Top of the pop books

 At the risk of once again sounding like an unpaid PR cheerleader for White Rabbit, I can't quite believe that not one of their publications features in Alexis Petridis' Guardian list of the best music books published in 2022. No Jude Rogers, no Stuart Braithwaite, no Ted Kessler, no Lenny Kaye, no Adelle Stripe and Lias Saouidi, no Sinead Gleeson and Kim Gordon.

In Petridis' defence, he was limited to only choosing six and ultimately it probably just goes to show that it's been a vintage year for book-length music writing. Certainly, the tomes he selected sound potentially fascinating, and I've written about a couple of them already: Michael Hann's oral history of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Denim And Leather, and Nick Duerden's Exit Stage Left: The Curious Afterlife Of Pop Stars. He even does a good job of selling Bono's autobiography.

Arguing that "there's a nagging sense that all the great stories about pop's history might have already been explored", Petridis specifically chose books that suggest otherwise - which makes it all the more surprising that there was no place for Bob Stanley's Let's Do It: The Birth Of Pop. If the conversation Stanley had with Petridis' Guardian colleague Pete Paphides at Green Man is anything to go by, then his follow-up to Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story Of Modern Pop is packed full of fascinating insights and revelations into an underexplored but critically important period.