Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé

by Bob Stanley

As much fun to argue with as to quote, Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! is a monumental work of musical history, tracing the story of pop music through individual songs, bands, musical scenes, and styles from Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock around the Clock” (1954) to Beyoncé’s first megahit, “Crazy in Love” (2003). It covers the birth of rock, soul, R&B, punk, hip hop, indie, house, techno, and more, and it will remind you why you fell in love with pop music in the first place.
Bob Stanley—musician, music critic, and unabashed fan—recounts the progression from the Beach Boys to the Pet Shop Boys to the Beastie Boys; explores what connects doo wop to the sock hop; and reveals how technological changes have affected pop production. Working with a broad definition of “pop”—one that includes country and metal, disco and Dylan, skiffle and glam—Stanley teases out the connections and tensions that animate the pop charts and argues that the charts are vital social history.

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! is like the world’s best and most eclectic jukebox in book form. All the hits are here: the Monkees, Metallica, Patsy Cline, Patti Smith, new wave, New Order, “It’s the Same Old Song,” The Song Remains the Same, Aretha, Bowie, Madonna, Prince, Sgt. Pepper, A Tribe Called Quest, the Big Bopper, Fleetwood Mac, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,” Bikini Kill, the Kinks, Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, Jay-Z, and on and on and on. This book will have you reaching for your records (or CDs or MP3s) and discovering countless others.


For anyone who has ever thrilled to the opening chord of the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” or fallen crazy in love for Beyoncé, Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! is a vital guide to the rich soundtrack of the second half of the twentieth century.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History, Pop Culture, Cultural, Cultural Studies, Biography

624 pages, Paperback

First published September 13, 2013

About the author

Bob Stanley has worked as a music journalist, a DJ, and a record label owner and is the cofounder and keyboard player for the band Saint Etienne. He lives in London.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

FROTHOPHILES OF THE WORLD UNITE!

I always had the feeling that somebody stole my life and was living it instead of me, and now I know who it is – Bob Stanley. There was some prenatal jiggery-pokery somewhere. I don’t know what happened, but I got people looking into it. The real trouble is, it looks like Bob Stanley has been a lot better at being me than I would ever have been. He founded Saint Etienne, the band, not the French city, which was pretty good, and he was also a music journalist, okay, but now he has written this huge forensically detailed, funny and altogether grand history of pop and rock music since 1950, which I should have written. I must admit, though, I’m a lazy git. Bob has put the required hours in, here - o how many hours! - and he has listened to everything, I mean everything. I’ve only listened to about 37% of everything. When I say “everything”

There were a few Icelandic beat groups, naturally enough, and the best were Thor’s Hammer (in the UK) or Hljomar (in Iceland), meaning ‘Clouds’. P140




and all the way up to the byzantine twists of the million microgenres of modern Dance & Hip Hop, which left me a long way behind.

He connects everything together and he’s never insufferably knowing, which people who can connect everything together can often be. On p 295 he launches into British folk rock, (different musical strains started to pass close to planet pop without landing, causing a fuss without ever seizing control), which I detect is not his favourite idea of fun, and on one page he flashes nimbly from British kids tv of the early 70s to Led Zep’s famous Welsh hide-away Bron-yr-Aur, to Alan Garner’s novel The Owl Service to Anglo-French ye-ye singer Gillian Hills to the 1973 movie The Wicker Man (it declared victory for the pagans. No wonder it kept its head down).

There are quotes leaping out of every other page. His style has a distinct smack of Nik Cohn about it, meaning Nik’s ur-history-of-pop book Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom from 1970, which is one of the funniest books of all time. But Bob has learned from the master. Bob is, actually, the new master.

SOME QUOTES

Brian Jones had a fine blond mop and a babyish face that looked as if it could break out in tears under the slightest strain.

Given his own tv show, Scott Walker sat on a stool and looked deeply hurt, modern pop’s most existential star.

Even on Love is Blue Marvin Junior sounded like he’s been asked to encapsulate the sum of human suffering inside thirty seconds.

According to garage-punk historian Greg Shaw, in 1966 sixty-three percent of American boys under twenty were in a group.

The Kingsmen, whose organ-led, bumbling bear-in-a-china-shop rendition hit No 2

Happy Together, a love song so joyous that it’s hard to avoid throwing your arms around the nearest human being every time it comes on the radio

King Tubby’s main rival in dub was Lee Scratch Perry, a skinny four-foot-eleven character with a penchant for “I’m mad, me” self-promotion who played Salvador Dali to Tubby’s Andre Breton

Jim Reeves sits there waiting in this dreamscape, placid, blank, with that gentlemanly half-smile on his face. Dig deeper into Reeves’ catalogue and it becomes disturbing on a Patrick Bateman level.

Classic rock was more of a business model than a genre

A slew of balding and/or bespectacled singer-songwriters appeared from the suburbs to take out their physical shortcomings on the public



He celebrates and disparages thrillingly and likes to let the guilty hang themselves with their own actions. In the wake of the 76/77 punk explosion, he singles out The Pop Group as “the embodiment of post-punk…Their politics were anarcho-syndicalist, they claimed to owe nothing to the past, they binged on dub reggae and itchy funk” but after some nice early stuff, “a year later came an album entitled For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder which featured the following lyric

All that we ask for is our very own garden of Eden
All that we get is a garden of interballistic missiles

Pure genius!

Moving swiftly on, Bob remarks : The Cure were more about stubbing your toe than taking your life

There are no “essential listening” lists but Bob drops names of songs around so frequently that my marginalia in this book looks like William Morris wallpaper. So there are hours of post-reading fun also to be had here.

In other reviews Bob is called a “poptimist”, one who loves the unserious froth of Blondie, as opposed to the “rockist” who only likes 20 minute dirges by Can and God Speed you Black Emperor, and I think I’m one of those too, Sister Ray notwithstanding. So if you’re a hardcore frothophile and you revel in the apparent indestructability of all these ephemeral sounds from the last 50 years, if your ipod shuffles Vaughan Monroe, Francoise Hardy, The Kitchens of Distinction, Squeeze, Shep and the Limelites, Kraftwerk, Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich, Johnnie Ray, Marianne Faithfull, The Aphex Twin, Kate Bush and Nicki Manaj (the last singer to be named, on p737), then this book was written for you, just you.

[Ulysse · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Pop Shop Hop

Here is a book all about pop
And me I simply could not stop
A-reading it

How does a song rise to the top
While another will only drop
Far beneath it?

The answer to this author Bob
Makes available to the mob
—Go ahead and steal it!

