New Books in Music

Over the last seven decades, some of rock 'n' roll's most celebrated figureheads have flirted with the imagery and theater of the Third Reich. From Keith Moon and Vivian Stanshall kitting themselves out in Nazi uniforms to Siouxsie Sioux and Sid Vicious brandishing swastikas in the pomp of punk, generations of performers have associated themselves in troubling ways with the aesthetics, mass hysteria, and even ideology of Nazism. Whether shock factor, stupidity, or crass attempts at subversion, rock 'n' roll has indulged these associations in a way not accepted in any other art form. But how accountable should fans, the media, and the music industry be for what has often seemed a sleazy fascination with the eroticized perversions of a fascist regime? In This Ain't Rock 'n' Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika, and the Third Reich (Akashic Books, 2026), award-winning music historian Daniel Rachel navigates these turbulent waters with extraordinary delicacy and care, asking us to look anew at the artists who have defined us, inspired us, and given us joy--and consider why so many have been drawn to the imagery of a movement responsible for some of the twentieth century's worst atrocities. Rachel asks essential questions of actions often overlooked or underplayed, while neither casting sweeping judgment nor offering easy answers. In doing so, he asks us to reassess the history of rock 'n' roll, and he sheds new light on the grim echoes of the Third Reich in popular culture and the legacy of twentieth (and twenty-first) century history as it defines us today and sheds new light on the grim echoes of the Third Reich in popular culture--and the legacy of twentieth (and twenty-first)-century history as it defines us today. Daniel Rachel is a former musician turned award-winning and best-selling author. His previous books include Too Much Too Young, the 2 Tone Records Story; Isle of Noises: Conversations with Great British Songwriters; and The Lost Album of the Beatles: What If the Beatles Hadn't Split Up? He has also written sleeve notes for many artists including the Kinks, Madness, Ocean Colour Scene, Ray Davies, and Bryan Ferry. He lives in London. Daniel Rachel’s website and Instagram. Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat Books, 2021), Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025), and U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Marty Friedman is a multi-platinum recording artist and government-appointed Ambassador to Japan Heritage. He has written three books in Japanese and had long running columns in the Asahi Weekly, Nikkei Entertainment, Cyzo, Big Comic, Young Guitar, Guitar World and Burrn. The show opens with a moving tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, formerly of Black Sabbath, who passed away on July 25, 2025. Friedman then turns to the reason for writing his book, co-authored with Jon Wiederhorn. He talks about the co-writing process and describes it as “putting his musical abilities into words.” His latest solo release, Drama, he calls his best and most romantic work to date — a largely orchestral album that stretches beyond his usual style. He also reflects on the Japanese entertainment industry, the uniquely Japanese idea of heta-uma, idol music, and the role of “cuteness” in J-Pop. Producers such as Tsunku and Komuro Tetsuya play a key role in drawing out this unique appeal. J-Pop carries deeper cultural nuance than outsiders might assume. In addition, Friedman reflects on scandals, music managers ,and his first rehearsal with a J-Pop band. Read our book review of Dreaming Japanese (Permuted Press, 2024) as reviewed by Stephen Mansfield. Subscribe to the Books on Asia podcast, and the Books on Asia newsletter featuring new releases, book reviews and the latest podcast episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Melissa Auf der Maur's new memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A '90s Rock Memoir(DaCapo, 2026) is a remarkably open-hearted, clear-eyed memoir of the '90s Alternative era by the bassist of Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins Even the Good Girls Will Cry begins with Auf der Maur's bohemian upbringing in Montreal, where her early, deep connection to art and music gave her entry to the colorful and thriving local creative scene. Working as a cassette DJ and ticket girl, she would see (and sometimes meet) the luminaries who'd pass through town--Nirvana, Jane's Addiction, Pavement, Sonic Youth. Thanks to a thrown beer bottle and a long-shot fan letter to a PO Box, her band Tinker scored a life-changing opening slot for The Smashing Pumpkins and, sensing her natural talent on bass, Billy Corgan recommended her to Courtney Love, just one of the many uncanny threads that weaves destiny throughout this riveting memoir. Whisked from her local scene and thrust into the eye of a hurricane of grief on a global stage, Melissa joined Hole for the band's 1994 Live Through This world tour just after the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Hole's prior bassist, Kristen Pfaff, with Courtney Love at the center of it all. It was a tour of passionate intensity, as a chaotic yet stunningly powerful band constantly threatened to spin out of control. Melissa brings the reader with raging intimacy into the action, offering a heroic portrait of the unforgettable Courtney Love as she howled into the darkness as if to keep grief at bay. That was only the beginning of Melissa's journey through alternative rock. Part rock memoir, part travel diary, part psychedelic scrapbook, Even the Good Girls Will Cry is a behind-the-scenes rock 'n' roll