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

by Bob Stanley

Overview

"[Stanley is] as clear-eyed about music as he is crazy in love with it." —Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times

A monumental work of musical history, Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! traces the story of pop music through 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). Bob Stanley—himself a musician, music critic, and fan—teases out the connections and tensions that animated the pop charts for decades, and ranges across the birth of rock, soul, R&B, punk, hip hop, indie, house, techno, and more. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! is a vital guide to the rich soundtrack of the second half of the twentieth century and a book as much fun to argue with as to quote.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393242706
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/07/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	624
Sales rank:	452,349
File size:	808 KB

About the Author

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

Editorial Reviews

06/01/2014
Stanley (Match Day), a member of indie pop band Saint Etienne, traces the development of popular music in Great Britain and the United States from 1952 through 2012, with extended riffs on major solo artists and groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, ABBA, and Michael Jackson, and shorter discussions about everyone from one-hit wonders in obscure English mining towns to long-popular singers such as Elton John and Aretha Franklin. He casts a wide net, encompassing pop, rock, folk, soul, R & B, country, punk, metal, grunge, and rap, examining the cultural context surrounding the music and delving into the lyrics, the harmonies/chord structures of songs, and use of instruments. All of this helps distinguish his work from others that explore these genres and gives the whole more depth. Some may quibble with Stanley's opinions or emphases, but his chatty style will engage the reader and his extensive research is displayed to excellent effect. VERDICT This eminently readable tome should appeal to all who lived through this period or who have an interest in the various musics. Despite some Britishisms and only a glancing reference to key players such as the Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, and Frank Zappa, Stanley presents a solid story.—Barry Zaslow, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH

Library Journal

"Zips through decades of dance tunes and teenage heartthrobs with an affectionate ebullience… As good ‘a story of pop music’ as a fan could hope for."

Ryan Little

"Breezy, opinionated and totally delicious."

Wall Street Journal - David Kirby

"Quixotic and kaleidoscopic, Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! serves up erudite irreverence on every page. Like its sprawling subject, it invites everyone in for a listen."

Dallas Morning News - Chris Vognar

"This book will be remembered and deserves to be."

Barnes & Noble Review - Robert Christgau

"Rich with musical history lived, worked, and felt, with dozens more chapters and digressions that pay pop its due…Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! is smart, funny, surprisingly deep for just how broad it is, but, most of all, for stars and songs great and small, it is full of love."

Los Angeles Review of Books - Joshua Joy Kamensky

"Tells the story of American and British pop music almost as engagingly as the songs themselves."

Newsday - Glenn Gamboa

"A landmark celebration, rumination and encapsulation of just about everything worth knowing—and arguing—about the pop landscape… A book for the ages."

USA Today - Matt Damsker

"Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! ties together the disparate strands of pop’s shape-shifting history to create a vivid living document of the music of our lives."

Greg Milner

"An immensely entertaining pop-music survey course. [Stanley] is engagingly opinionated and often very, very funny… The assemblage of irresistible, bite-size histories of top-of-the-charts stars is joyful, smart, and addictive, just like the best pop songs, and a must for music fans everywhere."

Starred review Booklist

"[Stanley is] as clear-eyed about music as he is crazy in love with it."

Los Angeles Times - Mikael Wood

"Bob Stanley loves and finds surprising connections between a thousand kinds of pop. He makes me want to run to the nearest record store—and move in."

Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields

"[An] exuberant celebration of the silly and the sublime… [Stanley’s] writing delights and surprises, and his description of the music makes you want to dance to it."

The New Yorker - Sarah Larson

"An ambitious undertaking… Stanley’s bold positions connect pop’s many dots in fresh and fascinating patterns."

Christian Science Monitor

"{A] Roller-coaster ride through pop history… encourages readers to look deeper into offshoots of ‘pop’ and performers they might not be so familiar with."

Houston Press - Bob Ruggiero

"Like War and Peace, but with a beat…[E]ndlessly readable."

Boston Globe - James Reed