed warehouses, with stops in on the births of disco and punk, the rise of hip-hop (not to mention Bob Dylan and Madonna), and the shifting sands of gentrification — but also its focus. Few music histories are this sharply attuned to day-to-day costs and proximity as driving forces of a scene: Rifkin argues persuasively that the CBGB’s punk scene happened largely because the key band members all lived within a few blocks of the club. — M.M.

‘The Creative Act: A Way of Being,’ Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin has produced some of your favorite songs , and in The Creative Act , he details the philosophies he follows while making art. These include challenges like “Create an environment where you’re free to express what you’re afraid to express,” which he writes like a three-line poem, and “Look for what you notice but no one else sees.” The simplicity of his advice is deceptive and, in fact, Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies may be more effectual, but there’s a hypnotic quality to Rubin’s longer musings between his koans that show how he has become something of a creative guru, teaching people how to believe in themselves enough to tap into the ingenuity they already have inside them. —K.G.

‘The Woman in Me,’ Britney Spears

Britney Spears’ memoir was destined to be a blockbuster from the moment she announced it, shortly after her 13-year conservatorship was finally ended.  The Woman in Me  lived up to much of the hype: the fast-paced book details more than 40 years of pain, trauma, and exploitation that the pop star has endured. Spears names names and doesn’t hold back from letting the world know what she’s been through. The juiciest moments come from the revelations about her relationship with Justin Timberlake, adding depth and sadness to their experience together as pop’s golden couple during the early aughts. The book isn’t as meaty as other celebrity memoirs in terms of length and painstaking detail about her life and career, but it’s clear Spears needed to get some of the worst moments of her life off her chest first. Given a recent announcement that she is working on a second book, she may have only just scratched the surface. —B.S.

‘Goth: A History,’ Lol Tolhurst

Lol Tolhurst is a goth elder — he was in the Cure for their unholiest hours, in their black-lipstick funeral-party trilogy of Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography. So who better to write a scholarly, witty, yet totally engaging guide to the goth lifestyle — as he calls it, “the last true alternative outsider subculture.” He begins with literary precursors like Poe and Bronte, then moves into the music of Bauhaus, Bowie, Nico, Siouxsie, Joy Division, and others, sorting them into “Architects of Darkness” and “Spiritual Alchemists.” Tolhurst shares his own personal stories about the scene, as in his excellent 2016 memoir, Cured. But the community is timeless — “bigger than the Deadheads,” he boasts like a proud uncle. For him, goth isn’t merely music or fashion — it’s “a way to understand the world.” — R.S.

‘The Upcycled Life: A Memoir on the Art of Becoming Who We Are,’ Tariq Trotter

As the chief lyricist in the Roots, Tariq Trotter (a.k.a. Black Thought) is never without an apt word or a multilayered image. But in all his years of quotable bars, he’s kept his personal life at a cool remove; in interviews , he’ll tell you that even the most candid-sounding Roots songs are more like works of fiction, and he’s long ceded the celebrity limelight to his childhood friend and bandmate Questlove. That makes it all the more remarkable when Trotter lets the world in on the experiences that shaped him in this debut memoir, writing in detail for the first time about growing up in South Philly, losing both of his parents to street violence when he was young, and the often-challenging path he had to take to develop and protect his talent. These are stories that he’s only hinted at on the Roots’ records, but once you read them, you’ll never hear his music the same way. —S.V.L.

‘World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life that Changed My Music,’ Jeff Tweedy

Is it possible that the whole time Jeff Tweedy was impressing us as one of his generation’s most consistently moving songwriters, he was only warming up for his role as an equally insightful essayist? The Wilco frontman’s third bestseller is an extraordinary memoir disguised as a collection of music criticism. Writing about a bunch of songs he loves (by Rosalía, Dylan, the Replacements …), and a couple he can’t stand (“Wanted Dead or Alive”), Tweedy takes us through his whole journey, from misunderstood Midwestern kid to the kind of guy who can write a book like this. Each track on the playlist is a new chance for him to think through the ways we all use music to shape our identities and connect with one another. He ends up with a gently wise self-portrait of someone who’s attuned to the world’s sensitive frequencies. —S.V.L.