I saw this book in a bookshop
High on a shelf I had to hop
On one foot to reach it

Imagine seeing some milksop
Behaving like a spinning top
Just so he can read shit

But my hand slipped and the book went ‘plop’
Onto the floor (thank god a mop
Had recently cleaned it)

My face the hue of a beet crop
I quickly glanced around the shop
Paid for my book and beat it

Now I'm an expert on Doo-wop
Motown Deep Soul East Coast Hip-hop
Oh I can really feel it

And though it sounds over-the-top
I’ve never gone back to that shop
For my shame hasn't healed yet

[Clementine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an incredibly ambitious and comprehensive undertaking which I think was executed fairly well. There's no doubt that an incredible amount of research went into it, and I generally enjoyed Stanley's writing. Writing about music is very tricky, but I think he did a good job: he made me want to listen to so many songs, albums, or artists, which is a high compliment.

That said, I did have some issues with the book. Firstly, it wasn't unbiased - not that I was expecting that, but there were times when Stanley's personal opinion was almost too present. Like, he spent one of the chapters on punk relentlessly dragging The Clash through the mud, which didn't seem necessary. Most chapters were devoted to genres (or groupings of genres), but then he'd dedicate an entire chapter to a single group once in awhile - which is perhaps justifiable for truly iconic acts like The Beatles, but then he didn't give Bowie his own chapter but he did allocated one to the Pet Shop Boys. The organization by genre also made for issues with chronology - the book does go in roughly chronological order, but whereas you might end one chapter in, say, 2009 with the death of a particular artist, you'd then start the next chapter in 1985. Or, you'd think you were firmly in the 90s, but a chapter would start in the late 70s. Necessary to tell the stories of the genres properly, but the chronological organization (and the positioning of the book as "the story of pop music") didn't quite work.

Stanley also really fell into a rockist trap throughout the book, as well (including in the aforementioned chapter on The Clash). There were many times when he debated the authenticity of certain groups or songs or forms of pop music and posited a divide between commercial and creative success. The conclusion of the book is rather teleological and cynical; Stanley seems to think that pop music is past its peak, basically because musical technologies have changed. I definitely don't agree with this, but it's something every generation goes through once they're no longer young and on the cutting edge of everything.

Most troubling, though, is Stanley's sometimes patronizing attitude towards women and people of colour. There is some uncomfortable discussion of rap; he argues that "something was lost" with rap without a message: he actually says, of Straight Outta Compton, "There was no Nation of Islam revolution in their words - this was a world of dope deals ho's, and violence..." (498) - as if rap needs to carry a heavy duty political message to be worthy? And let's not pretend that drugs, sex, and violence are not present in other genres! Ridiculous.

And he makes a lot of troubling statements about women; generally nothing, like, overtly disgusting, but just small condescending remarks. Case in point: "I roll my eyes at Patti Smith for constantly mentioning Rimbaud, so why do I find it OK for the Human League to use an obscure term for silk manufacture and open a song with the line "Listen to the voice of Buddha"? Why do I find one good pop and the other bad? Maybe because Patti Smith was using Rimbaud as a prop, a symbol of rebellion" (391) vs. "If 1991's dance music was short on lyrical bite, then the Manics made up for it all by themselves. The quoted Rimbaud and Debord in interviews..." (477) Like, why can The Manic Street Preachers quote Rimbaud but not Patti Smith? UGH.

More: "Courtney Love eventually channeled her attention away from media-baiting, until 1998's Celebrity Skin felt like a proper record rather than just a vehicle for her problems..." (523). Could he have been a little more patronizing?! Fuck Courtney Love for not using her music for the exact purpose Bob Stanley thinks is "proper", right?

I mean, do these things ruin the book? No, it was still packed full of good information and written well. But is it annoying to NEVER be able to escape the pervasive sexism and racism that's embedded in the music industry and every other part of society? YES. For its sheer comprehensiveness I'd certainly recommend this book to someone interested in modern pop music, but I didn't think it was as good as the reviews made it out to be, and not just because I have my feminist hat on.

[Nigeyb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you believe in magic?

Arresting, beguiling, comprehensive, diverting, exciting, fabulous, groovy, hit-filled, inspiring, joyous... you get the idea.

"Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop" is a trove of fascinating opinions and insights from Professor Bob Stanley who - in addition to being a member of Saint Etienne, a journalist, compiler of fine compilations, and a film producer - has a PhD In Musicology.

If, like me you ever listened with impatient anticipation to the latest Top 30 chart run down, pen in hand, or pause button primed, then "Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop" is your Bible. It's all here, the entire modern pop era, from NME's first chart published on 14 November 1952 (Al Martino's "Here In My Heart" at number one pop pickers) to "Crazy In Love" when, as we know, the story becomes far less interesting.

750 pages of illuminating excellence. I came away with a c500 song poptastic playlist. Yes, it's really that good.

5/5

[Dave Schoettinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mr. Stanley takes on the ambitious task of reviewing popular music from the mid-50s to the mid-90s for both the US and UK and he is not shy about sharing his opinions on the subject. Whether in agreement with (The Everly Brothers are underrated), skeptical of (Abba wrote half a dozen of the greatest songs of the 20th century), or baffled by (Supertramp is worthy of mention only in a single footnote) those opinions, they are generally useful in starting lively conversations among music aficionados. The greatest value of the book to me was that it reminded me of songs and artists I had forgotten and had me singing songs I hadn't heard in decades.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Packing 40 years of pop history into a single volume is no easy feat. Bob Stanley covers an amazing amount of material in this 500-page book and mentions an absolutely incredible number of songs along the way. For that reason, the experience of Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! was less like regular reading and more like a six-week intensive course on the pop era. It's also quite a feat that Stanley managed to write a book that is so informative, while remaining consistently engaging, insightful, and pithy.

I tackled the book by keeping a running Spotify playlist. I would read each chapter, then go back and review it and add songs to the playlist. To add every song mentioned would be way too much, so I focused on songs I wanted to hear and songs that sounded intriguing. The resulting playlist clocked in at more than 36 hours and totaled 571 songs. I listened to them all. Even the one by Foreigner.

Each chapter of the book sums up a trend, era, or artist. Parker works chronologically through the pop era, but he has to backtrack a lot, especially for artists who were way ahead of their time. There was a point where I was well into the 70s and I thought to myself, "he skipped the Velvet Underground?!" But they were covered later, as a precursor to punk. The result is an interweaving of influences, innovations, fads, and revivals that follows the threads of pop's development and cultivates a deeper understanding of the overall narrative. (Questions answered: What's the difference between house and techno? Why did everyone hate disco? What's the deal with Northern Soul?)

