Major Labels

dear, dear PENIS!"

The young diarist eventually turned her passion for rock stars into a lifestyle, and then a literary career. She is Pamela Des Barres, and in 1987 she included those diary entries in her first book, I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie. The title is accurate enough: Des Barres was for years a leading light in the Los Angeles rock 'n' roll scene, and her adult life turned out to be even more interesting than her girlhood diary. (Her Jagger prediction, for example, proved accurate soon enough.) But the true subject of her book was rock stardom itself. Few people have ever written as insightfully, or as sympathetically, about the peculiar enthusiasm that gives the genre of rock 'n' roll its mythic reputation, or about the complicated bond that unites performers and fans-and, just as important, divides them. Often in the book, Des Barres and her idols seem to be trying to figure out exactly how they are supposed to relate to each other. After all, Des Barres was not just a fan but a minor celebrity, and also a recording artist: a member of the GTOs, or Girls Together Outrageously, a rock 'n' roll performance-art troupe that released an album on an imprint owned by Frank Zappa, the rock eccentric who served as their mentor. Still, she was clear-eyed about the seductive power of rock stardom, and about the corresponding imbalance of power in many of the relationships she had. "I wondered if I was going steady with the best guitar player in the world," she thought while she was dating Jimmy Page, from Led Zeppelin. As part of the arrangement, she was expected to listen to the band's forthcoming album:

On his day off, we stayed in my bedroom, listening to the test pressing of Led Zeppelin II over and over again while he took reams of notes. I had to comment on every solo, and even though I believed the drum solo in "Moby Dick" went on endlessly, I held my tongue and went on pressing his velvet trousers and sewing buttons onto his satin jacket.

criticism working today. . . . Sanneh is an ideal guide for this journey, with a purist s depth of knowledge and a gourmand s indiscriminate love of the medium . . . perfectly fascinating. Vox

Kelefa Sanneh has achieved the impossible. Major Labels somehow manages to unspool everything you need to know about 50 years of music, but more impressively, he makes you care about all of it. Even the stuff you don t care about. It s funny, it s personal and as a piece of writing, the book borders on poetry. David Letterman

A beautifully observed history of the last 50 years of music. It f****ing rules, and I recommend it without reservation. Tom Breihan, Stereogum

A charming stroll through our sometimes useful, sometimes debilitating compartmentalizing of sounds. The point is not another survey of familiar classics, but rather, a far more ambitious consideration of how styles fuse and expand in ways audiences often aren t comfortable accepting. Chicago Tribune Fall Book Preview

An essential document from an inimitable critic. Vulture

This is quite simply a perfect book for any music lover and an ideal primer on the last 50 years of popular music in the United States. It s written not in the voice of a music critic but that of a deeply engaged and passionate listener . . . A thoroughly enjoyable and perceptive book that champions the art of popular music. Library Journal (starred review)

[A] thrilling debut . . . Equally fascinating are Sanneh s insights into the way race has shaped music, particularly in the overlapping worlds of R&B and rock n roll. This remarkable achievement will be a joy to music lovers, no matter what they prefer to listen to. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Kelefa Sanneh takes a very ambitious swing with this deep dive into a half century of American music . . . As both an engine of commerce and the driving force behind myriad cultural shifts, popular music has shaped American society in ways we can only begin understand. But it would be hard to find a better guide than Sanneh to help us try. LitHub

There have been many attempts at explaining the modern trajectory of pop music, but Major Labels is quite possibly the best version I've ever read. Kelefa Sanneh is pure talent: an engaging, efficient writer with insightful observations and an openness of mind other critics only pretend to possess. I'm sure other people will attempt to publish books like this in the future, but they probably don't need to. They should just read this one. Chuck Klosterman
 
Kelefa Sanneh is somehow able to stand back and give the most clearheaded thoughts about the Big Picture while also diving in for the entertaining, memorable detail. Major Labels is a completely enjoyable history that told me a thousand things I didn t know and one of the book s great pleasures made me see lots of musicians I thought I knew, or half-knew, in a whole new light. Ira Glass, host of This American Life
 
A lively, heartfelt exploration of the many worlds of popular music. . . . Throughout, the author shows himself to be a master of the mot juste . . . but it s clear that he s listened to just about everything with ears and mind wide open. A pleasure and an education for any music fan. Kirkus (starred review)
 
Major Labels is the most elegant history of popular music ever written. That may sound like faint praise to those who want their pop criticism to channel raw passion, yet passion comes in many forms. Sanneh not only delivers a coolly dazzling overview of the battlefields of genre but also revels open-heartedly in the music itself, his taste unbound by dogma or prejudice. The operative word is keen: zealous in spirit, exact in execution, ferociously acute from the first sentence to the last. Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker and author of Wagnerism