Seven Books That Will Change How You Listen to Music

Last February, I saw a concert that brought fresh meaning to the cliché “my soul left my body.” In a packed room at Radio City Music Hall, I sang the Swedish pop star Robyn’s hit “Dancing on My Own” along with her and the Talking Heads front man David Byrne, and genuinely felt as though I was floating outside of my own skin. If you’re lucky, you’ve experienced something similar, and know just as well as I do that the right song can unlock physical sensations that feel uncannily like magic.Though many people can instinctively understand music’s intrinsic power—recognizing a beat that makes you want to dance, or getting goose bumps from a tune you thought you’d forgotten—articulating why you like it can be much harder, at least without the right knowledge. As a longtime music lover who is neither a gifted musician nor a music critic, I found myself in exactly this position when I began drafting my novel. I wanted my main characters, who are composers and pianists, to speak about their art as if they knew what they were talking about. So I embarked on a self-directed crash course in musicology, taught mostly through books.The seven titles that follow make up a syllabus on how to think about music. These works are not comprehensive, but they span a wide variety of literary and auditory genres. All of them changed how I wrote about and listened to music by giving me a new appreciation for its neuroscientific and cultural effects—and by showing me what it means to make a life as a musician.Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres, by Kelefa SannehIt could be argued that the ideal audience for a song consists of people who can appreciate its pedigree—all of the influences that combined to inspire that specific work. Although many aficionados may be able to exercise that skill in one or two genres, rarely does a listener possess the encyclopedic knowledge for more than that. So you can think of Sanneh’s book as a cheat sheet of sorts—but one that’s deeply re