Perhaps the most interesting were the chapters devoted to a single artist. They give a good sense of what Parker values as a listener and of his attitude toward pop. I was delighted to see him single out both the BeeGees and the Monkees, who he describes as "one of pop's greatest achievements." He's clearly no snob, and he was able to highlight the best of nearly every genre he covered: pop, rock, soul, rap, electronica, and more.

Finally, Parker has a nice philosophical take on the end of the pop era (which for him came with the end of music as a physical artifact): "The modern pop era is there to be enjoyed and pilfered, curated, compiled, and recompiled in an endless jigsaw puzzle for the generations." I've already found this to be true in my own life, and Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! has certainly added -- and will continue to add -- a richness to my experience of pop.

[Jon Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be an impossibility. Instead it’s merely insanely ambitious; the equivalent of attempting to simultaneously scale Everest on physical and philosophical levels. Not only does it seek to scale the mountain it seeks to admire and understand it. The Sherpa and Zen master for this expedition is Bob Stanley; fan, journalist and member of St Etienne. The only other person remotely qualified to write something of this breadth and depth with the same level of understanding is Neil Tennant and he’s probably a touch too busy to attempt a project like this.

Like the mere thought of scaling a mountain it’s a deceptively simple concept; the history of British and American pop through the five decades where the single was the common unit of currency. Essentially Stanley’s theory is that the advent of downloads, emphasis on marketing tricks and the rise of dedicated music channels meant that this period around the turn of the century was when the pop charts stopped mattering, that they were no longer the common cultural currency they’d been for nearly five decades (the rise of the MP3 player and playlist culture might also factor in here). He traces the history of the charts from the pre-rock ‘n’ roll days of David Whitfield through to Beyoncé by essentially replicating the format he’s writing about; each chapter is a short, sharp but hook filled burst covering genres, years or important artists, the equivalent of a single. This allows room for pop’s titans and the one-hit pygmies who belied their stature for three or four minutes of glorious noise. Naturally he covers all the well-worn territory that these books have to cover but the twin joys of the book are the unexpected angles he finds to appreciate records and the nuggets dug up along the way; the relationships and patterns he draws out from pop history that only a book of this scale would allow him to draw.

Stanley’s background as journalist and fan also allows him to pull off the tricky balancing act between rational assessment and conveying the emotional hit of the music. It’s clear he’s attempting at least a fair assessment; for instance whilst he’s obviously a huge Bee Gees fan their flaws are clearly drawn out and acknowledged and where Westlife and Stock, Aitken and Waterman are disparaged at times there’s even a thought that he may investigate their discography someday. But he’s prepared to make the case for the bands and records he adores; for the KLF, for the pure beauty of Wichita Lineman’s lyric ‘And I need you more than want you/ And I want you for all time.’, for Brill Building songwriting; for the vocal performance on N-Trance’s ‘Set You Free’ and even for the arrangements on David Whitfield’s records. This is a book designed to open eyes and actually properly assess pop music. As such it isn’t a quick read; most chapters demand a dive into your music collection, YouTube or Spotify. Incidentally, Stanley’s assessments of that Wichita Lineman lyric and the KLF as his favourite lyric and band respectively are compelling cases, though it helps that I was inclined to agree with him before reading that.

There are minor flaws, notably a willingness to draw an easy trajectory of decline on certain bands – I’d certainly argue with his assessments of the fall of REM and the Pet Shop Boys for instance – and, perhaps a certain modesty. His own band gets a casual mention I passing (naturally, in the Britpop chapter) and as a result one of the most heartrending, beautiful singles of the 1990s, ‘Hobart Paving’, goes unmentioned. Sarah Cracknell’s voice is the sound of falling tears and sweet heartbreak (particularly in the magnificence of ‘Rain falls, like Elvis tears’ and ‘Don’t forget to catch me’). But then that’s like complaining a conqueror of Everest made one step out of line with the route Hillary took when successfully climbing the mountain; something only a perfectionist might quibble with. As it stands this is likely as close as there will ever be to a definitive, joyous history of what looks like a bygone age of shared musical culture. What remains are shards; instead of a mountain the future pop historian looks like they’ll be a wandering through foothills. As an epic recounting of the ever churning, ever hungry pop machine this is likely to stand as far above other pop books as Everest does above all other mountains; physically and philosophically.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is surely no coincidence that the title of this book comes from one of the most exuberant and joyful pop records ever made, because this is certainly written with boundless enthusiasm and a real love of music, which shines through. In five parts, the author takes you on the journey of popular music from 1952 until the early 1990's. The book begins with the first UK singles chart, the advent of the 45 and early rock 'n' roll. In the first part the author looks at the importance of skiffle, Larry Parnes and fledging British rock, Joe Meek, Phil Spector, the Brill Building and Elvis, among others.

Generally, each part of the book concentrates on a decade - the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties and the start of the nineties. I have to admit that I found the first half of the book the most interesting, but that probably just reflects my musical tastes. However, whether you are a fan of the Beatles, Dylan, Motown, Glam Rock, Punk, Britpop or anything in between, they are all covered. Although the author obviously cannot give detailed biographies of every artist involved in popular music, he puts bands and styles of music in context and assesses their legacy. Also, despite the huge time period and amount of musical styles and bands covered, there is an abundance of interesting and funny stories, which bring each section to life. This is a book that you will be quoting from for some time if you read it and I cannot think of a better gift for a music lover. Considering the task that the author set himself, this is a magnificent achievement.

[JiGoEm Conan Turner ★ · Rating 5 out of 5]

music is the best thing you can hear in life, that's why you should read this book, it's very inspiring and I love it

[Alex Sarll]

A staggering project to even attempt, of course - especially when you define 'pop' as widely as St Etienne's Stanley obviously does. Elsewhere I've compared it to David Thomson on film, but that was meeting the mainstream audience halfway - what this really reminds me of is those ludicrous projects of scholarship like the Anatomy of Melancholy, enormous and necessarily incomplete yet packed with so much arcane knowledge and sudden, startling new perspectives that you can hardly begrudge the inevitable omissions, small errors and questionable interpretations. I would say it doesn't pretend to objectivity, but that's not quite right; it does, but often with a footnote by way of a wink that acknowledges otherwise. Definitive, if only because nobody else could be fool enough - or know enough - to even attempt to supplant it.

[Bob Fish · Rating 5 out of 5]

One hell of a rollercoaster ride through the second half of 20th century pop music history.

An era when you physically bought something, took it home and cherished it until your next pocketmoney. Then you could go out again and buy yet another single, album or compilation. A slow appreciation proces could start over new. That proces had usually begun after you picked something up from the radio, a magazine, MTV or at a friend's house.

