Music to My Ears

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This eclectic gathering of White's "Music to My Ears" Billboard columns combines interviews with recording artists and reviews of their records. Spanning rock, new wave, punk, blues, jazz, rap, country, reggae, world music, calypso, Latin, classical and other genres, his essays fuse critical acumen with an unerring sense of the music business. Along with pieces on veteran artists like Eric Clapton, George Harrison, David Byrne, Ray Charles, Wyonna Judd, Joni Mitchell and the Eagles, White conveys the excitement of discovery generated by Liz Phair, Joan Osborne, Alanis Morissette, the spiritual dance sonorities of the Haitian group Boukman Eksperyans and English conductor John Eliot Gardiner's renditions of Mozart's operas. White, Billboard's editor-in-chief, infuses these essays with his belief that the best rock 'n' roll and pop is an expression of personal truths, a celebration of the human scale that is increasingly absent from our lives. Photos. (Nov.)

Library Journal

Rock journalist and author of the outstanding Rock Lives (LJ 9/15/90), White here offers 85 considerations of recent important pop albums and their creators. Because the essays are nominally reviews of albums released during the Nineties, artists considered include not only contemporary successes such as Trisha Yearwood, Alanis Morrisette, and Joan Osborne but also "classic" artists with recent releases (e.g., Keith Richards, Cab Calloway, and Elmore James). White pursues an effective, assuringly consistent format, which, albeit concise, nonetheless examines each subject in depth. Each essay includes revealing quotes from the artist, a glimpse of the current release, a summary of family background, and a career overview. White's cogent choice of subjects and clear emphasis on the present decade make this work a broadly representative spectrum of Nineties popular music. Recommended for both public and academic music collections.Bill Piekarski, Southwestern Coll. Lib., Chula Vista, Cal.