The Secret Diaries of Taylor Swift's Cats

'Just be yourself, there is no one better' Taylor Swift has been a global superstar for well over a decade. Her pop hits and iconic music videos constantly deliver empowering messages of self-love and resilience. Shaking off personal challenges and clapping back at misogyny since day one, Tay Tay has emerged as the defining voice of her generation. Featuring all her best wisdom on confidence, careers, beauty, relationships, and more, this collection of quotes will motivate Swifties of all ages to live a more creative and confident life.

Taylor Swift Lines To Live By

'You should celebrate who you are now, where you're going, and where you've been' Despite facing media scrutiny, sexist backlash and a battle to take ownership of her own music, Taylor Swift has shown her fans how to rise above the haters. Organised into ten life lessons that have shaped Taylor's eras, this collection of quotes will inspire swifties to be creative, emotional and rebellious. This is Taylor's precious wisdom, and the ultimate celebration of every era of Taylor's life so far.

Taylor Swift Lines To Live

What would Taylor do? Songwriting genius, poised performer, warm-hearted friend-we'd all love to be a bit more like Taylor Swift. This brilliant guide will show you how. Whether it is standing up for yourself and your friends, opening your heart to love, or refusing to let others write your reputation, these life lessons will help you shake off your troubles and become folklore for Swifties everywhere. Containing advice on love, friendship, overcoming fears, being yourself, and finding creative inspiration, Be More Taylor Swift is the perfect gift for Taylor Swift fans.

Be More Taylor Swift

A collection of more than 300 quotes from Taylor Swift, pop culture icon and one of the bestselling musicians of all time. Part of the In Their Own Words series.

Taylor Swift

You know the songs by heart. You've traded the friendship bracelets. You've worn the cowboy boots and the bejewelled bodysuits. Now, get the inside track on this generation's biggest super star - Taylor Swift. An intimate look at the life and music of modern pop's most legendary figure, Taylor Swift, from leading music journalist Rob Sheffield. A cultural phenomenon. A worldwide obsession. An agent of emotional chaos. There's no parallel to Taylor Swift in history: a teenage girl who turns into the world's favorite pop star, songwriter, storyteller, guitar hero, live performer, changing how music is made and heard. An all-time great on the level of The Beatles, Prince, or David Bowie. Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music is the first book that goes deep on the musical and cultural impact of Taylor Swift. Nobody can tell the story like Rob Sheffield, the bestselling and award-winning author of Dreaming the Beatles, On Bowie, and Love Is a Mix Tape. The legendary Rolling Stone journalist is the writer who has chronicled Taylor for every step of her long career, from her early days to the Eras Tour. Sheffield gets right to the heart of Swift and her music, her lyrics, her fan connection, her raw power. At once one of the most beloved music figures of the past two decades and one of the most criticized, Taylor Swift is known as much for her life beyond her music as she is for her hits-the most public of stars, yet also the weirdest and most mysterious. In the tradition of Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles, Heartbreak Is the National Anthem will inform and delight a legion of fans who hang on every word from Taylor and every word Rob writes on her.

Heartbreak Is the National Anthem

From a Robert Frost poem on her debut album to the myth of Cassandra on The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift’s lyrics are filled with literary connections. Make sure you're catching them all with this expert guide to the novels, poems, and plays that influence her songwriting. Let a literature professor and a musical theater artist guide you through the Taylor Swift canon—from Shakespeare to the Brontë sisters to Daphne du Maurier! Learn what "New Romantics" has to do with the old Romantics Get to know the Gothic monsters haunting Midnights Spot Taylor's many Great Gatsby references Discover what Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson have in common And find your new favorite tortured poet! Packed with fun facts, entertaining analysis, and literary-themed playlists that fans will love, Taylor Swift by the Book will turn anyone from a Taylor Swift lover into a Taylor Swift scholar. With full-color illustrations highlighting the literary eras of Dr. Swift (yes, she has an honorary PhD), it’s a perfect gift for the Swiftie in your life.