Today, everything is at your fingertips every second. The internet is a vast space of chaos, 90% filled with trash. But that's how I love it. Everything is available and possible like it never was before. It really is a great era to be alive, to be reading this book and listening to everything Bob Stanley mentions has been one of the best music book experiences I've had until now. It deserves a place at the top next to Brewster & Broughton's masterpiece "Last Night A DJ Saved My Life".

The problem with today is that many people don't have any concentration span and approach music as an easy listening side commodity, that has to appeal immediately to their liking. Average listeners don't seem to care to broaden their tastes, they want ready-made, instant gratifying pleasures. Sometimes I think they don’t even know there is more to music than that. So they turn to those top 3 songs that get played to death on every radio station and in every mall/store/supermarket. There's no wide popular music consensus any more. After Beyonce and the R&B nillies, where this book ends, you've got Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Ed Sheeran, Calvin Harris, Bruno Mars, Adele, a bit of reggaeton and that’s it. Outside of that, you're already entering specialized niches which is thin ice when you spin records for an average all-ages audience.

I am a DJ (mostly weddings and corporate parties) and my motto is to play what my audience wants to hear. That moment, I will not try to teach or rather force my so-called knowledgeable views on good music onto anyone. We are here to celebrate so I’ll play all the hits everyone knows and loves (and I love as well !). But I must confess I have a hard time with this decade's popular music, there is so much great stuff out there today but it is so scattered and fragmented all over the place. People only seem to know random stuff they picked up via spotify, youtube or other streaming websites. So to play new music everyone knows, offers a rather limited repertoire to choose from.

But nostalgia is bigger than ever, everybody knows the classics, so that's an easy path to happiness when I'm DJ'ing to many generations at once. But I sometimes long to that era that everyone listened to that same bunch of new groundbreaking genre specific singles. The twentieth century is full of these wonderful hit periods: Rockabilly, Motown, the British Invasion, Northern Soul, Glam Rock, Disco, Punk, Reggae, New Beat, Acid House & Hardcore Breakbeat, the Golden Age of Hip Hop, Grunge, Gabber, Britpop, Big Beat, Trance, D&B, R&B, etc. to name a few. Maybe it's just my nostalgia fooling me, like an old man’s “Things used to be better", but I feel like the general consensus of popular music has never been so limited. And most of it is produced by Max Martin, Dr. Luke or Benny Blanco anyway.

To end my review, I would like to share my 25 favorite, to me most exciting pop singles from the 2010's that are too risky to spin on most parties :

1. Danny L Harle - Broken Flowers
2. Grimes - Oblivion
3. Danny Brown - Ain't it Funny
4. Jamie XX - Gosh (great tune that seems to work, although more than half of the crowd just doesn't know it)
5. SOPHIE - Bipp
6. Kanye West - Famous (even post-MBDTF Krazy Kanye is risky)
7. Todd Terje - Inspector Norse
8. Death Grips - I've Seen Footage
9. Azealia Banks - 212
10. M83 - Midnight City (you can be lucky with this one)
11. Sky Ferreira - Everything is Embarrassing
12. Deerhunter - Desire Lines
13. Crystal Castles - Baptism
14. Andrés - New For You
15. Waka Flocka Flame - Hard in da Paint
16. Charli XCX - Vroom Vroom
17. Moderat - Bad Kingdom
18. M.I.A. - Bad Girls
19. Blawan - Getting Me Down
20. Jai Paul - BTSTU
21. Wavves - King of the Beach
22. TR/ST -Rescue, Mister
23. A.G. Cook - Beautiful
24. Sentinels - Love Rhythm
25. Bicep - Glue

:)

[Sid Nuncius · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed Yeah Yeah Yeah a lot. It’s comprehensive, readable and fantastically knowledgeable, although its huge scope did mean that it had its limitations.

Bob Stanley knows whereof he speaks. The breadth and depth of his knowledge is plain, as is his enthusiasm for pop music in all its forms. Of course, he doesn’t like everything he hears, but he’s largely unhampered by prejudice and gives bands like Sweet, for example, the credit they deserve rather than sneerily dismissing them as many Rock Fans (with capital letters, of course) do. It’s a fascinating history, with some good analysis of well-known artists and a fine array of less well known stuff which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed investigating.

Obviously, no-reader will agree with all Stanley’s judgements. I found his rather airy dismissal of much of Joni Mitchell’s work strange, and his failure even to mention the groundbreaking I Can See For Miles by The Who quite shocking – but then he also cites with approval Loudon Wainwright III’s first album which I bought at the time and got him to sign when I saw him live on his first UK tour, so I can forgive the odd lapse elsewhere.

More seriously, although it’s a long book, its sheer scale of ambition means that no-one gets real, in-depth treatment and quite often I felt I wanted a good deal more about styles or artists than was on offer here. It’s probably unfair to criticise the book for this because it’s not really what it sets out to do, but that nagging sense of wanting to know more did haunt me rather often.

That said, it’s a fascinating, enjoyable read which I can recommend to any pop music fan.

[Joachim Stoop · Rating 4 out of 5]

4+
Terrific!

Pop music is broader than the genre itself. All music that once was popular from the 40s till now.
Only the last chapters came across a bit hurried and haphazardly done

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bob Stanley's Yeah Yeah Yeah is an ambitious work, setting to out cover no less than the entire history of pop music from just before the beginning of the rock & roll era (specifically, the publication of Britain's first weekly pop chart with the advent of the 45 rpm single as the primary medium of distribution) until the onset of the digital age with the arrival of mp3s and file-sharing. Stanley looks at pop and all of it's many strains through the decades, including rock, soul, folk, electronica, hip-hop, disco and others, and endeavors to show how the origins, influences, and evolutions of each were threads in a wider, ever-changing tapestry of popular music as a whole. The book forms its narrative by looking at the monthly and yearly pop charts chronologically, examining what was popular, then using the charts as a framework to zoom in on key songs, people, record labels, and events to illuminate his points.

Stanley aims to follow two broad themes here. The first has to do with the fact that, unlike many pop or rock history books, "Yeah Yeah Yeah" is not another appraisal of the established "canon" that has been built up by critics over the years. Volumes have been written about what critics think is important, but Stanley is much less concerned with asking "What is the critical consensus" than with "What were people actually listening to?" The book emphasizes the "popular" component of "pop" music.

The second overarching theme is the relationship between different genres under the broad umbrella of "pop", and their influence on each other over the decades. Whether it's dance, rock, reggae, hip-hip, punk, or electronica, no genre exists in a vacuum. Stanley endeavors to show not only how the different styles of pop music developed, but how they developed in relation to each other, drawing influence from what came before (or concurrently) and setting the stage for what came later.

