Nick Hornby ha logrado compartir 31 canciones que para el significaron en algún momento de su vida algo. De estas canciones probablemente conocía 4 o 5 , las otras fueron ir a la aplicación spotify y buscarlas, con cada capítulo la siguiente canción y así sucesivamente. Es entonces cuando el libro se empieza a explicar solo. Si deseas leer sobre canciones , música y vivencias este libro sería un recomendado.

What could perhaps described as autobiographical music criticism. Anyone who knows me knows I frequently cite the often miss attributed quote "writing about music is like dancing about architecture" (Costello? Monk? Mingus? Kant?) so this book is kinda like that. Plus, Hornby frequently comes across as an old, liberal fart, especially in his descriptions of 21st century pop music and hip hop BUT HE KNOWS HES AN OLD LIBERAL FART AND HE REALLY LOVES Nelly Furtado so that sort of makes it OK doesn't it? Not really. I don't even know where to begin with that one.

Still, his passion for music made me pull out a couple CD's I'd bought out of guilt and/or curiousity and listen to then, only to realize I still didn't like them.

Hornby is just about my age, and as we all know a person's age is one of the best determiners of the sort of things you'll have on your shelf. Although I am more of a jazz listener than Hornby, I found that there was a fairly extensive crossover between my collection and his list. What makes the book fun-- what makes lists like that fun-- are the arguments he sets out to make the case for his selections. His defense of Rod Stewart, for example, is spot on-- Stewart is cool, up to a point, and then he is inexcusable. It is best to pretend that his career ended about the time of "Smiler" and move on. None of want to think about what came next, but what came before was pretty terrific.

I am tempted to say that what I liked about the book was that it was like "High Fidelity" without all the relationship stuff, but of course it is impossible to write about pop music and not have some emotional seepage-- one of the reasons that there is pop music is that it allows even the most buttoned up personality a means of expressing things that otherwise would go unsaid. There is no prettier Valentine than a mix tape for exactly that reason, and that is what Hornby accomplishes in this book.

Alcuni giorni fa ho ricevuto un bellissimo regalo: un cuscino poggiatesta per la vasca da bagno. Oggetto che desideravo da tanto tempo. E’ la sua anima arrogante e inutile travestita da manufatto con finalità d’uso ad attirarmi. Esattamente come le canzoni . La prima volta che presi coscienza dell’esistenza di un simile oggetto fu in un cinema, secoli fa, incauto spettatore di Nightmare e l’unico ricordo che ho di quel film è una scena, assai secondaria, in cui una mamma raccomanda al figlio (o era una figlia?) di utilizzare nella vasca il poggiatesta per evitare di affogare (?!) al sopraggiungere di un eventuale colpo di sonno. In prima battuta pensai che diavolo di popolo è un popolo che affoga in una vasca da bagno , e soprattutto un popolo che progetta costruisce vende e consuma poggiatesta da vasca? Poi conclusi che in fondo è lo stesso popolo che è riuscito a rendere industria globale un oggetto assai più immateriale e bizzarro come la canzone.
Da felice possessore di poggiatesta ho ripreso in mano questo libello di Nick Hornby -libro da leggersi obbligatoriamente in vasca- scrittore poggiatesta per eccellenza , della cui produzione ho letto molto ma ricordo poco, come certi filmetti horror o talune canzonette, scrittore inutile e, a volte, piacevole appunto come un poggiatesta da vasca. Qui Hornby, una volta tanto, lascia da parte l’usurata formuletta del chik lit per maschietti e adotta una lingua rozza, discorsiva, quasi da bar, adattissima all’argomento trattato. Un elenco di 31 canzoni che spazia dal molto alto (Dylan, Patti Smith, Van Morrison) al molto basso (Nelly Furtado) senza soluzione di continuità. Ma non ha alcuna importanza. Le 31 canzoni possono essere tranquillamente sostituite da altre qualsiasi 31 capate a caso dal canzoniere universale per portare avanti il giochetto volutamente ingenuo innescato da Hornby. La tesi di fondo, esplicitamente non dichiarata, ma ovvia cordicella che infila tutte le 31 false perle, è il domandarsi (e rispondersi) come può un adulto trasferire un tot di passione (un bel po’ di tot) verso quei quattro minuti quattro di esile trama musicale, quell’innocente approssimazione di una rappresentazione estetica della realtà quale è la musica pop. E’ una domanda che insegue tutti noi, attempati e suggestionabili idioti che corrono dietro al nulla in musica.
Su una cosa io e H. siamo d’accordo: il corpo a corpo con la canzone è un corpo a corpo con il mistero, non è importante tirar giù il vestito musicale a certe creature fragili, si avrebbero solo brutte sorprese, gli ingredienti è buona regola lasciarli segreti, il disvelamento interrompe il gioco, meglio quindi bendarsi gli occhi e cercare a tentoni una qualunque di quelle 31 maniglie che aprono la porta di quel mondo parallelo. Siamo persone predisposte alla fede e all’abbaglio, alla fede nell’abbaglio.
Su molte altre siamo in netto disaccordo, ma non importa, in fondo mi sono sempre posto un paio di domande intorno agli inglesi: la prima è quale cortocircuito culturale sia l’origine dell’invenzione di una cosa come il porridge, la seconda è perché esiste Rod Stewart.A una delle due, Hornby mi ha risposto. E tanto basta

“All I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to 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.”

Don’t I know that feeling, Nick… It should come as no surprise that the man who wrote “High Fidelity” wrote a book like this: I feel like he must have had most of this book in a back drawer somewhere as he created the character of Rob and his compulsive ‘top 5’ list making. I kept thinking about Rob wanting to re-arrange his record collection ‘autobiographically’: I’m guessing that this is what that would end up looking like.

