Customer Reviews

Songbook

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I bought this book, sight unseen, simply because of the description, which was: Nick Hornby, one of my favorite writers, had written a book about a bunch of his favorite songs. That's all I needed to know, that sounded great to me, I was sold.

I've been a Hornby fan since Fever Pitch. When High Fidelity (the book) came out, I was amazed: it felt like Hornby had been eavesdropping on my mind, because I tend to agree with a lot of his opinions about music and music lovers. Similarly, I'm a big fan of the reviews he wrote for The New Yorker a few years ago.

So I ordered the book and it showed up in my box and I immediately turned to the table of contents to see: which songs did he write about??? And I was surprised, and a bit disappointed, to see that I only recognized about a dozen of the titles. And there wasn't one song in the bunch that I considered a personal favorite. And when I listened to the songs I didn't know (included on a handy-dandy CD)... they didn't blow me away. But that's the beauty of a mix tape and, despite the fact that it's printed on paper, this is a mix tape.

And this one comes with great liner notes. Hornby's a smart, entertaining, intuitive writer. I may sound like a disappointed fan trying to make the best of a book that didn't satisfy me 100%, but even when Hornby's writing about music I haven't heard, it's still enjoyable, it's still worthwhile, it's still exposing me to things I previously didn't know about.

Even when he's confessing to not being a huge Dylan fan and confesses to preferring a Rod Stewart cover of one of my favorite Dylan songs to the original (which is, of course, the true road to enternal damnation), he does so in a way that's completely relatable even to a Dylan fanatic.

Even when he's extolling the virtues of a song I find to be "sad bastard" music (like he does in his essay about Mark Mulcahy's "Hey Self Defeater") he manages to include a great, conversational subtext about the virtues of small, privately owned, slowly-becomming-extinct record stores with a personal touch.

This is also a beautifully designed McSweeny book, with a beautiful "Maxell XL-II" mix-tape cover and with clever illustrations by Marcel Dzama. The book also benefits Treehouse Trust and 826 Valencia, organizations that are extremely worthy of the extra money.

Hornby should do one of these a year, I think. And next time, it'd be nice if he'd touch on his favorite Stones songs, his favorite Stax songs, his favorite Steve Earle songs, his favorite blues, his favorite jazz, his favorite Clash songs, etc, etc. If he'll write it, I'll read it.

I suppose I should admit up front that I'm one of those people who would buy the phone book if Hornby wrote it. That cavaet aside, this lovely little volume with accompanying CD is the best written explanation of why people who love "pop" music do so. Hornby uses the word "pop" not only to refer to garbage of the Britney Spears/'NSYNC ilk, but as a broad distinguisher from classical, jazz, and sofroth. The 26 brief essays aren't about his favorite pop songs, nor are they about what the songs remind him of, rather these are songs that he loves (as of the time of writing) and has something to say about.

As readers of his football memoir, Fever Pitch, know, Hornby writes exceedingly well about being a fan. And more than anything, the book is about being a fan of the 3-4 minute pop tune. Of course, this neccesitates a spirited defence of pop as a genre, so throughout the book, Hornby is on the attack, railing against small-minded snobs (including his younger self) who dismiss pop music out of hand. People who've spent a good portion of their lives paying attention to pop music will find a lot of themselves in the book, and may be struck with a newfound openmindedness. And by this measure, any book that can get me to track down an old J. Geils Band album has got be considered noteworthy! (Although I remain unmoved by his essay on reconsidering Jackson Browne.)

As always, Hornby's writing is funny, poignant, telling, and dead on. His skewering of church music is priceless, as is his explanation of why "Let's Get It On" is a terrible song to have sex to, why Led Zepplin rocked his 14-year-old world, how Rod Stewart led him to Motown music, the tedium of being a music reviewer for The New Yorker, and much more. Other parts are more introspective, dwelling on how his music tastes have changed as he's gotten older, fatter, and divorced, his autistic son's love of music, and how certain musical moments have influenced his writing.

It's a brief book, but one that ranges far and wide. Although I'm not really fan of much of any of the artists he writes about, he still manages to use their work to make larger points that are relevent to any music fan. Somewhat annoyingly, he mentions my favorite band (The Clash) more often (in eight different essays) than any other throughout the book, but didn't pick one of their songs to write about! That aside, the one thing that holds the book back a little is that the CD doesn't contain all the songs in the book (no doubt due to liscensing and money issues) and so leaves the reader hunting for MP3s online. But as the book's proceeds go to charity, this is easily overlooked and forgiven. Some of the best music writing I've come across.