‘Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You,’ Lucinda Williams

There’s a matter-of-fact delivery to Lucinda Williams’ Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You, as the Southern songwriter dryly recounts a series of pivotal events and relationships in her life with the nonchalance of someone telling you what’s on their grocery list. But Williams has never been one for flash, and it’s that casual tone that makes her memoir, full of freewheeling escapades on the road, busted romances with her ideal type of man (“a poet on a motorcycle”), and paths crossed with the literati, such a personal read. “It was New Year’s Day and I was hungover as fuck,” she writes in one chapter, detailing the creation of her song “2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten.” Despite its title, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You doesn’t drop any major revelations. But it doesn’t have to: Williams’ skeletons live in plain view in her songs. —J.H.

‘Parachute Women: Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, and the Women Behind the Rolling Stones,’ Elizabeth Winder

Winder shines a light on the women of the Rolling Stones — Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, and Anita Pallenberg — who were long overlooked and dismissed as girlfriends, groupies, and mere muses. In reality, they were much more, exposing Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Brian Jones to art, culture, and high society. They got them to pick up some Russian literature, dabble in LSD, and indulge in the occasional occult practice. In other words, as Winder writes, “It’s about women of such potency that their sheer proximity turned a band of mama’s boys into Luciferian demigods.” With Parachute Women , Winder removes these powerhouses from the shadows of rock stars and hands them their well-deserved flowers — dead flowers, but flowers all the same. —A.M.

‘Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans,’   Kenneth Womack

Paul McCartney called Mal Evans “a big loveable bear of a roadie.” He was a crucial figure in the Beatles’ inner circle — their loyal road manager, assistant, friend, confidant, sometimes bodyguard, sometimes nursemaid. Everybody knows Mal as the cheerful giant from Get Back , banging the anvil or stalling the police at the door. But he had a dark side that turned deadly in coked-out Seventies California — in 1976, he aimed a rifle at the L.A. cops and was gunned down. Kenneth Womack reveals the whole Mal Evans story in Living the Beatles Legend , a complex portrait of one of the few friends all four Beatles trusted, as he shares their adventures from Liverpool to Hollywood, from Abbey Road to Rishikesh. — R.S.

Contributors: Jon Dolan , Maya Georgi , Kory Grow , Brian Hiatt , Joseph Hudak , Angie Martoccio , Michaelangelo Matos , Rob Sheffield , Brittany Spanos , Simon Vozick-Levinson

Waylon Wyatt Is Putting His Own Spin on Red Dirt — While Still in English Class

• New Kid in Town
• By Joseph Hudak

Timothée Chalamet Channels Infamous Bob Dylan Look at 'Complete Unknown' New York Premiere

• By Daniel Kreps

Jay-Z Accuser Acknowledges Allegation Inconsistencies: 'Made Some Mistakes'

• COURTS AND CRIME
• By Charisma Madarang

Charli XCX Cast Alongside Jenna Ortega, Natalie Portman in New Film

• The BIg Screen
• By Ethan Millman

Sean Combs Drops Bail Appeal, Will Remain Jailed Until Trial

• By Cheyenne Roundtree

Most Popular

Elton john called the legalization of marijuana in america and canada 'one of the greatest mistakes of all time', oscar predictions via feinberg forecast: scott's updated picks post afi, l.a. film critics and golden globes announcements, papoose says he's requested divorce "numerous times," remy ma exposes his "gf" claressa shields, look mom: when photographers and their parents collaborate, you might also like, south korea president to be suspended after parliament’s historic impeachment vote, dallas market center’s former president and ceo bill winsor dies at 78, the best yoga mats for any practice, according to instructors, feeling cynical at the holidays try nickelodeon’s ‘invader zim’ and ‘the most horrible x-mas ever’, sportico transactions: moves and mergers roundup for dec. 13.

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

The 10 Best Music Books of 2023

Every year there are countless books released about music—2023 alone included dishy memoirs from Britney Spears, Barbra Streisand, and Sly Stone, plus a big-deal, authorized bio on Tupac. In our estimation, the best works tend to give the reader new ears with which to listen. What follows is a list of personal favorites from this year, as picked by Pitchfork staffers and contributors. Happy reading!

Check out all of Pitchfork’s 2023 wrap-up coverage here .

