Whether it’s Nineties punk, Sixties pop or Forties jazz that floats your boat, there’s plenty of variety in these picks for music lovers. Books providing the inside track on superstardom have had particular success, from Neneh Cherry’s autobiography, rich with celebrity cameos, to the Blondie guitarist Chris Stein’s account of New York’s seedy counterculture. Or go back in time with Paul Alexander’s sensitive portrait of Billie Holiday or the latest instalment in Simon Goddard’s weighty Bowie series. Encore!
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The Times and Sunday Times music book of the year
A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry
New York jazz, London punk, pop stardom, trip-hop: Neneh Cherry has moved through enough scenes to have material for a dozen memoirs. She weaves it all together in the wonderful A Thousand Threads, a rich autobiography wise to all the joys — and the perils — of a creative life. The bohemian milieu of her mother, the Swedish artist Moki Cherry, and her stepfather, the jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, is key — as a child, she was given a Toblerone by Miles Davis — but she has her own remarkable life to lead, from a stint in the Slits to her pop breakthrough in 1988 with Buffalo Stance. What is she like? Like nobody else.
Fern £25
Buy a copy of A Thousand Threads here
Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna
Girls to the frontispiece! Kathleen Hanna, the lead singer of Bikini Kill and a big noise in the riot grrrl movement, encouraged a generation of young women to take up space, whether at gigs, in zines or on record. A harrowing account of family dysfunction and a pungent recreation of the 1990s scene that also shaped Nirvana, Rebel Girl potently reanimates a lost underground world, with cameos for Kurt Cobain and Kathy Acker. It’s both cultural history and vital protest memoir, and its fight against misogynist creeps is sadly as urgent as ever.
William Collins £20
Buy a copy of Rebel Girl here
My Family and Other Rock Stars by Tiffany Murray
Nobody has a perspective on rock history quite like Tiffany Murray. Her mother worked as a chef at Monmouthshire’s residential studio Rockfield, so Murray grew up surrounded by starry visitors, hearing Bohemian Rhapsody take shape and serving David Bowie his dinner (he only wanted “a little bit”). Hardcore music nerds might prefer forensic breakdowns of studio sessions, but if you want to know how to get solid food into Lemmy, this child’s-eye view of a grown-up world is a delight.
Fleet £22
Buy a copy of My Family and Other Rock Stars here
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1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left by Robyn Hitchcock
This close-up memoir of a year in the life of the singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock beautifully documents the power of music to open up new worlds. While the 13-year-old navigates dismal boarding school and his parents’ postwar trauma, he is also discovering the psychedelic landing lights — Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, the Incredible String Band — that will guide him towards his musical destiny. It’s a cosmic gender-switched Malory Towers, with the midnight feasts replaced by happenings hosted by a Winchester Art School student called Brian Eno.
Constable £22
Buy a copy of 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left here
Hip-Hop Is History by Questlove and Ben Greenman
One autumn night in 1979, the eight-year-old Ahmir Thompson was washing up when Rapper’s Delight by the Sugarhill Gang came on the radio. That epiphany pitched him straight into hip-hop’s story, first as a record-collecting obsessive, then as Questlove, a founder of Philadelphia’s the Roots. His fascinating book covers 50 years of hip-hop, synthesising a fan’s passions with practitioner’s erudition, a compendium of knowledge, lore and analysis that’s a gift to both eager neophytes and Adidas-wearing veterans.
White Rabbit £25
Buy a copy of Hip-Hop Is History here
Under a Rock: A Memoir by Chris Stein
Born in 1950, Chris Stein was the right age to benefit fully from rock’n’roll, becoming a Brooklyn Beatles fan, a Haight Ashbury-visiting hippie and, ultimately, the guitarist with New York’s new wave superstars Blondie. The result is an unusually Zelig-like autobiography, one that captures brilliant pop glory as well as addiction, poverty, urban blight. With David Bowie, Jean-Michel Basquiat and William Burroughs wandering through this book, it’s essential for Blondie fans and anyone interested in New York’s cultural crosscurrents.
Corsair £25
Buy a copy of Under a Rock here
Earth to Moon by Moon Unit Zappa
With this jaw-dropping memoir, the eldest daughter of the sardonic countercultural scourge Frank Zappa and his “manager” Gail underlines how easily women and children are sacrificed on the altar of male “genius”. The Zappas’ laid-back California household (clothes optional, groupies welcome) is a hatchery of unbounded dysfunction, while Valley Girl, the 14-year-old Moon’s 1982 novelty hit with her father, stirs fame into an already complicated psychological mix. It’s beautifully written and intensely evocative of her parents’ absurdist bohemia, but it’s the damage that lingers.
White Rabbit £22
Buy a copy of Earth to Moon here
Bowie Odyssey 74 by Simon Goddard
With Simon Goddard’s monumental David Bowie decalogy hitting its halfway point, it’s a good time to catch up with his exhilarating year-by-year reconstruction of the star’s 1970s. It’s the year of Diamond Dogs, and Bowie is “as edgy as a getaway driver’. Goddard’s David Peace-like fictionalisation is as alert to dark currents in the wider world — especially The Exorcist — as it is to the turbulence in Bowie’s mind. Perfectly balanced between deep research and imaginative force, it’s like wiretapping the past.
Omnibus £16.99
Buy a copy of Bowie Odyssey 74 here
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Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday’s Last Year by Paul Alexander
Neither casting her as victim nor ignoring her traumas — racism, addiction, violent men — Paul Alexander’s sensitive biography of Billie Holiday views her life through the lens of her fragile final year. She died on July 17, 1959, but Alexander stresses how much she achieved in 44 years, despite the forces working against her — not least J Edgar Hoover. “No matter what the motherf***ers do to you, never let them see you cry,” she once said, but this is an emotional read.
Canongate £20
Buy a copy of Bitter Crop here
Explore more of The Times and Sunday Times best books of 2024 with our complete guide. Then see who’s topping The Sunday Times Bestsellers List — the UK’s definitive sales chart
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