Even with close to 900 pages to work with, fitting everything in is still a daunting task. Stanley helps to sketch in the big picture by focusing in on little details here and there. He excels at brief, thumbnail descriptions: Chuck Berry had the "look of a card sharp blessed with luck" whose songs "sounded like the tail fins on Cadillacs". Johnny Cash had "a wood-carved face and a look of resolute danger; when he sang his voice could go deeper than a coal mine". Sly Stone's early records had the "feel of a Sunday-school riot", while the harmonies of CSN sounded "like the first rays of dawn". The book is peppered with illuminating anecdotes and observations that serve to illustrate the larger points, such as a suitably apocalyptic description of Altamont, or a charming account of a Christmas Day charity show played by the Sex Pistols.

There are a couple of things to be aware of. The author is British, so the book takes a very British point of view in many respects, emphasizing some artists or movements that were never as big in the States as they were in England. Not that this should be a problem; readers used to an America-centric outlook will simply have to recalibrate their point of view.

Second, rather than providing a strictly detached outlook, Stanley frequently takes the opportunity to express his personal tastes and opinions. On the one hand, this allows his passion to shine through, giving a fervent eloquence to his writing when talking about those things that he feels strongest about, both positively and negatively. On the other hand, some of his opinions are bound to meet some resistance with different readers. This is especially true for those whose tastes run more towards rock, as Stanley can be quite disdainful of the post-sixties rock canon (notable exceptions being the watershed 70's punk revolution and it's early 80s descendant post-punk, which were by their very nature, a repudiation of rock’s perceived self-absorption).

Whether or not you agree with Stanley’s personal opinions, his passion is undeniable. When describing the music that has really moved him, be it a Beach Boys song, a Motown track, a punk anthem, a pioneering techno track, or a 70s bubblegum pop song, his eloquence and unabashed enthusiasm are infectious, drawing the reader in. Stanley is both professional critic and professional musician, but he is also at times simply a fan, eager to share his discovery of joy with others. One might not agree with Stanley's personal opinions, but any music fan knows the giddy rush that only comes when getting lost in a favorite song. No matter your musical preference, that is a universal feeling that this book ultimately seeks to celebrate, and in that it does a remarkable job.

One more thing: It’s handy to have access to YouTube or an internet radio account while reading this, as listening to the songs he’s writing about adds a whole new dimension.

[Alex MacMillan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Critics of this book as "just a list of songs" miss out on the best playlist of the 20th century's greatest hits. The reader is expected to use YouTube or Spotify to listen and watch as he reads along. By committing to the method* I discovered hundreds of amazing new songs. I also received new perspectives on all my favorite artists who were active before my birth by the book's crucial addition of chronology - the past, present and future of every genre since the 1950s. I've followed pop since the late 90s, and this book helpfully ends where my education began.

The author writes hundreds of brilliant mini-biographies for history's biggest pop acts, which concisely provides rapid context and appreciation of the music. Each chapter is like an introduction from a wise uncle with a massive vinyl collection to a new world. You are guaranteed to raise your Music IQ on every page. - 8/11/15

* - My method: I used Youtube (with AdBlock Plus installed), combined with the "reading list" feature on my Safari web browser. One browser window acted as jukebox for the playlist, while a second window searched for songs and added them to the back of the reading list. Here are my 231 favorite songs from this book.

[ΠανωςΚ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Υποθέτω πως οποιοσδήποτε ενδιαφέρεται για το προφανές αντικείμενο του βιβλίου αυτού, θα μείνει ικανοποιημένος από το περιεχόμενο και από την συχνά επιλεκτική, υποκειμενική και φαρμακερή ματιά του συγγραφέα στην ποπ μουσική απ' το 50κάτι μέχρι σχεδόν το 2000.

[Joshua Line]

"It was the perfect soundtrack for divorced men in wine bars who couldn't find their voice in The Smith's and the impermeability of indie culture but recognised a kindred spirit in bald, angry Phil, standing on his ex-wife's lawn at two in the morning, shouting up at her bedroom window: 'Take a look at me now!'"

"Through it all, they were never fashionable. They made some diabolical mistakes, so bad that you'd think it was some kind of cosmic joke. Take 'Fanny (Be Tender with My Love)' - no one else could have come up with such an ugly title (why not 'Annie', for God's sake?) for such a beautiful song."

[Sara Goldenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only knew some of the music and I enjoyed those parts.

[Michael Bohli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow - was für ein Brocken. Mit "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé" versucht Autor, Musiker, Archivar und Journalist Bob Stanley die Geschichte des modernen Pop aufzuzeichnen. Und woran anderen bereits in den Recherchearbeiten scheitern würden, brilliert der Autor mit einem extrem umfangreichen Werk voller Anekdoten, Zahlen, Vergleiche, Verbindungen und vor allem Namen. Eine Kritik verglich dieses Sachbuch mit "Krieg und Frieden", dies kann ich so nur unterstreichen. Denn auf jeder Seite fallen einem unzählige Bandnamen, Künstler, Musiker, Manager und dergleichen entgegen, die sich in einem wunderbar lesbaren Fliesstext das Zepter in die Hand geben.

Trotz der unglaublichen Dichte und Menge an Information, ist "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé" zu keiner Sekunde mühselig oder langatmig. Es ist dem frischen Schreibstil und der direkten Art von Stanley zu verdanken, dass die Geschichte der modernen Musik immer lesbar und unterhaltsam bleibt. Der Autor vermag es seine persönlichen Ansichten in objektive Erzählungen einzubringen, bietet Underdogs und vergessenen Musiker eine Plattform und spornt immer wieder zu eigenen Reminiszenzen an.

Die Geschichte der Pop-Musik ist eine schier unendliche und lässt sich wohl kaum abschliessend zwischen zwei Buchdeckel pressen. So fehlen auch hier einige Genres, Gruppierungen oder gar Kontinente (so werden Afrika, Asien, Australien und Südamerika komplett ausgeklammert), doch die wichtigsten Strömungen kamen immer aus England oder den USA. Und wie auch Bob Stanley selber in der Einführung schreibt, dies soll nicht eine definitive Abhandlung des Themas sein, sondern EINE Version.

Für alle Musikfreaks, Liebhaber und Sammler ist dieses Buch aber ein unendlicher Fundus an Fakten und gelüfteten Zusammenhänge. Im Kopf hört man automatisch passende Melodien und Lyrics, immer wieder wird man zum schmunzeln oder verwundert schauen animiert. Und besser als sich stapelnde Jahrgänge von Magazinen wie "Mojo", "Eclipse" oder "Rolling Stone" ist es allemal. So macht lernen Spass!