60 Songs That Explain the ’90s

In 2020, as the pandemic forced everyone who didn’t live on a megayacht to upend their entire lives, retreating into the nostalgia of one’s youth became an all-but-necessary coping mechanism. Veteran music writer Rob Harvilla felt that same urge. But instead of merely staring into the middle distance while washing dishes to Gin Blossoms’ “Hey Jealousy,” he put his musical memories to work and made an essayistic podcast called 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s . And now that very funny and startlingly insightful show—which has grown to cover more than 100 songs—has its own very funny and startlingly insightful book. (Full disclosure: I once lost money to Harvilla in a basement poker game in 2010, and recently guested on the 60 Songs podcast.)

The entire endeavor succeeds because Harvilla is so good at conveying his teenage excitement (he’s unafraid to use the descriptor “rad,” repeatedly) while also offering the wisdom of a fortysomething dad who’s been writing about music for much of his adult life. For every loving one-liner (listening to Celine Dion sing is “like drinking rosé from a fire hose”) or list of the 20 Worst Red Hot Chili Peppers Song Titles (don’t worry, “Party on Your Pussy” makes the Top 10), there are sober reflections on Courtney Love reading Kurt Cobain’s suicide note, or how white rap fans (like him, like me) would be smart to understand that they’re eavesdropping when they listen to a song like Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day.” Earnest, empathetic, and admirably goofy, Harvilla is an ideal guide to the most random decade in pop history. –Ryan Dombal

All products featured on Pitchfork are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Black Punk Now

When James Spooner first logged on in 2001, he immediately Googled “Black punk.” A blank screen stared back at him: There were zero links. Spooner knew this was inaccurate—he had countless Black punk friends and collaborators—but the experience underscored that if no one else was going to document his culture, then it was up to him. This is what motivated Spooner to create the Afropunk documentary and festival, as well as compile this new anthology of writing alongside Black Card author Chris L. Terry.

Black Punk Now uses a multi-genre approach, from fiction to graphics to screenplays, to showcase the ways Black punks move through the world. In “The Princess and the Pit,” Mariah Stovall explores the racialized beauty standards of punk shows via a feminist fairytale. The script for comedian Kash Abdulmalik’s short film, Let Me Be Understood , meditates on one musician’s desire to have an honest relationship with his father.

The collection’s greatest strength is how it captures the pure joy felt by its contributors while living on the fringes, the integrity they’ve gained from being misunderstood by the white establishment. (As contributor Bobby Hackney Jr. puts it, what is more punk than challenging what people think “Black” is supposed to be?) Taken together, these works show readers that “punk” is a commitment to liberation from the tedium of mainstream culture, and a way to demand much more. –Mary Retta

The Golden Voice: The Ballad of Cambodian Rock’s Lost Queen

One of the best graphic novels of the year is a riveting portrait of an undersung musical hero and an intense document of wartime Cambodia. Gregory Cahill tells the story of Ros Serey Sothea, the prolific ’60s and ’70s Cambodian rock singer who seemed to rocket from rice farmer to national treasure overnight. It’s an underdog story told through the lens of the Cambodian Civil War’s propaganda machine.

Scenes of Cambodian rock’n’roll club nights and studio recording sessions are depicted in a blissful sunrise palette of deep reds and oranges, with sheet music floating translucently into the ether. Music is central to the experience of enjoying the book; there’s an accompanying playlist, and each page has track cues, so the sound of Sothea’s music is never abstract. But the book is also full of darkness: A constant military presence hangs over Golden Voice , and it closes with the Khmer Rouge seizing power and burning Sothea’s records. It’s a tragedy with heart-wrenching illustrations and a solid history lesson, soundtracked by incredible vintage Cambodian records. –Evan Minsker

Goth: A History

Despite its totemic title, Goth: A History is neither a sociology textbook nor a definitive document of the subculture. Instead, Lol Tolhurst—a core member of the Cure across its gothiest period—has written a memoir and social history of his years in the scene’s cobwebbed trenches. Structured more like the florid chaos of the Cure’s Pornography than the linear minimalism of their Seventeen Seconds , the book wends its way from capsule meditations on the genre’s influences (Nico, Bowie, Camus, Sartre) into diaristic recollections from the Cure’s gloomy golden era; he wraps up with mini-profiles on fellow travelers like Cocteau Twins and Nine Inch Nails. But many of the book’s most revealing passages are its most personal, like running into Depeche Mode’s Andy Fletcher while in rehab, or discovering that his buttoned-up IRS agent was also a secret member of the sect.