1 Paul Westerberg - Born For Me
2 Teenage Fanclub - Your Love is the Place Where I Come From
3 The Bible - Glorybound
4 Aimee Mann - I've Had It
5 Rufus Wainwright - One Man Guy
6 Rod Stewart - Mama You Been On My Mind
7 Badly Drawn Boy - A Minor Incident
8 Teenage Fanclub - Ain't That Enough
9 Ben Folds Five - Smoke
10 Mark Mulcahy - Hey Self Defeater
11 Ani DiFranco - You Had Time

The book is genuinely more engaging than his pop music criticism for The New Yorker as he is obviously writing with his heart as opposed to his head.

Hornby covers a wide range of topics here. He discusses how our favorite songs eventually blend in as part of our personalities, and we'll never be able to really remember the first time we heard them. There are discussions about how it's okay to claim that certain songs from revered artists just plan suck, and how there is no such as the perfect song for making love. He talks about how the next Lennon/McCartney team is probably already out there, but fragmented nature of the music industry will keep them from ever reaching the heights they deserve. There is some exploration of how songs with "edge" and "grit" will often leap to the forefront, but will never last for the ages. There's even some analysis of genuine musicianship, such as his investigation about how too many guitar solos are mean simply to take up space rather than capturing the soul of the song.

So before going much further, let's see what songs Hornby discusses in the book:

1. Your Love Is the Place I Come From by Teenage Fanclub
2. Thunder Road by Brice Springsteen
3. I'm Like a Bird by Nelly Furtato
4. Heartbreaker by Led Zeppelin
5. One Man Guy by Rufus Wainwright
6. Samba pa Ti by Santana
7. Mama You Been on My Mind by Rod Stewart
8. Can You Please Crawl out Your Window? by Bob Dylan and Rain by The Beatles
9. You've Had Time by Ani DiFranco and I've Had It by Aimee Mann
10. Born for Me by Paul Westerberg
11. Franie Teardrop by Suicide and Ain't That Enough by Teenage Fanclub
12. First I Look at the Purse by J. Geils Band
13. Smoke by Ben Folds Five
14. A Minor Incident by Badly Drawn Boy
15. Glorybound by The Bible
16. Caravan by Van Morrison
17. So I'll Run by Butch Hancock Marce LaCouture
18. Puff the Magic Dragon by Gregory Isaacs
19. Reasons to Be Cheerful Part 3 by Ian Dury & the Blockheads and The Calvary Cross by Richard and Linda Thomson
20. Late for the Sky by Jackson Browne
21. Hey Self Defeater by Mark Mulcahy
22. Needle in a Haystack by the Velvettes
23. Let's Straighten It Out by O.V. Wright
24. Röyksopp's Nigh Out by Röyksopp
25. Frontier Psychiatrist by The Avalanches and No Fun/Push It by Soulwax
26. Pissing in a River by The Patti Smith Group

Now, I like to consider myself pretty well versed in music, but even if you're like me, you probably look at that list and say, "geez, I know about a third of these songs well, I've heard of a few of the rest, but I'm clueless about the rest." The list might seem daunting for all but the strongest music mavens, but there's nothing to fear. Even though Hornby find his inspiration in some rather little known songs, he simply uses those songs as springboards from which to launch his discussions on music in general. He never writes in a manner that assumes the reader already knows the music by heart. In fact most of the essays devote no more than seven or eight paragraphs directly to the song being discussed, reserving the rest of the text for philosophical discussions of music and for tangents that leap about among more well-known songs.

Hornby's writing glimmers with an endearingly obsessive fandom of someone who's surrendered himself completely to the love of music, and therein lies the only real flaw in the book. Hornby often lapses into the vernacular of the devoted stereophile, and readers who aren't so particular about their own musical taste may feel a bit excluded, as if Hornby is talking down to them. Songbook probably won't turn anyone into a deep music lover, since those who really "get" the book will already be at such a level. Those readers who already love music (especially those who see a piece of themselves in the record store clerks fro High Fidelity) will get a warm, fuzzy feeling from the book. Another thing I need to mention is that the writing is very fluid and clear - a real pleasure to read. So pick up a copy of Songbook! And while I'm at it I need to also recommend another recent Amazon quick pick: The Losers' Club (Complete Restored Edition) by Richard Perez, a gritty, funny, urban novel that made me think of High Fidelity more than once.