[Ed Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pop music: we all know what it is, we all know what we like and don’t like, and we all have an opinion on it. But we don’t really know much about it. The shelves of libraries are well stocked with chunky hardbacks about the legends of rock, the story of the blues and the significance of jazz, but pop - the very stuff that turned most of us onto music in the first place - is seriously under represented. Perhaps it is its very popularity that has meant that until now nobody has attempted to write about the history of modern pop in its entirety. The subject is so broad and so sprawling that it would seem an impossible task to give pop the same comprehensive overview that modern ‘classical’ music recently received with Alex Ross’ ‘The Rest is Noise’.

Although better known as a member of Saint Etienne, Bob Stanley is also an experienced music journalist, and no doubt has a record collection to die for, which makes him the ideal candidate for the job, and with the perfectly titled ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah’ he doesn’t disappoint. This is a big book that does a great job of describing the very finest in pop music. His aim is to tell the whole story (within certain parameters) and at the same time to distil pop music into its purest form, so that we might come to a greater understanding of pop and to give the respect it is due as an art form.

Stanley gives his history of modern pop a clearly defined beginning and end. Modern pop, he says, began in the early fifties with the advent of seven inch singles and the music charts, and ends fifty years later, when downloads replace shop-bought singles and the charts lose their relevance. Whether or not you agree with this delineation, there’s no doubting the usefulness of starting and ending the book when he does. Few amongst us think of anything pre-war as pop music exactly, and the ten year gap between the end of the book’s narrative and today gives the writer just enough distance to make informed and rational judgements.

One of the main strengths of ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah’ is that the writer’s love for the music is evident throughout, his own voice and opinions are clearly stated but never intrusive. Stanley is able to take us through fifty years of chart successes, the talents that were fulfilled and those that were squandered, the inspired touches of genius and the awkward failures, without ever letting his own infectious enthusiasm drop. The lives and works of some of the most famous people on the planet, as well as plenty of those who enjoyed nothing like the same level of recognition, are told to us in a steady flow of facts, anecdotes, and never failing to include the US and UK chart position for each and every song that is mentioned.

A thread throughout the bank is the tension that has always existed in pop concerning authenticity. Convention has it that ‘manufactured’ pop is cheap, throwaway and bad, but this is not a view that Stanley subscribes to. He is a great champion of those hothouse environments that at various points in the history of pop have produced such massive quantities of hits, like Motown and the Brill building, which housed many of the great songwriting duos like Goffin & King and Mann & Weil whose songs changed the nature of pop in the years between rock and roll and The Beatles.

Stanley is very good on the schism that occurred in the late sixties, when pop and rock became two different things, and we are left in doubt as to which Stanley prefers. Championing Donovan, the Bee Gees and Blondie over Dylan, Led Zeppelin and Patti Smith, this is not a book that will please the Mojo-reading blues purist. All of which won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone familiar with Stanley’s own music (there’s actually a line in Saint Etienne’s Finisterre about believing in Donovan over Dylan).

‘Yeah Yeah Yeah’ excels at telling only as much as you need to know about each and every artist and trend of significance in American and British pop. Stanley maintains an impressive pace and at no point does the narrative seem to dip or seem insubstantial. It’s also a great resource if you’re looking for something new to listen to. The chapter on deep soul has been for me an excellent introduction to some truly stunning sounds. Recommended to all fans of pop, which is pretty much everyone to some extent.

[Art · Rating 3 out of 5]

I vacillated on the rating for this long book. It is a broad survey of popular music since the mid-fifties. Each of the five dozen chapters covers a narrow period, name dropping and cramming song titles along the way, giving the sense of a surface history whizzing by. The early chapters come across as deeper and more satisfying than the late ones. Three and a half stars.

This book traces the development of pop from the seven-inch forty-five rpm single, introduced in the late forties, to the decline of pop as a physical thing, when it became digital in the nineties.

Billboard published its first Top Hundred list in fifty-five. The author takes the launch of that list as the beginning of the pop era, which ran for thirty-three years, ending when the magazine allowed the tally of airplay tracks to count toward a song’s rating.

A sample of nuggets, assertions and observations from this six hundred page book:

— Louis Jordan, the king of jump blues, served as the transition between the swing of the forties and the rock ’n’ roll of the fifties. “Is You I or Is You Ain’t My Baby” (written in Milwaukee) became Jordan’s breakthrough song as a million-seller in the early forties.

— “Rocket 88,” by Jackie Brenston, recorded at Sun in fifty-one, influenced Little Richard, who took that boogie-woogie piano intro seven years later for his own “Good Golly, Miss Molly." The author describes “Rocket 88” as “proto-rock.”

— The author, a Brit, writes that skiffle in England served as a rough equivalent to rockabilly in the United States. It was fast, loud, do-it-yourself music without pretension. The Beatles began as a skiffle band.

— Felice worked as a nineteen-year-old elevator operator in Milwaukee, at The Schroeder Hotel. Her door opened one day and in walked Boudleaux Bryant. Felice saw his face in a dream as an eight-year-old. So, upon seeing him, Felice knew that she would marry him, which inspired them to write “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” a big hit for the Everly Brothers in fifty-eight. They published fifteen hundred songs.

— The birth of FM rock radio began with long album tracks. AM mainstream radio stations of the day ignored the vacant channels on the newer FM band. So, our generation filled that air. San Francisco stations began that in the sixties. I deejayed at an underground radio station in St Louis in the early seventies, using the phrase “under St Louis.” Of course these stations typically avoided most of the pop tunes of the day.

— “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” by Nina Simone in fifty-eight, with its walking bassline and dance floor action, helped inspire ska, a style that exploded in sixty-two, writes the author.

Modern pop began in the early fifties with vinyl, pop charts and the music press, the author says. Singles evolved into albums before morphing into digital for the new era, he concludes.

Although the appendix includes a massive thirty-nine page index, it does not include any footnotes. Not one. And that may help explain the factual errors throughout the book. Meanwhile, the cheap and ugly cover may help explain why I postponed for three years this book of uneven quality.

Each of us likes pop songs in our music mix. In my case, pop songs account for a third of my musical memoir, which includes jazz, folk, classical and eclectic styles that will never rank on the lists.

[Neale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bob Stanley's 'Yeah Yeah Yeah' is an encyclopaedic, nerdy, impassioned, defiantly unfashionable history of popular music, from the early 50s to the mid 90s. It's endlessly fascinating, almost overwhelming in its parade of detail and anecdote. It's great strength is that, while it gives plenty of space to the landmark 'serious' performers, it gives even more space to the true footsoldiers of music: the girl bands, the crooners, the copycats, the two-hit wonders. The best parts of the book are the sections dealing with those eras when music seemed to have stalled, when nothing important seemed to be happening. And the notes at the end of each chapter are as good as the chapters themselves: in some ways the notes are the real heart of the book.