memoir with a soulful intimacy and mystic undertone that sets it apart from memoirs by her peers. It is a vivid dispatch from the last analog decade, artistically capturing that bygone era in all its messy, angsty glory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Around 1830, opera houses stopped using castrati, and Rome and the Vatican became home to their glorious singing, engineered by surgery and intensive vocal training. Castrati were long mired in secrecy, obfuscations, and lies about their origin and conditions, not least the last of them, Alessandro Moreschi. In Castrato Phantoms: Moreschi, Fellini, and the Sacred Vernacular in Rome (Zone Books, 2026), musicologist Professor Martha Feldman declines to accept these deep-seated mysteries and concealments. After a decade and more of digging through archives and family histories comes her exciting transdisciplinary and quasi-cinematic account of Moreschi, whose recordings preserve the only sonic trace of a solo castrato.Yet Moreschi’s story extends far beyond him. It opens up intrigues, politics, and histories of the Vatican, everyday histories of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Rome, the world of Roman opera, the city’s unique mélange of sacred and vernacular tropes, and representations of Rome by iconic film director Federico Fellini. Moreschi and Fellini turn out to have been related by marriage, but also to share synergies grounded in Rome’s persistent inclination to vernacularize the sacred. Far from telling of one anomalous figure, Professor Feldman’s gripping history convinces readers that Moreschi, like Fellini, can be read as an improbable index of Roman consciousness, both during his own life and well beyond. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Sourced from over a hundred hours of interviews with musicians, producers, booking agents, label owners, writers, fans, employees, volunteers, friends and family, Elvis is Dead, I’m Still Alive: The Story of Asian Man Records tells the singular story of Asian Man Records. In its first thirty years, Asian Man Records released over 400 albums, all from the garage at Mike Park’s parents’ house. Founded when Park was in his early twenties, the label has started and supported the careers of musicians across many generations, all free from the pressures of the larger music industry. It seemed things could even stay that way forever, until an unexpected email arrived… Spanning early releases by breakout artists like Less Than Jake and Alkaline Trio, to albums that went viral on TikTok, every record has its own story. All of them connect back to Mike Park, the record label founder, who went from struggling with racism as a Korean American in an overwhelmingly white town, to his current status as international underground inspiration. Written by Mike Huguenor, a musician who has seen the label from inside and out, this music biography documents thirty years in the life of a record label unlike any other—the one and only Asian Man Records. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

With his fake beard, putty nose, and thick Yiddish accent, the “stage Jew” was once a common character in vaudeville, part of a genre that mocked immigrants and minorities. Essentially a variant of blackface minstrelsy, the music that accompanied these “Jewface” performances was not only performed on stage, but also published as colorfully illustrated sheet music so fans could play them at home. Outrageous and offensive by today’s standards, these “Yiddish” dialect songs exploited a variety of unpleasant stereotypes about Jews. Based in part on the sheet music collection of The New York Times’ Sunday Magazine Critic-at-large Jody Rosen, YIVO presents its latest exhibition, Jewface: “Yiddish” Dialect Songs of Tin Pan Alley. Join Eddy Portnoy (Senior Researcher & Exhibition Curator, YIVO), the curator of Jewface, and Jody Rosen for a discussion with Tablet Magazine editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse about this form of early 20th-century entertainment, how it mocked Jews, engaged Jews, and developed Yiddish-accented English for comic effect. Allen Rickman, Yelena Shmulenson, and Steve Sterner will be performing selections from the exhibit, as well as a number of classic Yiddish/English comedy routines. This exhibition opening took place on November 24, 2015. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On October 10, 2025, NYU’s Journalism Institute hosted a day-long conference titled Podcast Intellectuals: Producing Original Scholarship with Audio. Over the course of three panels, scholars, podcasters, and journalists discuss how academics might employ the techniques of narrative audio as part of their research. In the first panel, podcaster Benjamen Walker discusses his work with NYU media studies professor Mara Mills as they produce Tuning Time, a podcast about the politics of time stretching technology. Professor Mills is an interdisciplinary scholar in the fields of disability studies, Science and Technology Studies, and sound studies. She teaches in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and is Director of the NYU Center for Disability Studies. Her work on “disability and media” spans disability arts and technoscience, with a focus on the history, politics, and cultures of electronics and digital media. Benjamen Walker is a radio writer and producer. He is one of the co-founders of the podcast network Radiotopia from PRX, and for a decade hosted and produced his award winning program Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything. The first panel concluded with a presentation by NYU musicologist Fanny Gribenski in which she discusses her current project, The Elephant in the Piano: Music, Ecology, Empire. The book, and podcast, is an investigation of the 19th century piano through a material history of its primary components: ivory, wood, felt, and metal. Professor Gribenski is a historical musicologist who specializes in the history of musical and sonic practices. Her first book, L'Église comme lieu de concert. Pratiques musicales et usages de l'espace (Paris, 1830–1905) analyzes the role of music in the production of sacred spaces. Tuning the World: The Rise of 440 Hertz in Music, Science, and Politics, 1859-1955 (University of Chicago, 2023) traces the rocky path towards international pitch standardization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

