Top ten music histories

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. His new book is Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Modern Pop Music. One of Stanley's top ten music histories, as shared with the Guardian:

Revolution In the Head by Ian MacDonald

I've avoided straight biographies on this list, but the Beatles' story is the perfect pop story, and – by going through every Beatles song chronologically – no one tells it better than Ian MacDonald. It's wildly unpredictable. MacDonald has a problem with George Harrison's general moodiness, and describes Helter Skelter as a "drunken mess", but you don't have to agree with him. His writing is so good that, against all odds, it'll make you listen to the most overplayed songs in history all over again.

Read about the other books on the list.

Also see: Greil Marcus's five top books on rock music, Nile Rodgers's top ten music books, Samuel Muston's ten best music memoirs, and Kitty Empire's ten best rock autobiographies.

--Marshal Zeringue