Stanley has been accused of preferring Donovan to Dylan, Sweet to Led Zeppelin. (He thinks that 'New Morning' is 'probably' Dylan's best album.) Good on him. In my opinion, only someone who feels this way is qualified to write a proper history of 'pop' (i.e. 'popular', the music that people actually listen to) music.

Stanley defines pop music as basically anything that is in the charts. He begins in 1952, pre 'rock and roll', and finishes in the mid 90s. I think he does this partly for practical reasons, but his contention that the mid 90s, around the time of Britpop, was the time when pop music ended has something going for it. It is no coincidence that this was the time when Stanley's own retro-magpie band, St Etienne, was coming into its own, alongside the internet - which was to give everyone, for the first time, the chance to be as eclectic and to listen as widely as critics like John Peel (and Stanley himself). First Napster, then iTunes, then Spotify: now everyone's a collector.

It's ironic that Stanley's account of the 'end of pop music' (as we knew it) is best accompanied by frequent side-trips to YouTube and streaming music services, to see and hear what he is talking about. No longer do we have to take the critic's word. This extraordinary opportunity may well be what 'killed' pop music, but it also makes it more available than ever before.

[Peter Boyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is quite simply the best book on music I've ever read. It's 800 pages long and I could easily have read 800 more. Pop enthusiasts will lap it up but there is something here for even the most casual music fan, such is the breadth of genres covered.
Bob Stanley writes with such passion and enthusiasm that it is impossible not to get carried away with his love of all things pop. He not afraid to share his honest opinions along the way - you can tell that Paul is favourite Beatle, that he preferred the incendiary Sex Pistols to the hypocritical Clash, and that he will always have a soft spot for Debbie Harry over the pretentious Patti Smith. You read in hope that he will praise your own favourite songs and when he does it feels like the highest vindication. He recounts it all in a wonderfully witty style - Edwyn Collins "sang like a drunken calf, The Bees Gees' You Win Again is a "Christmas Carol created in a shipbuilding yard".
My favourite passages were dedicated to bands that are beacons in the annals of pop music - The Beach Boys, The Bee Gees, Abba, Prince and Madonna. I must admit I found some of the earlier Fifties chapters a little tough going simply because I had never heard of most of the artists, but it is all necessary to show how the musical landscape was utterly transformed in the Sixties.
It must have felt like a wildly ambitious project to start off with on page one but I cannot think of a worthier writer to master it. A stunning achievement.

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

In theory, this should have been "the" book on pop. And in many ways it is, but only as an introduction for those who may not get pop music all in one big gulp. There is nothing further I learned from reading this book, except some great obscure groups and songs. For instance, The Fairytale. Check them out. On the other hand I was kind of shocked that he doesn't mention my faves, Sparks, to a pronounced degree. Surely there should have been at least three to four pages devoted to this perfect pop duo - but alas, no! Also Bob Stanley is very much a popster, and doesn't give much credit to bands like Television or music from the avant-garde side of pop. He doesn't even credit Eno that much, he prefers later Roxy Music albums without Eno. Which is border-line eccentric taste level, but still, a remarkable book. When I was younger, there would be mass-market books on the current pop scene, which concentrated on the "now" sounds with a touch of the history of that sound. "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" sort of makes me think of those type of books. It's a survey of sounds and styles, but Stanley is a fine thinker and writer. I believe that there are more essential books out there on pop, but still, I would recommend this book for a pop beginner.

[Tony O'Neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to claim some kinda bias here because I remember being totally in awe of Bob and Saint Etienne as a teenager (and I still am really, I mean come on Saint Etienne are a brilliant band) and then remember nearly dying when I met him when he was producing Kenickie's debut album. So I came into this knowing I'd like it - not just because Bob was someone I admired - but because he is a walking encyclopedia of pop knowledge... so yes, I had high exceptions coming into Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! and it didn't disappoint: it's an indispensable, fun and prescient guide to the world pop as written by someone who really knows their stuff. Essential to anyone who grew up in an era where music was a religion, not just that pleasant noise thats playing the background when you're on Facebook.

Shit, I'm old.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essential book in my collection. No qualifiers, as in essential “music book”. I found interesting and relevant things on virtually every page. I had a feeling I’d like it because of the way he defines pop, which is basically the same way I do: if you make records, singles, albums and you go on TV or on tour to promote them, you are pop. Simple but correct. And he’s funny as hell because he has strong opinions and doesn’t hide them even a little.

This is one of those books I will reference over and over. Clearly I’m not alone at all because a quick google search shows that people have created playlists on line that track the book. Looks like my free time now has some direction.

[James Tierney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although never less than engaging, Yeah Yeah Yeah is freighted with so much anecdote that it fails to service a clear narrative.
This eventually leads to it reading as a series of unusually considered music mag pieces rather than as a book.

[Joe O'Donnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Setting out to write a history of Pop Music would appear to be a monumental, if not foolhardy, undertaking. By extension you are essentially tasked with writing an overview of much of the cultural history of the 20th and 21st centuries. And even if you succeed in completing this mammoth task, the danger is that you will end up creating what amounts to a dry, dense reference book. That “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” – Bob Stanley’s story of Pop Music – not only avoids these pitfalls, but manages to be eminently, enthrallingly readable, speaks to how much of a towering achievement it is.

The name Bob Stanley will be familiar to many as the driving force behind the 90’s art-popsters Saint Etienne, and even the most cursory of glances through “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” will confirm that his talents don’t start and end at the mixing desk. Notwithstanding the book’s subtitle of being “The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé”, Stanley takes quite a broad view of what defines ‘Pop’, meaning his history encompasses everything from 60s garage rock, Heavy Metal, Rap, Acid House and Techno.

This vast breadth of knowledge – and a distinct ‘genre-fluid’ approach - allows Stanley to map connections between artists and across genres that would not have been immediately obvious to a non-expert reader. So if you were heretofore unaware of the links between Doo-wop and Hip-Hop, or the distant connections between Philadelphia Soul and British Glam Rock, or what Grandmaster Flash and Adam Ant – or, indeed, Roy Orbison and Joy Division – what might have in common, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” will plug all of the holes in your pop knowledge.

