"It's a Mann's World: Melodies for a Darker Mood", on Aimee Mann's album Bachelor No.Patti Smith Group – " Pissing in a River".The Avalanches – " Frontier Psychiatrist".The Velvelettes – "Needle in a Haystack".Richard and Linda Thompson – "Calvary Cross".Ian Dury and the Blockheads – " Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3".Gregory Isaacs – " Puff, the Magic Dragon".Butch Hancock and Marce LaCouture – "So I'll Run".Bob Dylan – " Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?".Rod Stewart – "Mama, You Been on My Mind".Teenage Fanclub – "Your Love Is the Place Where I Come From".There are 31 songs, but only 26 essays in a few instances, multiple songs are discussed within a single piece. After Hornby mentioned he was a fan in Songbook, Ben Folds contacted him and Hornby wrote the song "That's Me Trying" for William Shatner's album Has Been. These submissions were posted to the McSweeney website. The paperback edition of Songbook adds a few music-related essays by Hornby from other sources.Īfter the release of "Songbook," McSweeney accepted online submissions from authors writing about their favourite songs in the same manner as Hornby. Proceeds from the book go to the TreeHouse Trust, a UK charity operating a school for children with autism and communications disorders, which Hornby's son attends, and to 826 Valencia, a US-based learning center, founded by McSweeney's publisher Dave Eggers, that offers writing workshops and tutoring. Song by song, Hornby delves into what makes music catchy or classic, and how it can come to play an integral role in a person's emotional life. The music varies from established classics like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan to independents like Ani DiFranco, Top 40 pop like Nelly Furtado, and a few songs with special meaning only to Hornby. The hardcover edition of Songbook, published in the US by McSweeney's and illustrated by Marcel Dzama, includes a CD with 11 of the songs featured in the book. In the UK, Sony released a stand-alone CD, A Selection of Music from 31 Songs, featuring 18 songs. Let's eat, Grandpa! Let's eat Grandpa! (Punctuation saves lives.Songbook (published in the United Kingdom as 31 Songs) is a 2002 collection of 26 essays by English writer Nick Hornby about songs and (more often) the particular emotional resonance they carry for him.My Year of Reading Russian Literature (1).My Year of Reading Japanese Literature (2).My Year of Reading French Literature (Second Edition) (1).My Year Of Reading French Literature (12).– From Nick Hornby’s essay on the song ‘You Had Time’ by Ani DiFrancoĭo listen to it and tell me whether you agree with Hornby □ It’s a sweet idea, a fan’s dream of how music is created I’d love to be a musician precisely because a part of me believes that this is exactly how songs are born, just as some people who are not writers believe that we are entirely dependent on the appearance of a muse. Indeed, she celebrates the birth of the song by shoving the piano out of the way and playing the song proper on acoustic proper – the two instruments are fused together with a deliberately improbable seamlessness on the recording, as if she wants us to see this as a metaphor for the creative process, rather than as the creative process itself. She’s not quite there yet, because she hasn’t found anything to do with her left hand, so there’s a little bit more messing about and then, as if by magic (although of course we know that it’s merely the magic of hard work and talent) she works out a counterpoint, and she’s there. ![]() But it cheers up a little, when DiFranco makes out that she’s suddenly hit upon the gorgeous little riff that gives the song its spine. ![]() When it kicks off, the noodling sounds impressionistic, like a snatch of soundtrack for an arty but emotional film – maybe Don’t Look Now, because the piano has a sombre, churchy feel to it, and you can imagine Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie wandering around Venice in the cold, grieving and doomed. But DiFranco’s song is nothing if not ambitious, because what it does – or, at any rate, what it pretends to do – is describe the genesis of its own creation : it shows its workings in a way that should delight any maths teacher. I know, I know – neither ‘Baby Let’s Play House’ nor ‘ (Hit Me) Baby One More Time’ begins with piano noodling, and they wouldn’t have been much good if they had that’s not what pop is supposed to be about. ‘You Had Time’ sets itself a further handicap : it begins with more than two minutes of apparently hopeful and occasionally discordant piano noodling. ![]() Beautiful passage from Nick Hornby’s book ’31 Songs’ that I am reading now. Songbook is a 2002 collection of 26 essays by English writer Nick Hornby about songs and (more often) the particular emotional resonance they carry for him.
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