Situating goth at the intersection of punk and Sylvia Plath, Tolhurst describes the movement as a necessary reaction to the bleakness of post-WWII England. Yet, as he considers its decades-long endurance and 21st-century mainstreaming, he also notes the universality of its message: “It can get lonely being the only weirdo in town. We all want a tribe to belong to.” At Portland’s Powell’s Books, I bought my own copy of Goth along with an armload of children’s books. “It looks like I’m trying to turn my daughter into a goth,” I said to the woman behind the register. Without so much as a smile, she replied, “We all get there eventually.” –Philip Sherburne

Hachette Books

Kleenex/LiLiPUT

In the raw rapture of their shredded shrieks and destabilized noise, O.G. punks Kleenex made the Sex Pistols sound like the Rolling Stones. Though the Swiss group broke up in 1983—changing their name to LiLiPUT in 1979 after a threat from the tissue company—it’s taken 40 years for English-language fans to fully access the primary document of this crucial all-woman band: the diaries of guitarist Marlene Marder, who died in 2016.

Originally published in German in 1986, the diary was also a scrapbook capturing “the detritus that comes with playing in a band,” as described by editor Grace Ambrose, who instigated this English translation for the inaugural book on her Kansas City, Missouri-based punk label, Thrilling Living, which has released music by the likes of Special Interest and Girlsperm.

Supplemented by zine clippings, photos, and visual ephemera—including relics of Kleenex’s 1979 UK tour with the Raincoats—the collage-like Kleenex/LiLiPUT book creates its own paradigm for punk storytelling by imposing no definitive Kleenex narrative, instead replicating the ever-in-process nature of the unruly music. Legendary rock critic Greil Marcus’ original introduction to Marder’s diary is included along with another of his enlightening columns on the band, in which he writes, “Punk had good taste in ancestors.” He was talking about the Kleenex-Dada connection, but the same rings true of punks today, who see themselves in this history still. –Jenn Pelly

Thrilling Living

Lou Reed: The King of New York

Several strong Lou Reed bios were already out there by the time Will Hermes published The King of New York this fall. Victor Bockris’ Transformer: The Complete Lou Reed Story is a compelling document of the New York underground of the ’60s and early ’70s, while Anthony DeCurtis’ Lou Reed: A Life has first-person intimacy while situating the singer’s work among his rock contemporaries. But Hermes tells the best story, finding the ideal mix of big-picture narrative sweep and intriguing details.

The book frames Reed’s life in a way that speaks to our current cultural moment, revealing how the fluidness of sexuality and gender in Reed’s milieu hinted at the world to come, and it deepens your appreciation of his hugely varied recorded output. Hermes’ previous book, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire , was a personal examination of New York’s influential downtown music scene in the ’70s, and the city is just as influential here, growing and changing alongside Reed while forever informing his art. This shifting contextual backdrop makes Hermes especially fun to read on the Velvet Underground frontman’s notoriously spotty solo albums. Few artists risked failure like Reed did, and this book will have you digging for records you once ignored, from his wispy debut to the shocking power of Lulu ’s “ Junior Dad .” –Mark Richardson

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse

When writer Howard Fishman first heard Connie Converse’s beautifully melancholic folk music at a party in 2010, he became consumed by a quest to find out what became of the obscure mid-century singer. Thirteen years and 550 pages later, the New Yorker contributor has turned in the definitive history of Converse’s life. With To Anyone Who Ever Asks , he traces her story, from her tragedy-marred early years in small-town New England, to an escape to New York in the 1940s and ’50s and eventual retreat to Ann Arbor, Michigan. Converse eventually disappeared in 1974, speeding off in her Volkswagen and writing to loved ones asking them not to look for her.

Fishman uncovers not the shy wallflower that her songs suggest, but a binge-drinking, heavy-smoking bohemian widely ahead of her time, who performed for Walter Cronkite, composed operas, and championed civil rights. He occasionally falls into fanboy tendencies, glorifying every artistic move by Converse with uncritical praise. But for anyone who has ever wondered about the person behind these lost songs, or just what it means to make art that no one will fully appreciate until decades later, To Anyone Who Ever Asks provides as much of a proper answer as we’ll ever get. –David Glickman

Testigos del fin del mundo

In his debut book, Bolivian music critic and professor Javier A. Rodríguez-Camacho chronicles the untold history of 2010s Ibero-American indie music. The book includes artists from Latin America, the United States, and Spain—an editorial choice that illustrates how multiple genres and geographical locations of the Spanish-speaking world have always been in conversation with each other. Instead of presenting a definitive canon, Rodríguez-Camacho traces an incomplete but dynamic map of the era’s scenes and sounds through 120 albums, spanning everything from the Chilean indie pop explosion to the Mexican ruidosón movement.

