Songbook by Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby’s Songbook is a collection of essays on 31 songs and 15 albums. It is not typical music criticism. This novelist does not get into the historical relevance or excessive emphasis on the musical miracles that coincided to create great pop music. He “wanted to write about what it was in these songs that made [him] love them, not what [he] brought to the songs.”
This form of musical appreciation makes the book much more personal that some that Greil Marcus or even Lester Bangs would write. These essays show how “Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen has continued to makes its way onto Hornby’s mix tapes for 30 years; how owning 20 albums by and knowing more historical facts about Bob Dylan than William Shakespeare does not make him a “Dylan fanatic”; and how Patti Smith leaves him “wanting to read, or write, or paint, or go to a gallery, or run fast…” As Hornby declares, “That kind of inspiration is rare, in any area of the arts.”
As the author of Fever Pitch, readers have come to understand his obsessive devotion to certain topics. And with High Fidelity, Hornby demonstrated how musical fanatics could still allow someone to lead a normal life. Throughout Songbook, as Hornby proclaims his affection with songs by The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Aimee Mann, Nelly Furtado, The Avalanches, and Soulwax, he shows how a history of listening to pop music has influenced his life.
He describes how hearing Butch Hancock and Marce LaCouture perform at a local pub became an inspiration for scenes from High Fidelity. The essay on Badly Drawn Boy’s “A Minor Incident,” a song from the soundtrack to About A Boy, is one of the more heartfelt compositions. He relates how that song will eternally be tied to his thoughts of his autistic son, even though About A Boy was not directly influenced by his son. “I write a book that isn’t about my kid, and then someone writes a beautiful song based on an episode in my book that turns out to mean something much more personal to me than my book ever did.”
Throughout Songbook Hornby also insinuates about or questions trends in modern pop music. Stating that music may have found its “ideal form” in the short verse/chorus/verse format, he reminds the reader that, “if we simply sit around waiting for the next punk movement to come along, then we will be telling our best songwriters that what they do is worthless, and they will become marginalized.” When describing the inescapability of pop music, from its use in commercials to background music, Hornby asks, “How, then, given pop music’s transmutation into a sort of aural smog, is it possible for an artist to create something that sounds mysteriously compelling?” This book does not set out to resolve these issues, but rather to raise them while sharing a life of musical devoutness.
One of the strengths of Songbook is the personal tone that Hornby uses to annunciate his emotional connections to these songs. There are insights into his personal life, devotion to music, and literary inspirations. As Hornby openly declares, “All I’m hoping here is that you have equivalents, that you spend a lot of time listening to music and seeing faces in its fire.” My friends and I have spent entire evenings sharing our favorite songs and arguing or agreeing on which songs are truly great and what makes a great song. Ultimately, anyone who has shared that musical passion will relate and revel in this quick, enjoyable read. Nick Hornby eloquently explains the personal merit of being a musical fanatic. As he states in his introductory treatise on Teenage Fanclub’s “Your Love Is The Place From Where I Come,” “…mostly all I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along with them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when these other people don’t like them as much as I do.” What more does any music fan really want?
Download the first chapter (pdf)
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