Nick Hornby's gift as a writer is how he manages to express his love and appreciation of music through words. One of greatest pleasures in life that we so easily take for granted is discovering new music that yesterday was missing from our life and today seemingly becomes integral to our existence as we repeatedly play and sing along to the song. Hornby manages to capture and describe this unique feeling that we all feel but have difficulty expressing coherently.

"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strongest part..."

Although I'm fairly sure the majority of readers, will not be familiar with many of the songs that Hornby writes about, the point of the songbook is more personal. It will help you reawaken your own love of music as you shuffle through your music collection and go through a similar period of self reflection.

Personally, the book was worth it once I listened to Aimee Mann's "I've Had It", a beautiful soulful song that I've lived without for as long as I can remember, and now I can't go without listening to repeatedly along with the Soundtrack to About a Boy by Badly Drawn Boy.

OK, you people who criticize the book because you disagree with his musical taste are clearly not paying attention - THIS BOOK IS NOT ABOUT THE SONGS THEMSELVES.
The best essay in the book (Puff the Magic Dragon) barely even references the song it's titled after. Rather, the chapter is about his autistic child's response to music, and how that gives Hornby hope for his child's future.
It's in spots like these where Hornby shines - he is able to tackle matters of great gravity (his divorce, his autistic son) with with no bitterness and a healthy sense of humor. In a lesser author's hands, these subjects would be maudlin and corny - Hornby avoids that peril completely.
The book is about the connection between music and emotions - and how songs can exemplify what we want, need, and no longer desire in life, and it certainly tackles this subject well.

It's a great book.

Don't read it if you expect him to write about all of the songs you think he should consider "great," for reasons you might traditionally give for liking a song. Hornby, like a lot of great writers, writes about songs that he likes because they remind him of things: they remind him of other songs that they inspired him to buy, they remind him of why he doesn't listen to them anymore, they remind him of how much he hates the other better-known songs by the same artist because they're overplayed and have had all of the life sucked out of them.

He also has a wonderful way of digressing -- which other reviewers here don't like, but which I think is the best thing about the book. The book isn't about the songs at all, really. It's not about the people who wrote "Needle in a Haystack" or "Heartbreaker," about how the songs were produced or their chart positions or their histories. It's about how those songs make him feel, how they made him feel when he first heard them (in fact, he has a whole digression, the best thing in the book, about how disappointed he is that he can't know what it must have felt like to be 19 or 20 years old and to hear Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" when it first got played on the radio), how certain things can't be recaptured, can't be reproduced, can't be relived (he refers to how awful it is that most pop music these days is so overplayed and overexposed that you never get a chance to develop a unique and intimate individual relationship with it, which is one of the reasons why a lot of people under 30 love music that would never get played at Starbucks).

He does go rather overboard on "Thunder Road," but it's his favorite song, and he's entitled. I would probably go overboard if I had a favorite song.

His essay at the end about Patti Smith is pure genius.

Who better than the author of "High Fidelity" to dissect and ruminate on the art of the Pop Song? I was introduced to this book by a high school teacher who used it as basis for an assignment asking students to create a soundtrack of their lives. As Hornby admits, though, he doesn't select songs with attachment to a particular moment in his life, so much as songs that represent why he loves the verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/maybe solo/chorus style of music above all others. He openly attests that he uses even the most revered Mozart as background noise, that he doesn't get jazz, and he doesn't like music that brings him down.

Within those parameters, he finds many areas of music and his own life to expound upon. In doing so, he also turned this reader on to a lot of great music (esp. if you're lucky enough to get the hardcover with included CD). Here are a few choice examples:

Born For Me by Paul Westerberg: A song destined for play at a future wedding, but this chapter describes the art of the instrumental solo, and why less is so often more. Hornby exalts Westerberg's plinky-plink piano break by saying, "A bad musician would have picked the wrong four notes."

