British filmmaker, photographer, and magazine founder Rankin opens his vast archives to reflect on some of the best musician portraits from his three-decade career. "Play" is the operative word here: musicians play music, and play with... Read More

Dylan Jones’s "Sweet Dreams" is a vast and fascinating collection of interviews that showcase a decade of British music and culture—the New Romantic period, from 1975-1985. Mid-seventies England was full of chaos and creativity as... Read More

The compiled interviews and texts of "George Harrison on George Harrison" come from across the music legend’s career, from before the Beatles hit it big up into the final year of his life. This comprehensive, chronological tome is an... Read More

Nostalgia-fueled interest in retro music and contemporary artists’ expressions of “black resistance, joy, and togetherness” are at the heart of today’s soul music revival, and Emily J. Lordi’s nuanced revisionist history "The... Read More

Martin Schleske’s powerful The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty links the pursuit of beautiful music with that of finding God. Describing the process of building a violin—picking the perfect piece of wood; shaping the wood;... Read More

Jamie Anderson’s cultural survey "An Army of Lovers" focuses on revolutionary women’s music and how it influenced others. Women’s music—music by, for, and about women—addresses topics from love and healing to racism and... Read More

While the album itself is a definite masterpiece, the Beatles’s Abbey Road also served as a coda for the world’s most influential band, the last set of studio sessions before the four musical geniuses went their separate ways. In the... Read More

Music journalist and professor Vivien Goldman was at the moshy, grotty heart of the 1970s and 1980s punk scene, working, playing, and even recording with other musicians. Her extensive firsthand knowledge is combined with two years of... Read More