THE 50 BEST MUSIC BOOKS OF 2017

[Art by Al Margen]

✊
#RESIST

The Explosion of Deferred Dreams: Musical Renaissance and Social Revolution in San Francisco, 1965–1975 by Mat Callahan

Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran by Nahid Siamdoust

Grown-Up Anger: The Connected Mysteries of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Calumet Massacre of 1913 by Daniel Wolff

📖
#LIT

Epistrophies: Jazz and the Literary Imagination by Brent Hayes Edwards
"Do You Have a Band?": Poetry and Punk Rock in New York City by Daniel Kane
In Search of Soul: Hip-Hop, Literature, and Religion by Alejandro Nava

📕
#ESSAY

They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us: Essays by Hanif Abdurraqib
Shake It Up: Great American Writing on Rock and Pop from Elvis to Jay Z ed. by Jonathan Lethem & Kevin Dettmar

🆂
#SOUL

In the Midnight Hour: The Life & Soul of Wilson Pickett by Tony Fletcher
Soul Survivor: A Biography of Al Green by Jimmy McDonough
Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music by Ann Powers

🎷
#JASS

The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums by Will Friedwald
Queen of Bebop: The Musical Lives of Sarah Vaughan by Elaine M. Hayes
Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, and Drugs by Martin Torgoff
Finding Bix: The Life and Afterlife of a Jazz Legend by Brendan Wolfe

💂
#Россия

Riot Days by Maria Alyokhina
Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson
When the World Stopped to Listen: Van Cliburn's Cold War Triumph, and Its Aftermath by Stuart Isacoff

✏
#FICTION

Shadowbahn by Steve Erickson
White Tears by Hari Kunzru
Late Arcade by Nathaniel Mackey
Black Mad Wheel by Josh Malerman

💋
#RS@50

When Genres Collide: Down Beat, Rolling Stone, and the Struggle between Jazz and Rock by Matt Brennan
Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine by Joe Hagan

🎻
#CLASSICAL

Maestros and Their Music: The Art and Alchemy of Conducting by John Mauceri
Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture Since 1989 by Tim Rutherford-Johnson
Toscanini: Musician of Conscience by Harvey Sachs

🍎
#NYC

Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011 by Lizzy Goodman
Punk Avenue: Inside the New York City Underground, 1972-1982 by Phil Marcade

👑
#UK

Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World by Billy Bragg
O Sing Unto the Lord: A History of English Church Music by Andrew Gant
Folk Song in England by Steve Roud
The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock by David Weigel

☃
#MINNESOTAH

Complicated Fun: The Birth of Minneapolis Punk and Indie Rock, 1974-1984-An Oral History
by Cyn Collins
Dig If You Will the Picture: Funk, Sex, God and Genius in the Music of Prince by Ben Greenman

🌆
#SUB-

Dancehall: The Rise of Jamaican Dancehall Culture (reprint) by Beth Lesser w/ Stuart Baker
Ghostnotes: Music of the Unplayed by Brian Cross, Greg Tate & Dave Tompkins
The Tide Was Always High: The Music of Latin America in Los Angeles ed. by Josh Kun
The Raver Stories Project ed. by Michael Tullberg

👨

#HIS

Finding Joseph I: An Oral History of H.R. from Bad Brains by Howie Abrams & James Lathos
Lou Reed: A Life by Anthony DeCurtis
David Bowie: A Life by Dylan Jones
Everything Is Combustible: Television, CBGB's and Five Decades of Rock and Roll: The Memoirs of an Alchemical Guitarist by Robert Lloyd

🎧
#LISTENING

The Force of Listening by Lucia Farinati & Claudia Frith
Mozart's Starling by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Personal Stereo by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow

👭
#HERS

Every Night Is Saturday Night: A Country Girl’s Journey to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by Wanda Jackson w/ Scott Boma
Under My Thumb: Songs That Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them ed. by Rhian Jones & Eli Davies
Hit So Hard: A Memoir by Patty Schemel
Art Sex Music by Cosey Fanni Tutti