7 Great Books About Music from 2025
Though we’ve shared much of our favorite music of 2025, the year’s not quite over yet. Today we continue our year-in-review with a look back at some of the best reading about music, from the insidious rise of Spotify to deeply personal memoirs and chronicles about some of music’s most idiosyncratic figures. These are some of our favorite books about music from 2025.
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Black Mystery School Pianists And Other Writings
by Matthew Shipp (Autonomedia)
This year belonged to Matthew Shipp in a pair of mediums. First, the perennially prolific pianist dropped three stellar records this year alone: the solo piano genius work The Cosmic Piano, his String Trio’s Armageddon Flower with saxophonist Ivo Perelman and duo album Horizon with fellow pianist Eri Yamamoto. Then the downtown New York City avant-gardist achieved further greatness on the printed page with the revelatory read, Black Mystery School Pianists And Other Writings. Absolutely essential for hardcore enthusiasts of Shipp’s craft and novices and jazz fans alike, the words, subjects and opinions Shipp tackles in Black Mystery School Pianists And Other Writings is as forward-thinking, radically adventurous and fearless as his piano playing itself. With musings, opinions, anecdotes, poems, in-depth analysis, personal stories and reflections, Shipp invites the reader into his constantly churning brain as he delves into a plethora of subjects including but certainly not limited to, the thought process behind what exactly is the “Black Mystery School” and which pianists make the cut into this exclusive club (and who doesn’t), the relationship between boxing and jazz and ruminations on Wayne Shorter, Sun Ra, Paul Bley, Monk, Roscoe Mitchell and his friend and bandmate, the late great David S. Ware. Shipp even devotes a chapter to his partying club days in the 80’s where you would have found him dancing the night away at New York City hot spots like The Pyramid Club. Shipp explores more ideas in a shade under 100 pages than most authors do in epic-length books. Complete with an incredibly detailed introduction by visual artist, poet and longtime friend Yuko Otomo, Shipp’s Black Mystery School Pianists And Other Writings is a deep dive into the heady mind of one of the avant-garde’s genius minds of our time. – Brad Cohan
Buy: Amazon
The Dad Rock That Made Me A Woman
by Niko Stratis (University of Texas Press)
This book absolutely wrecked me. It shook me to my core. Throughout The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman, Niko Stratis writes about how listening to literal “dad rock” bands like Wilco, R.E.M., and Springsteen provided the soundtrack to the most resonant and ruinous events in her life. This is both a memoir of transformation and restoration, as Stratis chronicles in unsparing detail the jaw-dropping lengths she goes through to discover who she really is. The writing is incisive, the emotions are raw, and the music is spectacular. Through it all, it’s an exploration of gender and identity in pursuit of belonging, and any fan of introspective music writing needs to read it. – Adam P. Newton
Buy: Rough Trade
Descenes and Discords: An Anthology
by Howard Wuelfing (DiWulf Publishing)
Back in the late 1970s, fledgling writer and musician Howard Wuelfing helped plant the seeds for the DIY punk and hardcore ‘zine movement. With two xeroxed and stapled homemade publications that the then-New Jersey-via-Washington, D.C. punk rocker launched to document the burgeoning—but largely uncovered—local scene, Wuelfing would put an indelible mark on the underground landscape. The two ‘zines Wuelfing masterminded, Descenes published in 1979 and Discords in 1981, have now been compiled in full, each black and white issue collected in glorious book form. In Descenes and Discords: An Anthology, the punk rock ethos, spirit and trademark snideness and sardonic wit is manifest over interviews, live and album reviews, scene reports and more with all your faves like Black Flag, Pylon and Half Japanese, obscure, long-forgotten groups to new wave acts such as Adam and the Ants. Edited by Amy Yates Wuelfing with a foreword by Mark Jenkins and featuring a brand new conversation between Wuelfing, now a successful and in-demand music publicist, and Ian MacKaye, Descenes and Discords: An Anthology is a must-have and crucial document of DIY punk rock. – Brad Cohan
Buy: DiWulf
Don’t Say Please: The Oral History of Die Kreuzen
By Sahan Jayasuriya (Feral House)
Sahan Jayasuriya’s vibrant and challenging probe into the story of the anomalous Die Kreuzen—which managed to build a small but devoted fanbase in Milwaukee’s hardcore scene despite Dan Kubinski’s soaring vocals and an MTV-friendly sound—could overarch the band’s actual legacy. Interviews with Steve Albini, Neko Case and Thurston Moore shed some light on how this enigma of a band found such favor with artists who were actively trying to alienate their audiences simultaneously as Die Kreuzen attempted to woo and expand theirs. Jayasuriya devoted a full decade to creating this book, and his laudable efforts are blowing on the smoldering ashes of a band whose fire would otherwise have totally petered out by now. – Kurt Orzeck
Buy: Amazon
Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist
by Liz Pelly
As the rejection of subscription streaming platforms enters the mainstream, Liz Pelly’s decade-long investigation into Spotify’s monopolistic and sinister practices is pivotal literature. An exclusive deep dive into the Swedish tech platform’s origins and influence, Mood Machine contains over 100 interviews with ex-Spotify employees, working artists, and industry insiders alike, revealing the origins and nature of Spotify founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. If you are an analog-curious listener, an artist interested in pulling their music off streaming, or a free thinker looking to take individual steps to make the world a better place, Mood Machine gives you a plethora of reasons to cut streaming out of your life. – Patrick Pilch
Buy: Amazon
The Royal We
by Roddy Bottum (Akashic Books)
“I’m an artist. I need to provoke. I need to demand answers.” When Roddy Bottom made those declarations to this writer during a conversation about his memoir, he couldn’t have summed it up better. From surviving in a then-gritty San Francisco in the 1980s to battling homophobia at a time when it was far more prevalent than acceptance is today, the Faith No More keyboardist/rhythm guitarist pulls no punches. At a time when the memoir market is oversaturated, Bottom’s brazenness strips the word “transparency” of its trendy veneer and restores its original meaning. He’s done as much work on himself, and it shines through. – Kurt Orzeck
Buy: Amazon
Rumors Of My Demise: A Memoir
by Evan Dando with Jim Ruland (Gallery Books)
Besides having the best—and most fitting—title for a rock memoir possibly ever, Rumors Of My Demise by the Lemonheads’ Evan Dando is also, by far, the ultimate supermodel sex, drugs-spattered and punk and alt-rock trainwreck opus that you’re going to read. And, somehow that life wasn’t cut short by an untimely OD death that was predicted for Dando on more than one occasion. The infamous ’90s alterna-hunk and perpetual mess lived to pen Rumors Of My Demise and just a handful of pages into it, you’ll be wondering how. There’s much to love and loathe when speeding through Dando’s tome, as I did: Dando and his filthy rich private school punk pals living a life of privilege in the affluent Massachusetts suburbs, starting the Lemonheads, helping jumpstart the vibrant Boston indie scene, the trials and tribulations of landing on a major label, the unlikely success of “Mrs. Robinson,” partying with Keith Richards, Johnny Depp, Gibby Haynes and Kate Moss and hanging with Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain. And lots and lots and lots of crack and heroin abuse and all the money he’s blown on his drug habit while living in squalor. Rumors Of My Demise, co-written with Jim Ruland (Corporate Rock Still Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records plus author credits for books with Keith Morris and Bad Religion), leaves no stone unturned as it depresses, debauches and depraves throughout its tale of successes, struggles and survival. – Brad Cohan
Buy: Rough Trade
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