How to Write About Music: Excerpts from the 33 1/3 Series, Magazines, Books and Blogs with Advice from Industry-leading Writers
by Marc Woodworth (Editor), Ally Jane Grossan (Editor)
Now let me stop you before you way anything. I know what you’re thinking: a music website reviewing a book about how to write about music? Preposterous, right? What are you as the reader supposed to take from a book like this? Well, just listen for a second…
As someone who spends more of their time writing about music rather than reading about it, of course I’m going to be curious about this book, and there believe you me there were countless lessons to learn in it. But as a reader, How to Write About Music also teaches you plenty about how to READ music reviews.
A task like this is quite difficult and Woodworth and Grossan’s approach is valiant to say the least. How to Write About Music is simply structured in chapters with themes like album reviews, live shows, photography, and interviews. Obviously there are different ways to approach these topics and each chapter has “good” examples of overly descriptive, autobiographical, technical, and prosaic writing styles. In short, there are many ways to write about music and this book does an excellent job of covering them. There are even countless tips from great writers that vary from how to break into the business to how to approach a piece in particular. And it’s truly remarkable when writing can be engaging even though you don’t know the material being covered, but I daresay I’m quite proud of the fact that I knew a good deal of these bands and albums There’s a pat on my back. That said, I could have done without some of the ridiculous articles here like Tavi Gevinson’s irrelevant take on the equally trivial Taylor Swift. I guess famous people get a pass…
As much as you love music, whether you’re a musician, a critic, or a fan, How to Write Music takes your appreciation of the subject to a higher level.
Get it here.
