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Everything in life is, in a sense, unexpected. From the people you meet to the events you experience. But sometimes the unexpected attacks. It eats at you and fundamentally changes where you are and where you are going. September 11, the credit crunch, and the rise of the World Wide Web are recent examples of agenda changing megaevents that we were forced to react to in some way or another. This book, by one of the world's leading trendspotters, is designed to help you understand the nature of unexpected events and how we are affected by it on an individual, corporate and societal basis. Building on studies of and interviews with people who have in some way been "attacked" and significantly affected by the unexpected, its aim is to help you stop fearing uncertainty and start embracing and leveraging it to your advantage.
This is the first complete and authorized official visual history of ABBA, one of the greatest pop groups of the 20th century. ABBA has sold a stunning 400 million records, and in some markets has even surpassed the Beatles. This first and only official book on ABBA was created with the full cooperation of the band members themselves and containing more than 600 rare and heretofore unseen images from throughout the band’s career. Publishing with the 40th anniversary of ABBA winning the Eurovision Song Contest, which is what put the band on the map, publication is being synchronized worldwide to great media attention. With a foreword and commentary throughout the book by the band’s four members, this is truly the complete story of one of the most popular bands of all time.
Songs from Sweden shows how Swedish songwriters and producers are the creative forces behind much of today’s international pop music. As Ola Johansson reveals, the roots of this “music miracle” can be found in Sweden’s culture, economy, and thriving music industry, concentrated in Stockholm. While Swedish writer-producers developed early global recognition for making commercially successful pop music, new Swedish writer-producers have continuously emerged during the last two decades. Global artists travel to Stockholm to negotiate, record, and co-write songs. At the same time, Swedish writer-producers are part of a global collaborative network that spans the world. In addition to concrete commercial accomplishments, the Swedish success is also a result of the acquisition of reputational capital gained through positive associations that the global music industry holds about Swedish music. Ultimately, pop songs from Sweden exhibit a form of cultural hybridity, drawing from both local and global cultural expressions.
'I doubt I'll ever read a better account of the history and sociology of popular music than this one.' Brian Eno 'Profound.and beyond.' Robert Plant Legendary producer and record label boss Joe Boyd has spent a lifetime travelling the globe and immersing himself in music. He has witnessed first-hand the growing popularity of music from Africa, India, Latin America, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe since the 1960s and was one of the protagonists of the 'world music' movement of the 1980s. In this sweeping history, Boyd sets out to explore the fascinating backstories to these sounds and documents a decade of encounters with the most extraordinary musicians and producers who have altered the co...
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2023 'Profoundly moving.' EDMUND DE WAAL 'A work of searching scholarship, acute critical observation, philosophical heft, and deep feeling.' ALEX ROSS 'A rare book: extraordinarily powerful - magisterial, meticulously rich and unexpected, deeply affecting and human.' PHILIPPE SANDS A remarkable and stirring account of how music acts as a witness to history and a medium of cultural memory in the post-Holocaust world. When it comes to how societies commemorate their own distant dreams and catastrophes, we often think of books, archives, or memorials carved from stone. But in Time's Echo, Jeremy Eichler makes a revelatory case for the p...
An intimate portrait of the real Britney, from the church-going girl from the Deep South to the talented but troubled international pop icon, bringing her rollercoaster story up to date and looking to what the future has in store.
"How do you make a song a global smash hit that is guaranteed to make $millions? Who are the hit-manufacturers that can create a tune that is so catchy, so wildly addictive, that it sticks in the minds of millions of listeners? And who are the powerful few that have the capacity to transform, say, a young Barbadian woman called Robyn Rihanna Fenty into the global megastar that is Rihanna? In The Song Machine, John Seabrook dissects the workings of this machine, travelling the world to reveal its hidden formulas, and interview its geniuses - 'the hitmakers' - at the centre of it all. Hilarious and jaw-droppingly shocking, this book will change how you think and feel about music, as well as how you listen to it."
The extraordinary group of Russian composers who came together in St Petersburg in the 1860s - long known as 'The Mighty Handful', but, as the moguchaya kuchka, better translated as 'the great little heap' - gave rise to one of the most fascinating and colourful stories in all musical history. Stephen Walsh, author of a major biography of their direct successor, Stravinsky, has written an absorbing account of Musorgsky and his circle - Borodin, Cui, Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov. With little or no musical education they created works of lasting significance - Musorgsky's Boris Godunov, Borodin's Prince Igor and Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade. Written with deep understanding and panache, The Kuchka, is highly engaging and a significant contribution to cultural history.
'People are always asking, 'Aren't you proud of your famous brother?' I was, of course, but often wished he was not so famous so that one could see more of this brother who was such a joy to be with. Janet Baker has written that the air crackled when he walked into the room, and she was right...' The younger of Benjamin Britten's two sisters, Elizabeth ('Beth') Britten first published this loving and revealing portrait of their shared childhood in 1986. She evokes the Lowestoft upbringing of the four Britten siblings, their dentist father Robert, and mother Edith, who keenly encouraged the children's interest in music. She recalls the flat they shared in London while Benjamin studied at the Royal College of Music; and tells of 'The Old Mill at Snape', Britten's home/studio after its renovation by Beth's future father-in-law. Of special interest are Britten's letters to Beth from America, where he and Peter Pears emigrated in 1939 then became ensconced after war broke out.