Books in the Icons of Pop Music series

This is the first book on Costello that sets out to avoid chronological presentation, preferring a thematic approach focused on music and words over the nearly thirty years of career.

Buddy Holly occupies an enigmatic position in pop and rock music history, partly because of his premature death at the age of 22 in a plane crash in February 1959. This book provides a fresh perspective on Holly by discussing his career and art in the context of his contribution to the swiftly-evolving music scene of the late 1950s.

This is the first study of Wilson to eschew chronology for a topical organization that allows discussion of lyrical themes and musical motifs outside of any prejudicial presumptions about their place in the trajectory of his career.

This book explores how funk emerged in the mid-1960s at the very apex of the civil rights movement and shows how this music mirrored the broader changes taking place within the African-American community at a crucial political time and continues to underpin remix culture. It traces the extent of the Brown legacy, musically and culturally.

In this book, Ian Inglis provides a succinct critical appreciation of the group that is balanced, informative and objective.