> Skip to content
  • Published: 18 April 2017
  • ISBN: 9781846146862
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $28.00
Categories:

Every Song Ever

Twenty Ways to Listen to Music Now




From one of America's celebrated critics, the definitive field guide to listening to music in the age of the Cloud

The most significant revolution in the recent history of music has to do with listening: it is now possible to listen to nearly anything at any time, to ignore albums, and to instantly flit across genres and generations, from 1980s Detroit techno to 1890s Viennese neo-romanticism. Yet music criticism has historically focused on the musician's intent, not the listener's experience. Every Song Ever is therefore the definitive field guide to listening in an age of glorious, overwhelming abundance. By revealing the essential similarities between wildly different kinds of music, Ben Ratliff shows how we listen to music now, and suggests how we can listen better.

  • Published: 18 April 2017
  • ISBN: 9781846146862
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $28.00
Categories:

Praise for Every Song Ever

A music appreciation guide for our era ... Brilliant

Dan Chiasson, New York Review of Books

A remarkable new book . . . [Ratliff] goes leaping from Beethoven to Big Black, from Morton Feldman to Curtis Mayfield, identifying continuities while delighting in contrasts

Alex Ross, New Yorker

The spectacle of an active mind processing a world in constant flux . . . Maybe, as Ratliff beautifully argues, the brooding aggression of metal obscures a deeper melancholy

Hua Hsu, New Yorker

Incisive . . . Thanks to Ratliff's vast knowledge, what could have been a dry academic exercise is more like a trip into the world's coolest record store

David Browne, Rolling Stone