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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
I absolutely loved this book. It's written for Beatles fans, to be sure, but also anyone who loves smart, funny, accessible, not-snobby writing about music. I've been a fan of Rob Sheffield's for a while, but this is the best of his books by far.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Interesting and very nerdy. I felt I didn't know the Beatles' music (or other music mentioned) well enough to fully appreciate it.
I am not even close to a Beatles expert -- just someone who was born the year the band broke up and yet knows almost all of their songs. I read this book in hopes of learning more, and I certainly did (John and Paul met and started writing songs together when they were about the age of my children?!!) Sometimes, the chapters are more about the author's relationship to a song or album or particular Beatle than an outlay of the facts and general critical opinion. Sometimes, he goes into details that seem esoteric. I often skimmed, but it definitely had me reaching once again for my Beatles albums and hearing the songs with some new information and regarding them in a new light.
Thoroughly enjoyable for hardcore Beatles fans! I chuckled on almost every page at Sheffield's witty writing and the book further deepened my heart warmth for the band and its members.
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Sheffield weaves in lyrics throughout his writing — something I found a little corny at first, but if we're being honest, it made me smile each time.
5 stars?! Yep. I just enjoyed the heck out of this book. Just the fact that someone could write a book about The Beatles in 2017 and make it interesting and fresh is incredible. Rob Sheffield is the fifth Beatle. He's as much a part of this story as John, Paul, George, and Ringo. I adore his writing. It's his perspective that makes this book special.
sad
slow-paced
Alright - here goes: I think this book is not good.
I found my way to this from the Storygraph Genre Challenge, which has for sure been pushing me way outside my normal reading habits - for which I am grateful! I’m a professional musician and so the reality is that while I’ve read a huge amount about music - classical music specifically - I very literally will never choose to read about it of my own accord. Since my training and own intense work life are in classical music, I was tickled by the idea of reading about the Beatles, whose music I have loved for my whole life but never studied and explored in a more analytical setting! I was hopeful that this would be an illuminating and exciting read, but for a couple of key reasons I will now explain, it was not.
I get the sense that Sheffield is trying - not comfortably - to exist and to write both as a Beatles superfan and as an authority on their music and history. I understand this struggle well; I write my quartet’s program notes, a lot of the time, and sitting down to write about my favorite Beethoven quartets is like pulling teeth sometimes - the agony of trying to explain and elucidate instead of simply throwing up my hands and screaming “because it’s the greatest!!!”
But that’s this book: Sheffield throwing up his hands and screaming “it’s the greatest” about his favorite music. I presume there must some sense of playfulness to this - the pleasure in making an iconoclastic, unprovable statement like that without apology - but his audiobook narration revealed no such thing, so that is pure benefit of the doubt. But what I wish is that, as someone who clearly DOES love this band and know their music well, he would actually take the time to explain to us WHY he loves the music he loves - to describe details, lyrics, orchestrations, harmonies, rhythms, lilts, characters in the music that actually cause his favorite songs and albums to be his favorites. Instead he actually calls them “the best,” which I find astonishingly unself-aware (or egotistical? But again - I’m hoping it’s just painfully not self-aware, to give him then benefit of the doubt?) for someone who makes a living doing this. To me this is both a juvenile and an unspecific approach to describing art one loves - and indeed truly not illuminating in any way.
There is also, for me, something profoundly uncomfortable and sort of grotesque in the way in which Sheffield fictionalizes and describes the Beatles’ motivations and intent - in certain essays ascribing meanings to their lyrics that are in no way from the band members’ own writings and interviews. (The opening essay - again I assume in an attempt to be playful? Not clear what the point could possibly be here - talks about how with Paul, everything comes back to girls. ???? Write about the details and specifics of people’s music - the text! - don’t project your own exceedingly oversimplified interpretations and then present them as factual in a non-fiction book?!?)
I guess the long and short of it is that this book was both unsatisfying and unknowledgeable in the way the author writes about music; AND, in the moments he tries to actually editorialize, flies wildly wide of the margins into fictionalizing and projecting in a way that is better suited for a cheap blog.
So I guess basically I loathed this. I’m apparently still not above a petty rush to the end of a book I hate, though clearly I should have made this a DNF; but I guess I just couldn’t stomach the idea of having to start again and read another book about music.
I found my way to this from the Storygraph Genre Challenge, which has for sure been pushing me way outside my normal reading habits - for which I am grateful! I’m a professional musician and so the reality is that while I’ve read a huge amount about music - classical music specifically - I very literally will never choose to read about it of my own accord. Since my training and own intense work life are in classical music, I was tickled by the idea of reading about the Beatles, whose music I have loved for my whole life but never studied and explored in a more analytical setting! I was hopeful that this would be an illuminating and exciting read, but for a couple of key reasons I will now explain, it was not.
I get the sense that Sheffield is trying - not comfortably - to exist and to write both as a Beatles superfan and as an authority on their music and history. I understand this struggle well; I write my quartet’s program notes, a lot of the time, and sitting down to write about my favorite Beethoven quartets is like pulling teeth sometimes - the agony of trying to explain and elucidate instead of simply throwing up my hands and screaming “because it’s the greatest!!!”
But that’s this book: Sheffield throwing up his hands and screaming “it’s the greatest” about his favorite music. I presume there must some sense of playfulness to this - the pleasure in making an iconoclastic, unprovable statement like that without apology - but his audiobook narration revealed no such thing, so that is pure benefit of the doubt. But what I wish is that, as someone who clearly DOES love this band and know their music well, he would actually take the time to explain to us WHY he loves the music he loves - to describe details, lyrics, orchestrations, harmonies, rhythms, lilts, characters in the music that actually cause his favorite songs and albums to be his favorites. Instead he actually calls them “the best,” which I find astonishingly unself-aware (or egotistical? But again - I’m hoping it’s just painfully not self-aware, to give him then benefit of the doubt?) for someone who makes a living doing this. To me this is both a juvenile and an unspecific approach to describing art one loves - and indeed truly not illuminating in any way.
There is also, for me, something profoundly uncomfortable and sort of grotesque in the way in which Sheffield fictionalizes and describes the Beatles’ motivations and intent - in certain essays ascribing meanings to their lyrics that are in no way from the band members’ own writings and interviews. (The opening essay - again I assume in an attempt to be playful? Not clear what the point could possibly be here - talks about how with Paul, everything comes back to girls. ???? Write about the details and specifics of people’s music - the text! - don’t project your own exceedingly oversimplified interpretations and then present them as factual in a non-fiction book?!?)
I guess the long and short of it is that this book was both unsatisfying and unknowledgeable in the way the author writes about music; AND, in the moments he tries to actually editorialize, flies wildly wide of the margins into fictionalizing and projecting in a way that is better suited for a cheap blog.
So I guess basically I loathed this. I’m apparently still not above a petty rush to the end of a book I hate, though clearly I should have made this a DNF; but I guess I just couldn’t stomach the idea of having to start again and read another book about music.
Content Warnings
Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Infidelity, Mental illness, Violence, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Toxic friendship, Alcohol
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
fast-paced