Word: songbooks
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Hornby’s latest work, Songbook, recently published in paperback, zeroes in on two key themes in Hornby’s previous novels: music and the art of being a fan. Music has occupied a central place in all of his work. In both High Fidelity and About a Boy, the narrators, who bear more than a passing resemblance to Hornby himself, use music as a tool to live by, measuring their lives in songs. Dispensing with the fictional complications of a novel, Hornby has now brought himself directly into his writing...
Second only to a rap duo on the charts, elder rocker ROD STEWART is charming record buyers with As Time Goes By...The Great American Songbook Vol. II. But some chatty loves from the 58-year-old Lothario's past have come to spoil the party. In a documentary on British TV this week, seven of Stewart's exes hold forth on the singer's ravenous sexual appetite, philandering ways and--say two--fondness for donning their panties. Former Bond girl Britt Ekland shares an especially painful moment--when she learned that Stewart's song You're in My Heart...
...past decade, though, Andre and Big Boi have fused their personalities to create the best songbook in hip-hop. Songs like B.O.B. (Bombs over Baghdad) and Rosa Parks not only push the boundaries of the genre, they stimulate massive butt and brain vibrations. But as both men approach 30, their differences have hardened. Now they write songs separately, record in separate studios and sit for separate interviews. On Sept. 23, they are releasing separate albums, albeit in one boxed set, under the OutKast name. (Big Boi's disc is called Speakerboxxx; Andre's is The Love Below.) All this...
Yorke does have some undeniably morbid tendencies. The first song he ever wrote, at age 11, was called Mushroom Cloud, and much of his Radiohead songbook chronicles the destruction of abstractly good things by abstractly bad things. Still, like all other cynics, he'd like to think he's a romantic. Radiohead has covered Carly Simon's Nobody Does It Better and Glen Campbell's Rhinestone Cowboy in concert, and Yorke insists that the homage is sincere. "Even in the midst of the darkness of Kid A, I still thought we were doing big, romantic pop songs. I mean...
Back in the primordial rock ooze of the late '70s, Steely Dan wanted the world to think it was more wanton even than its extravagantly wanton rock peers. Judging from their blithely cynical and mordantly libidinous 1970s songbook, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were guys who would wait until the Eagles checked out of the Chateau Marmont so they could rush in and snort what was left on Glenn Frey's coffee table. Then they would go to a bar and talk about hitting on high school girls...