Samba-Pa-Ti by Santana: A hilarious chapter on the song Hornby planned to lose his virginity to. This leads to a great diatribe on songs like "Let's Get It On," and how they're really intended as sex substitutes rather than sex accompaniment. And in a great last laugh, the chapter segues into-

Mama, You Been On My Mind by Rod Stewart: This would seem too easy a target, but the author has some real compassion for the guy, and for others who are masters at the lost art of making someone else's song their own. That said, he can't resist some jabs at the rusty-throated one, and if anyone knows where to find Rod's rendition of the Scottish World Cup song (Ole Ola), please let me know.

A Minor Incident by Badly Drawn Boy: After the preceding comedy of several chapters, I was completely bowled over by this one; Hornby describes the grieving process of discovering his son's autism, and paints quite a moving picture of their father-son relationship. As the brother of a child with autism, I identified with quite a lot here, and learning later of the book's philanthropic nature (proceeds benefit a school devoted to the education of such populations) have even greater pride in my purchase. Anyone familiar with Badly Drawn Boy or his soundtrack to the film adaptation of Hornby's "About A Boy" will never be able to hear this song the same again. Hornby goes so far as to say that the song his book inspired now means more to him than his book ever could.

Through each chapter, Hornby maintains his deft use of phrase and subtle aphorisms, so slyly that you must often re-read passages to catch a clever quip that dares not draw attention to itself. Fans of Hornby's fiction will find no complaints here.

A thoroughly engrossing read which lends itself to periodic visitation, but will probably be read through many times over. And in buying it, you help a great cause. If ever there was a win-win literary purchase, this is it.

Anybody who has read (or seen the movie of) High Fidelity knows that Nick Hornby knows his music. Well, he's just proven it again with his writing in Songbook.

Songbook is a collection of short essays describing his thoughts and feelings (often tangential associations) regarding songs by Teenage Fanclub, Nelly Furtado, Aimee Mann and Ani Difranco, Bob Dylan and the Beatles, Suicide, and others. There aren't 31 essays because Hornby often combines linked thoughts about two different songs in one essay. He delves deep into his personal likes and dislikes and, in the process, has produced a book that is almost a "how-to" of cool. He feels no shame in liking pop music, as long as it's good pop music. What that consists of you'll have to read to find out.

If this were just a book about music, that would be good enough for it to find a place on my music reference shelf (where it fits in quite nicely next to my Billboard Book of Number One Hits, Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll and my Rolling Stone Record Guide), but it's also--as good reviews are--a portrait of the man himself and the state in which he experienced the songs.

Hornby tells us how he doesn't like to listen to depressing music anymore because life's depressing enough--the only people who can afford to listen to it are those to whom nothing really bad has happened to, he says. He also mention how his book About a Boy--which was inspired by, but is not about, his son--led to a song being on the soundtrack of the movie adaptation that somehow managed to be precisely about his son. It's these kinds of musings that give you entry into the mind of an artist and make him into a real person, not just someone who is paid to entertain you. I found that in many ways, I identified with Hornby and the place he was in his life when he wrote these essays. And that made the reading experience all the more real for me.

This paperback edition is lacking the CD that accompanied the hardcover edition, but in its place are five new essays not appearing in that printing, including another about Aimee Mann--focusing on her album, Bachelor No. 2--and an album review of a Los Lobos boxed set that are just as good as the others. Then, at the very end, he lists some particular recommendations that any music fan would do well to take into consideration.

Songbook isn't just a book of music criticism, it's one man's autobiography in time. Pick it up.

You know what I loved about High Fidelity? It thanked me for being as interested in music as I am. Even when he said Stiff Little Fingers sounded like Green Day and I yelled out at the TV screen (I've read the book too) "YOU'RE WRONG!" I still felt so cool for even knowing. It makes the piece so much more intimate, like how you would feel attached to a main character if she had the same name as your girlfriend.

So I expected Songbook to be exactly that. No story, just commentary on music which was just dandy to me. Sure, I'd only heard a couple of the songs, but where better to learn?

Well it turns out that it's much different than I thought. It should be stated that YOU DON'T HAVE TO KNOW THE SONGS though it's a nice bonus if you do. You see, these essays aren't about the songs but more about what they mean to him and what they mean about music, and there's so many times where us audiophiles will smile and nod. Not only that, but it's so telling about the author himself - what he cares to write about, his autistic son, and of course his tastes.

It's easy reading; In fact, it's an excellent bathroom reader. I wish mine came with this CD everybody's talking about