Great music books from 2023
This year was another fantastic one for music books. Below you'll find a selection of our favourites that include memoir, essay, nonfiction and even the fashion of an icon.
Half Deaf, Completely Mad by Tony Cohen & John Olson
Maverick music producer-engineer Tony Cohen defined Australia’s punk and rock sounds in the late ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. His long and celebrated career took him from the studios of Melbourne and Sydney to West Berlin and London’s Abbey Road, working with innumerable bands up until his death in 2017.
In candid reflections, Tony shares details of his decades-long relationship with Nick Cave, and provides behind-the-scenes access to recordings by Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, Cat Stevens, Jim Keays, Lobby Loyde, The Ferrets, Split Enz, Laughing Clowns, Models, Magazine, The Reels, The Go-Betweens, Hunters & Collectors, Cold Chisel, Beasts of Bourbon, The Saints, X, Michael Hutchence, The Cruel Sea, TISM, Paul Kelly and so many more.
Songs from the Kitchen Table by Archie Roach & Ruby Hunter
A year after he entered the Dreamtime, Archie Roach's spirit continues to soar, much like the wedge-tailed eagle - his totem animal from his mother's ancestral lands. Archie's songs stand as anthems for the experience of dispossession, and have touched the lives of many with their empathetic message of shared humanity. Songs from the Kitchen Table is a tribute to the power of Archie's voice, and to the career he built with his life partner and musical collaborator, Ruby Hunter.
This beautiful, illustrated volume contains the lyrics to over 100 of their songs, carefully curated by Archie's manager and friend, Jill Shelton and are accompanied by stories about their composition; rare photographs; handwritten lyrics; album covers and artwork; and heartfelt tributes.
The Woman in Me by Britney Spears
In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice - her truth - was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey-and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.
Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears's groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love - and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.
Listen: On Music, Sound and Us by Michel Faber
Listen reflects Michel Faber's lifelong obsession with music of all kinds and explores two big questions: how we listen to music and why we listen to music.
To answer these questions he considers biology, age, illness, the notion of 'cool', commerce, the dichotomy between 'good' and 'bad' taste and, through extensive interviews with musicians, unlocks some surprising answers. Listen will change your relationship with the heard world.
Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine edited by Mark Davidson & Parker Fishel
This carefully curated selection of over 600 images has been drawn from The Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma which is home to a treasure trove of some 6,000 Bob Dylan original manuscripts. Including never-before-circulated draft lyrics, writings, photographs, drawings and other ephemera from the Dylan archive the book focuses on the full scope of Dylan's working life particularly from the dynamic perspective of his ongoing and shifting creative processes.
Along with essays from a range of distinguised writers, poets, artists and musicians who were invited to visit the collection and write about a a single item which beguiled or inspired them, Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine is the magnum opus every Dylan fan has been waiting for and will also be a landmark publication for a broader cultural audience.
Book of Life by Deborah Conway
In this no-holds-barred memoir, Deborah Conway pulls back the curtain on the fevered world of a 1980's post punk band and the spectacular rise and fall and rise of one of the more obstreperous women working inside Australia's music industry, a woman who has straddled the high arts and the low without losing her footing or her mind and whose fierce independence has seen her produce her best work.
Welcome to the good, the bad and the ugly of an extraordinary life.
Sound Bites by Ed Le Brocq
Have you ever wondered where our music comes from? How did we arrive here, a place where we can have a hundred musicians on stage executing the wildest rhythms, a singer performing the most heartbreaking of melodies, or a solitary pianist playing an instrument that weighs half a tonne? How did the melodies and harmonies we listen to today, right now, come about?
Ed Le Brocq invites you on a journey through a living tradition that spans millennia: the tradition of Western classical music. You will roam its bendy path, from the Mesopotamians to the mediaeval age to music composed just last week by Australia's most creative minds and discover many fascinating facts and insights along the way.
Sonic Life by Thurston Moore
Iconic American musician and Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore's long-awaited memoir is a music-obsessed retrospective. From rock 'n' roll in the '60s to punk and no wave in the '70s and the formation of experiemental rock group Sonic Youth in the early '80s, Moore has continued to progress and explore.
In Sonic Life, he reflects on a life lived in an environment of wild music and endless wonder, and the constellation of artists and musicians who colluded and collided with Sonic Youth. Simply put, Thurston Moore and Sonic Youth changed the sound of modern alternative rock music and opened the minds of a generation of artists to new possibilities within the form.
Into Your Arms: Nick Cave's Songs Reimagined edited by Kirsten Krauth
Some of Australia's favourite creators, including Christos Tsiolkas, Cate Kennedy and Andy Griffiths, respond to Nick Cave's visionary genius with their own original and unsettling tales of death, faith, violence and love in this follow up to Minds Went Walking: Paul Kelly's Songs Reimagined.
From an automaton of Nick Cave, to a man who can't keep his blood out of the food he is preparing; from a vengeful Uber driver to a spinner of souls; and from a boy caught up in a robbery to a girl desperate to save a failing greyhound, the characters who populate this short story anthology could have dropped straight from a Nick Cave song book.
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
Music producer Rick Rubin is known for creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn't, he has learned that being an artist isn't about your specific output; it's about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone's life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more important responsibilities.
The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distils the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime's work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments – and lifetimes – of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.
Love & Pain by Ben Gillies & Chris Joannou with Alley Pascoe
This is the powerful, untold story of two of the three members of Silverchair, Australia's most awarded musical act. From their beginnings in Ben Gillies' garage, this trio of high school kids from Newcastle, New South Wales, became famous with their smash-hit single 'Tomorrow', setting them on a path to domination of the Australian charts, worldwide touring and fame.
