The Best Music Books of 2021

Hanif Abdurraqib, ‘A Little Devil in America’

Poet, critic, author (and Rolling Stone contributor) Hanif Abdurraqib weaves together music criticism, American history, emotional memoir, and performance analysis in this genre- and decade-spanning masterwork. Part of the thrill of this National Book Award finalist is observing Abdurraqib’s connective imagination at work, as he writes about everything from Merry Clayton and Josephine Baker to Soul Train, the card game spades, and 1920s dance marathons. Abdurraqib sums up his own book best, when writing about the Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace: “There is something valuable about wanting the small world around you to know how richly you are being moved,” he writes, “So that maybe some total stranger might encounter your stomp, your clap, your shout, and find themselves moved in return.” —J.B.

Betto Arcos, ‘Music Stories From the Cosmic Barrio’

The journalist and radio producer Betto Arcos has crisscrossed the world a few times over, interviewing musicians in far-flung places to try to understand a central question: What inspires people to make music? In Music Stories from the Cosmic Barrio, he collects about 150 stories that he’s written over the years, focusing primarily on Latin America, and organizes them by themes such as power, identity, and more. He shapes careful, nuanced profiles of musicians such as the Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, and always dives deep under the surface of musical traditions, resulting in a book that makes a reader want to see more, hear more, and understand more with each chapter. —J.L.

Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock, ‘Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the ’80s Hard Rock Explosion’

From stories about how Gene Simmons asked Van Halen to change their name to Daddy Long Legs (blech!) to Skid Row realizing the jig was up after Nirvana broke, Rolling Stone contributors Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock present a fun and often funny account of the rise and fall of hair metal during the Decade of Decadence in Nöthin’ But a Good Time. Even better, they present everything in an oral-history format, allowing Mötley Crüe, Poison, Cinderella, and countless others to tell their own occasionally cringe-inducing, always fascinating stories. (Check out this GN’R excerpt for a sample.) It don’t get better than this. —K.G.

Regina N. Bradley, ‘Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip-Hop South’

This treatise from leading Southern hip-hop scholar Regina N. Bradley is a revelatory collection of essays — part literary criticism, part sonic analysis, part personal memoir — that serves as an overdue and thrilling intervention on the NYC/L.A.-centric canon of hip-hop criticism. Bradley uses the conceptual framework established by the music of Outkast (“the founding theoreticians of the hip-hop South,” as she writes) as a way of discussing everything from the trap grief of fellow Atlanta rapper T.I. to the groundbreaking Mississippi novels of Jesmyn Ward and Kiese Laymon to the soundtrack to Django Unchained. It’s a masterful work of criticism that uses Outkast’s music as “a point of departure,” Bradley writes, “for understanding how post-civil rights Southerners excavate spaces of imagination, possibility, and cultural influences as they fold onto each other in a complex present.” —J.B.

Daphne Brooks, ‘Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound’

Yale professor Daphne Brooks takes on a wide-ranging study of Black female artists, from elders like Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters to Beyoncé and Janelle Monáe. But she reaches far beyond music, exploring writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Pauline Hopkins; there’s a chapter about an early interview between the playwright Lorraine Hansberry and the rock critic Ellen Willis. Liner Notes is a secret history in the spirit of Greil Marcus, connecting the sonic worlds of Black female mythmakers and truth-tellers. One of the most touching moments: Brooks’ mother recalls record shopping as a spiritual refuge in the Jim Crow South of the 1940s. —R.S.

Joshua Clover, ‘Roadrunner’

Jonathan Richman’s proto-punk classic “Roadrunner” is one of the greatest songs ever about the freeing power of rock & roll and the open road. (It’s 77th on our list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.) Poet and critic Joshua Clover’s book-length exploration of “Roadrunner” stays true to Richman’s “faster miles an hour” gospel, thrillingly pursuing connections backward and forward, from Chuck Berry to Cornershop to M.I.A. Clover also takes his story well beyond rock history, connecting a song about the circular freedom of driving around suburban Boston to the “transnational flow of culture,” and the global circulation of capital and human beings. Even if you’ve heard “Roadunner” a million times, this book will make it sound newly present and alive. —J.D.

Stephen Deusner, ‘Where the Devil Don’t Stay: Traveling the South With the Drive-By Truckers’

The most brilliant decision veteran music journalist Stephen Deusner made for this book — the first definitive history of Drive-By Truckers — was to structure his portrait of the band geographically, from Muscle Shoals to Memphis to Athens to Deusner’s home region, McNairy County, Tennessee. Band members past and present (including, yes, Jason Isbell) gave exhaustive interviews for the book, which offers as much cultural criticism and post-civil-rights Southern history as straightforward autobiography. “The Truckers understand that our notion of place is informed by its history, by its politics, by economic forces … by the music … and the food,” he writes. Where the Devil Don’t Stay approaches its subject with the same context and care as the band it portrays. —J.B.