Taylor Swift by the Book

Into the Taylor-Verse

Compiled from the literary estate of the singer who brought a wildly lyrical poetry of the damned to the world of rock 'n' roll. Includes unpublished poems, drawings, photos, and a candid self-interview.

Wilderness

"In lyric essays, a story, poems, and photographs, Smith illuminates the whirl of chance and choice that stokes a writer's imagination, recounting her fascination on the eve of a trip to Paris with Simone Weil and an evocative, accidentally discovered film about Stalin's mass deportation of Estonians. In France, a gravestone, a televised figure-skating competition, a meal, and a garden all converge in what becomes Devotion, [a] ... fairy tale about a young, displaced Estonian skater and a solitary dealer in rare objects and arms. This ... fable about creativity and obsession, possession and freedom is followed by a meditation on how a work of art is, for other artists, a call to action"--Booklist, 08/01/2017.

Devotion

Compilation of photographs of the major recording artists of our time. Subjects include Madonna, U2, The Rolling Stones, Nick Cave, Elvis Costello and many others. Includes concerts, magazine covers and live photography. Photographs are accompanied by anecdotes. Author's photographs have been featured in various media publications all over the world but he is particularly recognised by the music industry in Australia.

Every Picture Tells a Story

The J Files is one of the most popular shows on Triple J and Richard Kingsmill is its well-regarded and knowledgeable presenter. Each week he features an artist or band, a genre, a year or a theme. The shows receive input from enthusiastic listeners through its website and phoned-in requests. Kingsmill has conducted much research in the course of assembling over 250 subjects and he has interviewed a great many musical heavyweights. The J Files Compendiumdraws upon this rich archive. It is organised alphabetically and contains interviews with an impressive range of indie and mainstream artists, photos from respected music photographer, Tony Mott, plus heaps of lists, quizzes and trivia and more trivia. The J Files Compendium provides a fascinating browse for anyone who has ever been passionate about music. Kingsmill is the music buff's music buff and brings to the book his enthusiasm, vast knowledge and wry sense of humour.

The J Files Compendium

The Pogues

'So honest and pure as to count as a true rapture' JOAN DIDION'A poetic masterpiece' JOHNNY DEPP'Our St John of the Cross, a mystic full of compassion' EDMUND WHITE'A roadmap to my life', from the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids: an unforgettable odyssey of a legendary artist, told through the prism of cafés and haunts she has worked in around the worldREVISED EDITION WITH FIVE THOUSAND WORDS OF BONUS MATERIAL AND NEW PHOTOGRAPHS M Train begins in the tiny Greenwich Village café where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. Through prose that shifts fluidly between dreams and reality, past and present, and across a landscape of creative aspirations and inspirations, we travel to Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Mexico; to a meeting of an Arctic explorer's society in Berlin; to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York's Far Rockaway that Smith acquires just before Hurricane Sandy hits; and to the graves of Genet, Plath, Rimbaud and Mishima. Woven throughout are reflections on the writer's craft and on artistic creation. Here, too, are singular memories of Smith's life in Michigan and the irremediable loss of her husband, Fred Sonic Smith. Braiding despair with hope and consolation, illustrated with her signature Polaroids, M Train is a meditation on travel, detective shows, literature and coffee. It is a powerful, deeply moving book by one of the most remarkable artists at work today.

M Train

A prelude to fame, Just Kids recounts the friendship of two young artists--Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe - whose passion fueled their lifelong pursuit of art. In 1967, a chance meeting between two young people led to a romance and a lifelong friendship that would carry each to international success never dreamed of. The backdrop is Brooklyn, Chelsea Hotel, Max's Kansas City, Scribner's Bookstore, Coney Island, Warhol's Factory and the whole city resplendent. Among their friends, literary lights, musicians and artists such as Harry Smith, Bobby Neuwirth, Allen Ginsberg, Sandy Daley, Sam Shepherd, William Burroughs, etc. It was a heightened time politically and culturally; the art and music worlds exploding and colliding. In the midst of all this two kids made a pact to always care for one another. Scrappy, romantic, committed to making art, they prodded and provided each other with faith and confidence during the hungry years--the days of cous-cous and lettuce soup. Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. Beautifully written, this is a profound portrait of two young artists, often hungry, sated only by art and experience. And an unforgettable portrait of New York, her rich and poor, hustlers and hellions, those who made it and those whose memory lingers near.