For Bob Stanley, much of the momentum behind the growth and evolution of Pop Music is bound up with the importance of cities. Time-after-time throughout “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!”, we see how metropolises - whether they be Liverpool, Detroit, San Francisco, or Kingston – were crucial to the development of popular music over the last seven decades. Stanley is also remarkably clear-sighted on how technological advances (from improved amplification on to synthesisers and samplers through to downloading and ipods) have been so important to how pop music has mutated over the last half-century.

A huge part of the appeal of “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” is how opinionated and irreverent a writer Bob Stanley is, and he rarely seems content to kowtow to the standard rock journo consensus. Hence, he launches a stout defence of the once terminally unfashionable Bee Gees, re-appraises Blondie as being the ultimate super-connector between classic rock/punk and disco/house, and courageously (and, in my view, correctly) makes an argument for situationist pranksters The KLF being the greatest pop group of all-time.

“Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” clocks in at a weighty 600-plus pages, but what makes its reading time pass in the blink of an eye is Bob Stanley’s exquisitely-calibrated penchant for a one-line quip. The Pet Shop Boys are described as “channelling the unlikely inputs of Grandmaster Flash and Alan Bennett”; Dr. Feelgood vocalist Lee Brilleaux is recounted as having “the kind of voice you might hear if Ford Cortinas could sing”; while the 80s starlet Kim Wilde is cruelly, if accurately, dismissed as having “emerged in 1981 with a three-years-too-late budget Blondie sound she’d bought from a petrol station in Hertfordshire”.

Unlike so many music history books, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” is refreshingly free of rockism. Stanley is unafraid to upset the critical apple cart; for example, he laments Pop’s degeneration into complacent middle age during the 1980s (“an era of conservative calculation”), and pleasingly sees the artform as only being roused out of its slumber by the arrival of the future shock of House and Techno.

Amazingly astute in its observations, encyclopaedic in its command of history, and blessed with an immaculate turn-of-phrase, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” is a kaleidoscopic -and immensely enjoyable - journey through the history of pop.

[Jack Caulfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative but occasionally aggravating history of pop music. Stanley traces the history of pop from the fifties to the turn of the millennium. He reasons that with the decline of physical media and the death of pop music magazines and TV shows like Top of the Pops, pop music is basically (if not entirely, he concedes) dead beyond this point. I can definitely sympathize with not finding much worth talking about in recent pop music, but this still feels like something of a cop-out.

Elsewhere, the coverage can be uneven. The nineties coverage in particular feels a bit rushed compared to the rest, though what's there is good. And Stanley gets pretty petulant about artists he doesn't like: half the Sex Pistols chapter is devoted to slagging off The Clash; the chapter on 'new wave' (pretty narrowly defined) spells out his distaste for the genre pretty clearly; Radiohead and Talking Heads each get one rather dismissive sentence; in the prog chapter, Dark Side of the Moon is termed 'largely tuneless' and King Crimson aren't discussed at all; Patti Smith is brought up over and over again, but only as a punchline (he reckons she's pretentious); and he's oddly snooty about Stevie Wonder. The rationale for what's included is somewhat arbitrary; sometimes he abandons what was in the charts in a given period based on the idea that it didn't reflect what people were really into (i.e. he thinks it was naff). But it means he finds a way to sneak in the likes of Can, My Bloody Valentine, and Aphex Twin, so I can't complain too much.

Stanley makes a big deal out of the poptimist/rockist divide (if you don't know what this means, don't look it up; it's an imaginary distinction journalists made up to have a fight about), and you sense that this informs his tastes. He seems to value a sort of authenticity he redefines on the fly so that it can apply equally to Public Image Ltd or to Deee-Lite, according to his whims.

The book is organized into chapters on different genres (and occasionally particularly significant artists) which sometimes feel rather random in terms of what they include: Queen, for instance, go unmentioned in the chapter on glam rock and are instead covered in a chapter on metal, placed in the middle of the eighties. He's not a fan of theirs, as you might expect; you get the sense he just threw them in as an afterthought. Elsewhere, the transpositions are quite clever and effective: The Stooges and Velvet Underground aren't covered until a chapter on the transitional moment of 1975, on the basis that this was when their influence really started to be felt, in the form of punk. And soul from the mid-70s onwards isn't covered (with the exception of Michael Jackson and Prince) until the final chapter traces its development throughout the eighties and nineties into modern R&B.

Overall, it's a decent journey through modern music and a way of filling in any gaps in your knowledge, if you can bear with the author's posturing.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love history. I love music. This is the book for me.

Yeah Yeah Yeah is musician and music writer Bob Stanley's encyclopedic look at the Modern Pop era spanning from the invention of the vinyl record in '52 to the birth of the digital age ('00). It is nerdy, dense and will very much be isolating for those with only a passing interest in writing about the ins-and-outs of popular music. Fortunately for me, this type of stuff is like crack - being able to draw a line through music history to the music I love now builds my appreciation of the art form, and finding new music to discover excites me even more so.

The book is a whopper - 800 pages - though it realistically could be many times the size. While I think it is genuinely impossible to cover the sheer breadth of information needed to truly cover the history of Western Popular Music, Stanley almost succeeds. Each chapter is a look at a new genre, year or artist that had significance on popular music as a whole, as well as the contexts of the social situations in which they emerged. Every chapter could realistically be a whole book on its own -some key artists or moments inevitability feel short changed or omitted all together. Instead, I looked at this as more of a reference guide. If an artist or song interested me, I'd listen to it or go on to read more about it. It will lead on to other things beyond the US and UK centric music scenes talked about here.

Importantly, as a sort of reference guide, Stanley allows his own personality and tastes shine through his writing, avoiding what could have ended up as a dry recounting of long lists of artists, genres, songs and albums (though don't get me wrong - there is a LOT of that still here). You can sense his tangible joy at era defining moments such as the Sex Pistols punk explosion, or the early 90s rave scene in England, his disapproval of stale 'rock star' tropes mimicked by bands like Guns'n'Roses, or bemusement at the unlikeliness of Bob Dylan's rise to the mainstream.

Ultimately, I really loved the way this book connected me with the era of music before the one that I have grown up in. While I know many of the artists, genres, or songs, I don't know what it was like to have music not readily available at the press of a button. I don't know the tribalism of the community that builds within a localised music scene, or the thrill of discovering an obscure new '45, the confusion of a sound in a song I've never heard that completely changes the game, or the blind trust given to radio DJs to guide my tastes. I could feel like I've missed out on a true, tangible mainstream music community.

Instead, this book made me appreciate all the amazing stories and music that has come before me. The digital age may have taken over, but the age of Modern Pop still echoes in my ears.

Post-script: I considered taking a star off for Stanley's disregard of Radiohead (limited to a single sentence), but I tried not to let my hurt feelings take over.