For fans of Dilla Time and The Chronicles of DOOM, a culturally connected celebration of the groundbreaking hip-hop group De La Soul, and how they changed the look, sound, and feel of Black America. Music artists and trends come and go, but every once in a while, a moment arrives that genuinely changes everything. In 1988, De La Soul, three young men from Amityville, Long Island, did exactly that. Their always innovative work pulled inspiration from artists of the past and popularized cutting-edge music sampling techniques to blend jazz, R&B, and rap as they created a sound unlike any the world had heard before. But the De La Soul experience didn’t end there. These weren’t just musicians—they were game-changers in so many ways. From the way they dressed, to the words they spoke, to the day-glo colors of their breakout 3 Feet and Rising, De La Soul rejected convention, refused to be talked back into the box, and left the door open for everyone behind them. Now, in Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made (Atria/One Signal, 2026), West Virginia University history professor Austin McCoy explores how De La Soul not only defined a new era of hip-hop, but also American and Black culture at the same time. Through his eyes, ears, and well-studied recall of ‘80s, ‘90s, and 2000s America, McCoy takes us on a journey through the world this innovative musical act made. One of the few hip-hop groups of their era to stay together long term, De La Soul lived astonishing highs and lows, from forming the Native Tongues collective to influential fights with their publishers to assert the artist’s right to control their creations. And after a lifetime left out of music’s digital revolution, in 2023 they finally hit streaming services just as it lost founding member David Jolicoeur too soon to see his work reach a brand-new generation of fans. Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age will connect with DLS fans, ‘80s babies, and students of the rap game alike, in a beautifully rendered and deeply researched tome that places this group atop the pedestal it deserves. Guest: Austin McCoy is an assistant professor of history at West Virginia University, specializing in African American History, labor history, social movements, and hip-hop culture. His work has appeared in numerous outlets including CNN, The Baffler, The Washington Post, Black Perspectives, and Truthout. He lives in West Virginia. Host: Michael Stauch (he/him) is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Rebekah Buchanan talks with Ani DiFranco about her latest collaborative work The Spirit of Ani: Reflections on Spirituality, Feminism, Music and Freedom (Akashic Books, 2026). In this powerful collaborative work, the legendary folk-rock star and feminist icon is in conversation with author, artist, and cultural anthropologist Lauren Coyle Rosen. In these exchanges, Ani is remarkably open about her creativity, spirituality, personal experiences, and evolving consciousness. She is vulnerable and unapologetic, offering an unprecedented window into her fiercely prolific journeys. Rebekah  Expanding on themes from her best-selling memoir, Ani also offers fascinating reflections on contemporary popular culture—ranging from gender and queer politics, to the music industry in the virtual age, to climate change. The book includes previously unpublished photographs and journal entries, song-birth sheets, paintings, and the lyrics for some of her most treasured songs. The coauthors explore how Ani’s music and art are profoundly tied to her experiences of the interconnectedness of all consciousness and tuning in to receive creative inspiration. Ani’s striking openness produces a book that is both meditative and activating. This is a must-read for anyone intrigued by the dedication, intuition, and vision that drive Ani’s lifelong journey of creating art that not only reflects, but also empowers, transforms, and heals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

How can music change people’s lives? In Music Refuge: Living Asylum Through Music (Oxford UP, Press 2025) Ailbhe Kenny, an Associate Professor in Music Education at Mary Immaculate College Ireland, explores music programmes for, with and by people seeking asylum in Ireland and Germany. In doing so, the book offers new understandings of the use, practice and meaning of music in people’s lives, whether as musicians or as listeners. Exploring a range of settings for music, from listening on phones and shared music making experiences, to parties and performances, the book demonstrates music’s profound impact. Filled with stories of refugees’ experiences, alongside rich and deep analysis, the book is essential reading across the arts and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in music’s place in promoting our shared and common humanity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music