Just Kids

'At last an expert classicist gets to grips with Bob Dylan' Mary Beard When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, the literary world was up in arms. How could the world's most prestigious book prize be awarded to a famously cantankerous singer-songwriter in his Seventies, who wouldn't even deign to make a victory speech? In Why Dylan Matters, Harvard Professor Richard F. Thomas answers that question with magisterial erudition. A world expert on Classical poetry, Thomas was initially ridiculed by his colleagues for teaching a course on Bob Dylan alongside his traditional seminars on Homer, Virgil and Ovid. Dylan's Nobel prize win brought him vindication, and he immediately found himself thrust into the limelight as a leading academic voice in all matters Dylanological. This witty, personal volume is a distillation of Thomas's famous course, and makes a compelling case for moving Dylan out of the rock n' roll Hall of Fame and into the pantheon of Classical poets. The most dazzlingly original and compelling Dylan book in decades, Why Dylan Matters will amaze and astound everyone from the first-time listener to the lifetime fan. You'll never think about Bob Dylan in the same way again.

Why Dylan Matters

On October 13, 2016, it was announced that Bob Dylan had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, recognizing his countless contributions to music and letters over the last fifty years. Some months later, he delivered a lecture that will now be available in book form for generations to come. In it, he reflects on his life and experience with literature, giving readers a rare and intimate look at an American icon. From being inspired by Buddy Holly to the novels that helped shape his own approach to writing (The Odyssey, Moby Dick, and All Quiet on the Western Front), this is Dylan like you've never seen him before.

The Nobel Lecture

The Philosophy of Modern Song is Bob Dylan's first book of new writing since 2004's Chronicles: Volume One -- and since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. Dylan, who began working on the book in 2010, offers a masterclass on the art and craft of songwriting. He writes over 60 essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. He analyses what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal. These essays are written in Dylan's unique prose. They are mysterious and mercurial, poignant and profound, and often laugh-out-loud funny. And while they are ostensibly about music, they are really meditations and reflections on the human condition. Running throughout the book are nearly 150 carefully curated photos as well as a series of dream-like riffs that, taken together, resemble an epic poem and add to the work's transcendence. In 2020, with the release of his outstanding album Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan became the first artist to have an album hit the Billboard Top 40 in each decade since the 1960s. The Philosophy of Modern Song contains much of what he has learned about his craft in all those years and, like everything that Dylan does, it is a momentous artistic achievement.

The Philosophy of Modern Song

Songs create the soundtrack for our lives: they inform, stimulate, tell us about ourselves, thrill us and make us glad to be alive. Some songs stay with you for three minutes; others a lifetime. Each has its own quality , its own story. Rockwiz is a successful Australian television quiz show series, focused on rock music and featuring different guest artist musicians who perform live in each episode and hosted by the charismatic Julia Zemiro.The latest instalment in a successful series, Rockwiz Decades is a comprehensive guide to, and documentation of, the best songs of each decade dating as far back as the 1950s. Author Toby Creswell reminds us of the great songs that the last 65 years have offered us, delving into the untold stories behind some of the best songs of all time--from Bob Dylan to Joan Baez, Pulp to Leonard Cohen, Pet Shop Boys to Beach Boys to Beyonce--no rolling stone is left unturned. Revisit long-forgotten memories from the world of music and the colourful characters it has spawned over the years. The ultimate book for music fans, and trivia buffs, with insider photos from Rockwiz and playlists from the decades, this is a defining celebration of music and song.