Warren Ellis, ‘Nina Simone’s Gum: A Memoir of Things Lost and Found’

At a 1999 festival gig, Warren Ellis — the Dirty Three violinist and Nick Cave’s red-right-hand man — plucked a gob of Nina Simone’s A.B.C. gum off a piano, wrapped it in her stage towel, and stored it like treasure in a Tower Records bag. His first book, filled with photos of Simone and her gum, recounts how the singer’s garbage became a relic to him. “Nina Simone’s fingers were the last to touch [the gum],” he wrote. “Her mouth and teeth and tongue. Her spirit existed in the space between the gum and the towel. That concert was in the gum. That transcendence.” Alongside digressions about Alice Coltrane and Beethoven, the lovably quirky, easy-to-read volume explains how Simone’s transcendence became Ellis’ beacon. —K.G.

Mary Gauthier, ‘Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting’

In her debut memoir, Americana songwriter Mary Gauthier leaves nothing hiding in the shadows: She shares that she’s a recovering addict and alcoholic who got busted for DUI in the very first chapter. Like the plain-spoken songs she’s written — the alcoholic’s confession “I Drink,” the desperate plea “Mercy Now” — Saved by a Song is stunningly personal. She writes in sharp but warm prose about coming out as a gay woman, her difficult search for her birth mother, and how she learned to love herself, providing a handbook for compassion and self-care along the way. But Saved by a Song also pulls back the curtain on the magic of songwriting. Watching her dissect “I Drink,” crossing out lyrics that didn’t fit and streamlining her way to the finished product, is like sitting in on a class taught by a master. —J.H.

Dave Grohl, ‘The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music’

Stuck during Covid lockdown with nothing to do, the ever-restless Grohl started writing Instagram stories about his life and career that eventually turned into this memoir. Raised by a single mom he remains very close with, Grohl bailed on high school to hit the road with Washington, D.C., hardcore band Scream and never looked back. Grohl deals in revealing detail with the rise of Nirvana and the loss of Kurt Cobain. At 25, he wondered if his career was over. Instead, after finding his footing with the Foo Fighters, he goes on to amiably wander a self-made path of punk-rock conviviality, marked by run-ins with everyone from Little Richard to Madeleine Albright, remaining infectiously upbeat at every turn. —J.D. 

Eric Harvey, ‘Who Got the Camera? A History of Rap and Reality’

Touching on everything from Cops to A Current Affair to Kendrick Lamar and “Fuck tha Police,” Eric Harvey’s Who Got the Camera? draws a connecting line between post-Reagan reality TV and hip-hop — or, as he puts it in his approachably erudite prose, “a recombinant medium with designs on social relevance that came of age in the early 1980s, rap had much in common with television’s entertaining realism.” Harvey, a professor at Michigan’s Grand Valley State University, zooms in on N.W.A, Public Enemy, Tupac, the Rodney King beating, and hip-hop misogyny, among other topics, and the result is a rich, readable history that underscores all the ways in which hip-hop served essential documentary function — there’s a reason Ice T, among others, used to refer to his profession as “reality rap.” —C.H.

Clover Hope, ‘The Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop’

Clover Hope’s The Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop is a treasury of insightful anecdotes and juicy war stories. Hope, a seasoned journalist, has curated an impressive catalog of legendary ladies, from Seventies pioneer Sha-Rock to social media sovereign Cardi B. Filled with personal testimonies — on how the music shaped her as a lifelong fan — The Motherlode brims with authenticity: A profile on Roxanne Shante, who was slighted early on for her skills, gives way to some thoughts on how Hope herself gets second-guessed in a male-dominated industry. This is a crucial chronicle of the culture that you don’t want to stop reading. —W.D.

Rickie Lee Jones, ‘Last Chance Texaco: Chronicles of an America Troubadour’

In the late Seventies, singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones brought her Southwest boho mysticism to the L.A. rock scene and became a star. There’s some entertaining and revealing stuff in her memoir about her quick rise to success and hedonistic heyday, including a dishy aside about her early boyfriend Tom Waits (“In bed, he was the greatest performing lion in the world,” she writes). Jones is candid about her battles with drugs and the ups and downs of her career. The best parts of the book focus on her difficult childhood on the tattered margins of 1950s America, and her relationship with her alcoholic parents, whose stories are rendered with a rare realist tenderness. —J.D.

Alan Licht, ‘Common Tones: Selected Interviews with Artists and Musicians 1995-2020’

Alan Licht is a legendary guitarist in New York’s experimental scene. That means he’s got music perspective, but it also means he’s got hands-on experience in dealing with prima-donna cranks — that’s got to be part of why he’s so sharp as an interviewer. Common Tones has provocative discussions with artists across the map: rock pioneers like Lou Reed, Tom Verlaine, and Karl Precoda, avant-garde composers like Tony Conrad, Glenn Branca, and Rhys Chatham. For anyone mourning the late, great Greg Tate, don’t miss his essential comments here on the dance between words and music. —R.S.