But to be fair, he has a lot more to say than simply ‘I like this song’. I just read Jeff Tweedy’s book “World With a Song” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), and he really focuses on the songs themselves, as where Hornby uses the songs to go on tangents about music that don’t necessarily have anything to do with the song the chapter is named after. This makes both books much more different than I had assumed they would be, and I have to say, they both scratch a totally different itch. Sometimes, you just want to deep dive on what a song has meant to you, what it makes you think of; but other times, the song is just an excuse to talk about why indie record stores matter, or what it feels like to have reached the life stage where you make fun of your kids’ taste in music…

Case in point: I got a copy of this book after realizing that Hornby and I both have a thing for Paul Westerberg (though I suspect the nature of our ‘thing’ differs - at least slightly) and that he had dedicated a chapter of this collection to the song “Born for Me”, a gorgeous piece I can listen to on a loop for hours without getting sick of it. I was somewhat disappointed because that chapter is not really about Westerberg at all (or the actual song, for that matter!), but about Hornby’s thoughts about solos, and how they serve as emotional punctuation in the hands of skillful musicians. Still interesting, just not exactly what I expected. But that’s not a bad thing.

Further case in point: I was very skeptical he would have anything to say about Nelly Furtado that I would actually care about, but he did have really interesting things to say about the power of a flavor-of-the-month pop song, how it can give temporary joy and bring people together even when it’s not an objectively good piece of music. In fact, that sort of discussion is a refreshing reminder that music doesn’t have to be ‘serious’ to be enjoyable, and it’s not a big deal. It’s exactly what I love about Chappell Roan, as a matter of fact, the pure joy her music gives me (though I firmly believe she will stand the test of time much better than Nelly Furtado ever has).

It must be noted that the book was published almost twenty-five years ago, so it feels stale at times, because there’s obviously nothing terribly fresh on his list (though in his defense, a lot of songs on my own top 31 would probably pre-date my birth, so I don’t want to throw stones from my glass castle). I wonder if he ever considered updating it and if he has since changed his mind about some of those songs. A life-long song is rather rare, while there are plenty of ‘favorite for now’ songs out there.

If I am honest, I liked Jeff Tweedy’s take on this exercise a bit better, probably simply due to the fact that our references and tastes overlap a bit more. Tweedy’s book is also much more recent, so I was more familiar with his selection. But Hornby’s prose is always fun, engaging, and thought-provoking, which makes it a pleasure to read.

Recommended for music fans, and please note that it really doesn’t matter if you like the same music as Hornby’s; it only matters that you care about music, any music.



“Sometimes, very occasionally, songs and books and films and pictures express who you are, perfectly. And they don’t do this in words or images, necessarily; the connection is a lot less direct and more complicated than that."

I picked this up hoping it was a music equivalent of Hornby's delightful books column for The Believer, the point of which was always that reading begets more reading, so tangents and anecdotes were part of the deal. So too in this collection of essays, except it turns out, with only a few exceptions, it's hard to care about the music Hornby writes about. In only two cases did I become interested enough that I might check out the recordings (Steve Earle and Nick Cave.)

I still and always like Hornby's style, he is companionable and relatable. But for essays, I would stick to reading one of his other collections.

Un percorso originale tra 31 delle canzoni che hanno fatto di questo autore l'individuo che era nel periodo in cui scrisse questo libercolo -2003, circa-. Lettura decisamente consigliata a chi stia cercando di ritrovare la propria voce nelle canzoni altrui, a chi stia inseguendo lo swing perduto, a chi stia imparando a conoscere se stesso...e anche a tutti gli altri.

Se la musica non avesse avuto un impatto così profondo nella mia vita, mi sarei attenuta alle canoniche 3 stelle del "mi è piaciuto", ma non è questo il caso. Dopotutto si tratta di Hornby, non penso che mi pentirò di essermi sbilanciata.

Lascio qui, perlomeno per gli utenti di Spotify, la playlist -quasi- completa delle canzoni in questione Link alla playlist su Spotify

Ik had dit boek al eens eerder gelezen maar dit keer beluisterde ik de songs erbij, wat het toch nog wel beter maakt. Voor de rest blijft dit een prachtig boek van iemand die zijn liefde voor muziek wil delen, net zoals hij dat in "Fever pitch" ook al deed met voetbal en het supporter-zijn van Arsenal.
Pluspunt is bovendien dat het boek eindigt met "Pissing in a river" van Patti Smith, één van mijn all time favorieten. Ik leerde het nummer kennen uit de film "All over me" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118586/) en hoe de song gebruikt wordt in een sleutelscène, illustreert perfect de emotionele impact van het nummer.

I don't share much of Hornby's musical opinions, whether it be his inclinations towards Bruce Springsteen and Nelly Furtado or his disavowal of jazz and classical. It's still interesting to hear what other people like, and, as with his book reviews for the Believer, he's at his humorous best when dissecting the minutiae of pop culture and quibbles of taste. With some fun illustrations by Marcel Dzama.

Music criticism? Not quite - music appreciation, and a reading so easy and quick it does feel like a good song, itself.

When this book was written in 2003, the essays discussed songs that the reader either knew or would go out and seek having read the authors appreciation . Reading this in 2020 with the ability to ask Alexa to play each song would have been unimaginable feat, but what a joy it is! I’ve never found an in road to Ben Folds music, but reading the authors love for the song Smoke and being able to repeat it, enabled me to get it. While the book is dated, there are many gems to be discovered and classics to be celebrated. Quick and fun read.

This was written in 2002 and it shows.