Rockwiz Decades

'I walk into the corner of my room, see my friends in high places I don't know which is which or whom is whom, they've stolen each other's faces' Spanning Nick Cave's entire career, from his writing for The Birthday Party, through highly acclaimed albums like Murder Ballads, Henry's Dream and Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! up to his latest release, Push the Sky Away, this fully updated edition of The Complete Lyrics is a must for all fans of the dark, the beautiful and the defiant - for all fans of the songs of Nick Cave. 'Nick Cave is surely Australia's finest living songwriter.' Mail 'Cave's genius rings loud and clear.' Evening Standard 'Richly poetic creations which live a second life on the page. Essential reading.' Vox

The Complete Lyrics, 1978-2013

Woodstock. The Isle of Wight. Bowie at the Hammersmith Odeon, 1972. Nirvana at Reading, 1992. Gigs that changed the face of music and the very foundations of popular culture. Now, leading rock journalist Mark Paytress recreates the sights, smells, and sounds of the 20th Century's most talked about moments in the history of live music, debunking myths and recreating the bands' --and the fans'--experiences. There's something here for every musical taste-- from Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall in 1938, to Bob Dylan, to Live Aid. Complete with amazing photographs that capture the essence of these now legendary shows, this is a true compendium for any music fan or anybody who's ever thought, "I wonder what it was like to be there?"

I Was There

From award-winning musician and composer Warren Ellis comes the unexpected and inspiring story of a piece of chewing gum. Featuring an introduction from Nick Cave. On Thursday 1 July, 1999, Dr Nina Simone gave a rare performance as part of Nick Cave's Meltdown Festival. After the show, in a state of awe, Warren Ellis crept onto the stage, took Dr Simone's piece of chewed gum from the piano, wrapped it in her stage towel and put it in a Tower Records bag. The gum remained with him for twenty years; a sacred totem, his creative muse, growing in significance with every passing year. In 2019, Cave - his collaborator and great friend - asked Warren if there was anything he could contribute to display in his Stranger Than Kindness exhibition. Warren realised the time had come to release the gum. Together they agreed it should be housed in a glass case like a holy relic. Worrying the gum would be damaged or lost, Warren decided to first have it cast in silver and gold, sparking a chain of events that no one could have predicted, one that would take him back to his childhood and his relationship to found objects. Nina Simone's Gum is about how something so small can form beautiful connections between people. It is a story about the meaning we place on things, on experiences, and how they become imbued with spirituality. It is a celebration of artistic process, friendship, understanding and love.

Nina Simone's Gum

Arranged alphabetically by band name for ease of reference, Rock Chronicles offers a fascinating, encyclopedic study of the ever-shifting line-ups, appearances, labels, and sounds of 250 of the best-known and most important rock acts of the past fifty years. Esteemed music author David Roberts offers an insightful review of every group, giving the lowdown on every member - whatever their role in the band, however short-lived their time with them, and however well-known. A photograph of every band member from every line-up supplements the engaging text, and founder and current members are picked out visually for immediate recognition. Innovative, color-coded infographics provide an overview of every aspect of each band's story, so that readers can see at a glance which musicians featured in each formation, which instruments they played, which label the act was with when, the dates their albums were released, and who played on them. For the ten most commercially successful albums total sales figures are given. And for the 50 biggest acts, a stunning display of iconic photographs charts the artists' dramatic changes of appearance, relating each iconic 'look' to the album of the same period. Interspersed throughout the book are six graphic decade features. Each one presents a detailed family tree for that era's greatest acts, revealing which year every band formed, and to which other bands they are related through line-up changes. Plus, at the end of the book, there's a fact-filled, cross-referenced performer directory, listing all the bands each performer played in and when. Comprehensive, information-packed, and compelling to read, Rock Chronicles is the essential reference for everyone who loves rock.

Rock Chronicles

Jam packed with questions to make you think, laugh, and question your whereabouts in the early 80s. Makes you marvel at the music world and all the characters it has spawned over the years. A bonus CD with Million-dollar riffs from the infamous RocKwiz Orkestra is included for added entertainment

Rockwiz

Nearly everyone at some point in their youth has been gripped by desire for the rock 'n' roll lifestyle. This is a collection of funny, true, starting-out anecdotes from eager young bands determined to get out of the basement, and some of those who made it.

Sex, Drugs and Mum in the Front Row

Terrorism blows you up Nastiness grinds you down Stupidity wears you out The media sucks you in, drags you under Politics does you over Up, down, in, out, under, over! But ducks . . . Ducks just Let you be

Music Biography Books