The Lunachicks (with Jeanne Fury), ‘Fallopian Rhapsody: The Story of the Lunachicks’

The Lunachicks — brightly mascaraed New York punk mainstays throughout the Nineties — became a cult sensation, influencing a generation of feminist nonconformists, without a major-label deal or a radio hit. Their revealing, always-entertaining memoir, co-written with punk authority Jeanne Fury, is as fun and colorful as their costumes, as they recount highs (opening for Sonic Youth at CBGB), lows (bassist Squid’s drug addictions), and their regrets (drummer Becky Wreck wishing she’d accepted L7’s job offer after seeing they toured on a bus while Lunachicks drove a van). But they keep their sense of humor throughout: “We were in a tent getting ready, and I was wearing a pink curly wig,” frontwoman Theo Kogan writes of their 1992 Reading Festival appearance. “I was like, ‘This is it; we are clowns.’ … I’d always dreamed of this.” K.G.

Paul McCartney, ‘The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present’

Macca has been on a creative frenzy lately: a hit album, his Rick Rubin docuseries, and oh, yeah, Get Back. But he crowns his triumphant 2021 with this astonishing book. Despite the title, The Lyrics isn’t just 154 of his favorite songs — it’s the story of his life, in two lavish volumes; he shares unseen photos, untold stories, and witty insights on the music (who knew “Hi, Hi, Hi” was inspired by both absurdist playwright Alfred Jarry and bluesman Robert Johnson?) as well as the complex, driven, elusive genius who wrote it. He also recalls singing “Her Majesty” to the Queen. “I don’t know how to break this to you, but she didn’t have a lot to say.” —R.S.

Franz Nicolay, ‘Someone Should Pay You for Your Pain’

Finally, the great indie-rock novel. Franz Nicolay is best known as the keyboardist in the Hold Steady, and author of the Euro-punk travelogue The Humorless Ladies of Border Control. But his fiction debut is the agonizingly funny, savagely honest tale of a troubadour on the road, getting old and bitter in bar after bar. His life is hangovers and drug deals and motels with names like Canadas Best Value Inn. (“Four words, three lies.”) But he gets his shot at redemption via a teenage runaway who happens to be his niece. A heart-bruising story — like Dostoevsky in a DIY punk space. —R.S.

Dan Ozzi, ‘Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994-2007)’

Scruffy punks being wined and dined by big-spending label execs, self-righteous zines exiling bands who even entertained the idea of jumping from an indie to a major, frenzied bidding wars, sudden breakups — the events former Noisey editor Dan Ozzi chronicles in Sellout seem like scenes from some distant, mythical rock past. But, as he lays out across 11 chapters, each chronicling the major-label debut of a prominent underground band — from Green Day and My Chemical Romance to At the Drive-In and the Donnas — in the Nineties and early 2000s, the question of “to sign or not to sign” once felt like a battle for the soul of American culture. While there are just as many tales of implosion here as triumph, Sellout is ultimately an inspiring read, a monument to a time when punk and its various offshoots still felt like folk music, sparking fierce loyalty and even fiercer debate. —H.S.

Raekwon (with Anthony Bozza), ‘From Staircase to Stage: The Story of Raekwon and the Wu-Tang Clan’

The Wu-Tang Clan’s most searingly descriptive MC brings the same vivid storytelling power to his first memoir. The Wu saga has been told and retold many times over the years. But even superfans will want to get Raekwon’s often contentious side of the story, told with the help of author and frequent Rolling Stone contributor Anthony Bozza. The Chef gets inside the recording of the group’s Nineties classics, while also offering grippingly honest recollections on his early days in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood and on Staten Island. “As a fan, hip-hop was my escape from reality,” he writes. —J.D. 

Richard Thompson (Scott Timberg), ‘Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice 1967-1975’

Stevie Van Zandt, ‘Unrequited Infatuations: A Memoir’

According to longtime Bruce Springsteen lore, Stevie Van Zandt earned his place in the E Street Band the instant he came up with the horn arrangement for “10th Avenue Freeze-Out” during the making of Born to Run. But is that really what clinched it for him? “Who knows?” he writes in his new book, Unrequited Infatuations. “We’re all making up half of this shit anyway.” It’s a refreshing admission that half-century-old memories aren’t always reliable, though he spends the rest of the book laying out the story of his life in incredible detail, including his early teenage years with Springsteen, his decision to quit the E Street Band in 1984, and his time on the Sopranos as mob consigliere Silvio Dante. Even if he inadvertently made up “half of this shit,” it’s still a gripping read and the perfect companion to Springsteen’s 2016 memoir, Born to Run. —A.G.

Michelle Zauner, ‘Crying in H Mart’

We waited three years for Zauner’s memoir to arrive, patiently holding onto the 2018 New Yorker essay it stemmed from, in which she wrote, “Am I even Korean anymore if there’s no one left in my life to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy?” Crying in H Mart answers that question and then some, as Zauner details the devastating loss of her mother, exploring their relationship through a lifetime of shared meals. The book was released to wide acclaim, coinciding with the arrival of her great indie-pop band Japanese Breakfast’s excellent album Jubilee, in which Zauner touched on similarly intense themes with equally powerful results. —A.M.