So much has been written about Silverchair over the years but very little has been said by the band's members. In Love & Pain, childhood friends Ben Gillies (drummer) and Chris Joannou (bass player) tell us tales about growing up across the road from each other and starting in Silverchair, wild stories from the peak of their days in the spotlight, and the ups and downs of how their lives have panned out since.
Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams
Iconic singer-songwriter and three-time Grammy winner, Lucinda Williams is one of the greatest and most influential songwriters of our time, but her rise to fame was anything but easy.
Raw, intimate and honest, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You is an evocative reflection on an extraordinary woman’s life journey from Williams’s traumatic childhood in the Deep South, her years of being overlooked in the music industry, and the stories that inspired her enduring songs.
Full Coverage by Samuel J. Fell
For over fifty years, Australia has maintained its own rock press – a vibrant, passionate, sometimes volatile industry of dozens of papers and magazines committed to the coverage of the country's robust music scene. From the glossy and glamorous to the punk and pernicious, these publications were the medium that brought Australian music culture to international attention and launched the careers of countless musicians, as well as writers, editors and photographers.
Drawing on comprehensive research and dozens of interviews, journalist Samuel Fell captures the vibrancy of music journalism in Australia with colourful anecdotes and surprising stories. Full Coverage is the tale of how the Australian rock press was born, grew and evolved to become an integral part of Australian culture.
Marr's Guitars by Johnny Marr
The guitarist’s guitarist, Johnny Marr redefined music for a generation. His ringing arpeggios and chordal innovations helped elevate The Smiths to be one of the most influential and important British bands of all time.
Tracing Marr’s career from his teenage years to his recent work on the Bond soundtrack, this stunning photographic representation, accompanied by personal reflections and insights, showcases the most significant of Marr’s superb collection of electric and acoustic guitars, revealing through them the evolution of his iconic sound and style of playing.
Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones by Dolly Parton
In Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, global superstar Dolly Parton shares, for the first time, the full story behind her lifelong passion for fashion, including how she developed her own, distinctly Dolly style, which has defied convention and endeared her to fans around the world.
This gorgeously photographed book features behind-the-scenes stories from Parton's life and career, and the largest reveal of her private costume archive, spotlighting her most unforgettable looks from the 1960s to now. A shining tribute to one of the most beloved musicians in history.
George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle by Philip Norman
From the author of the bestselling Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation and John Lennon: The Life comes a revealing portrait of George Harrison, the most undervalued and mysterious Beatle.
Unprecedented in scope and filled with numerous colour photos, this rich biography captures George Harrison at his most multi-faceted: devoted friend, loyal son, master guitar-player, brilliant songwriter, cocaine addict, serial philanderer, global philanthropist, student of Indian mysticism, self-deprecating comedian and, ultimately, iconic artist and man beloved by millions.
Karma by Boy George
Boy George has led a colourful life, to say the least, with his androgynous look making him the poster boy of a counter culture and of the glam rock generation, becoming a LGBTQ+ icon along the way. Controversial and unapologetic, he was part of the New Romantic movement that started in the late 1970s/early 80s, birthing other stars like Marilyn and Steve Strange who were equally influenced by glam rock pioneers like David Bowie and Marc Bolan. The band itself had incredible success and remain together to this day, through the ups and downs of the ensuing decades.
Now, Boy George is telling his story in full for the very first time – from the early days of his music career in the 70s and 80s, through the hedonism of the 80s and 90s, through to the resurgence he's enjoying in present-day,
My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand
Barbra Streisand is a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment. She is among the handful of EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) and has one of the greatest and most recognisable voices in popular music.
In her eagerly anticipated memoir, Streisand tells the story of extraordinary life and career, from growing up in Brooklyn to her first star-making appearances in New York nightclubs to her breakout performance in Funny Girl (musical and film) to the long string of successes in every medium in the years that followed. Frank, funny, opinionated, and charming My Name is Barbra will delight her millions of fans.
Started Out Just Drinking Beer by Stuart LLoyd
The riotous rollercoaster ride of Mental as Anything, Australia's greatest party band from 1976-2019.
The Mentals went from the top of a pool table to the top of the charts. Enjoy the untold stories behind Aussie classics like: Live It Up, Too Many Times, If You Leave Me Can I Come Too?, Berserk Warriors, Egypt, The Nips are Getting Bigger, and a whole lot more. Plus tales from the road as told by Greedy, Martin, Bird, Pete & Reg — and a star-studded cast including Colin Hay, Richard Gottehrer, Mark Opitz, Jeremy Fabinyi and Wreckless Eric — in this access-all-areas official biography.
1964: Eyes of the Storm by Paul McCartney
In 2020, a trove of photographs taken by Paul McCartney on a 35mm camera was re-discovered in his archive. They record the months towards the end of 1963 and the beginning of 1964 when Beatlemania erupted in the UK and shortly after in the USA. 1964: Eyes of the Storm presents 275 of these extraordinary photographs – including many never-before-seen portraits of John, George and Ringo – from six cities during this intense, seminal time.
Unsung by Kate Ceberano
A beautiful illustrated memoir from beloved Australian musician Kate Ceberano, featuring her inspirational song lyrics, stories, paintings and embroidery, and celebrating four decades of songwriting and recording on the release of her 30th album.
In Unsung Kate muses on the people and experiences that have inspired her, on what has humbled her, what hurts and what sustains. This is the story of a powerful woman in her prime, but also of a reflective, romantic and vulnerable artist making sense of the universe. It's proof of a lifetime lived in music. It's a tribute to songs, wherever they come from and wherever they go.