It’s an archival endeavor structured through individual album reviews, each of which transcends mere formal description. The chapters are meticulously contextualized, immersing readers into the musical and sociopolitical milieu from which these albums sprouted. But they also explore how these artists speak to shared experiences across the Spanish-speaking diaspora—regardless of the “zip code of their residence, their accents, or their stylistic influences.” The book is packed with delightful easter eggs, too, like playlist recommendations from guest contributors. Its creative direction is vividly inspired by the blogs and streaming platforms that revolutionized the decade, with tracklists, sidebars, and credits surrounding each review as though you can click on them. Whether you’re reading up on culture-shifting artists like Arca, or discovering Puerto Rican trap pioneers like Füete Billëte, Testigos del fin del mundo is an illuminating compendium that documents scenes and sounds that have lived in the shadows for too long. —Isabelia Herrera

Rey Naranjo Editores

Wayward: Just Another Life to Live

Those drawn to Vashti Bunyan ’s memoir likely know her story already: a ’70s British singer-songwriter whose freak-folk debut Just Another Diamond Day developed a cult following—thanks in part to fans like Animal Collective and Devendra Banhart—that inspired her to return in the 2000s with a long-awaited follow-up. Originally released in the UK last year, Wayward delivers far more than that familiar redemption arc.

Bunyan’s life story is one of striking defiance and quiet beauty, the combination of which moves the heart in unexpected ways. She recounts wearing the fragile shellac of her father’s 78s so thin that her parents removed the needle as punishment; skipping class to play guitar and fraternize with soon-to-be Monty Python co-founders Michael Palin and Terry Jones; and recording her debut single with Jimmy Page while Mick Jagger facetiously imitated her voice. “I was quietly delighting in being a small part of the big fuck-you,” she writes.

Perpetually drawn to the outdoors, from searching for bones amid post-WW2 rubble as a kid, to voyaging to Donovan ’s Scottish commune by horse and carriage in her 20s, Bunyan long rooted her music’s roving spirit in a desire for physicality that’s muddy and crestfallen. For a figure that’s been upheld as fragile and innocent, the true story of Bunyan the musician is that of a woman-turned-nomad fueled by an awareness that the more people and places you meet, the more your perception of the world grows. –Nina Corcoran

White Rabbit

World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music

Jeff Tweedy admits in the introduction to his third book, World Within a Song , that he would have started here, with brief love letters to important songs throughout his life, had he been more confident as a writer. Instead, the Wilco frontman felt the pressure to pen a more conventional memoir in 2018’s Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) , then followed that up with How to Write One Song , his down-to-earth approach to the guru-littered gutters of the “creativity guide” genre. Both books are excellent—warm, funny, unflinchingly honest, and clearly the work of a true music fan. But World Within a Song allows Tweedy to go full nerd, not as a tangent to a story but as the story itself. The effect is something like a book-length version of Pitchfork’s own 5-10-15-20 interview series , where stray memories become reflexively intertwined with certain lyrics or melodies.

Tweedy writes like he talks—direct, enthusiastic, relatable, self-aware when he’s corny—and it’s a quick and enjoyable read even when he opines on well-worn hits like “Smoke on the Water.” The best parts are when he focuses on specific moments with family members that shifted his view of things: his mom connecting to Lene Lovich’s “Lucky Number” while watching the “New Wave” episode of The Midnight Special with him, her own “you live alone, you die alone” worldview reflected back; discovering, after many years of assuming otherwise, that his cousin did not write Bachman–Turner Overdrive’s “Takin’ Care of Business.” It’s not all classic rock and vintage alternative, though—I gotta hand it to Tweedy, I didn’t expect to be so moved by his take on Rosalía’s “Bizcochito.” He writes, upon Googling lyric translations and realizing he’d understood the emotion even though he doesn’t speak Spanish, “I could actually hear the look on her face. I could see the man she was singing to—pinpoint the heartache to a specific moment in her life.” –Jill Mapes