Illustrated throughout with stunning images, this glossy biography tells the story of Taylor Swift's life and music. The definitive biography of a global music icon.

Includes coverage of The Tortured Poets Department and The Eras Tour

Taylor Swift’s rise to mega stardom is the story of the century. Charming fans straight out the gate as a teen country music sensation, Swift has gone on to dominate the music industry as a pop titan.

She is the first woman to have four albums in the Billboard chart’s Top Ten at the same time, is the recipient of fourteen Grammys and forty American Music Awards, and her recent Eras tour broke records to become the highest-grossing tour in history.

A treasured celebrity who has triumphed in the face of haters and intrusive tabloid coverage, Taylor Swift uses her personal life as inspiration for her songwriting, delivering hit after hit, and selling out stadiums the world over. Her music continues to engage, evolve and encapsulate the hearts of fans all over the world.

Taylor’s story is one of love and poetry.

The quintessential Mod band, notorious for their theatricality and destructiveness on stage, The Who rate alongside the Beatles, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones as one of the most successful and innovative rock bands of the sixties and seventies, who captured the voice of youth. Following on from the successful Led Zeppelin Revealed and Pink Floyd Revealed, this new, glossy, visually stimulating coffee-table book covers all the major events in their 20-year career accompanied by revealing and evocative images.

Keith Hatschek tells the story of three determined artists: Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Iola Brubeck and the stand they took against segregation by writing and performing a jazz musical titled The Real Ambassadors. First conceived by the Brubecks in 1956, the musical's journey to the stage for its 1962 premiere tracks extraordinary twists and turns across the backdrop of the civil rights movement. A variety of colorful characters, from Broadway impresarios to gang-connected managers, surface in the compelling storyline. During the Cold War, the US State Department enlisted some of America's greatest musicians to serve as jazz ambassadors, touring the world to trumpet a so-called "free society." Honored as celebrities abroad, the jazz ambassadors, who were overwhelmingly African Americans, returned home to racial discrimination and deferred dreams. The Brubecks used this double standard as the central message for the musical, deploying humor and pathos to share perspectives on American values. On September 23, 1962, The Real Ambassadors's stunning debut moved a packed arena at the Monterey Jazz Festival to laughter, joy, and tears. Although critics unanimously hailed the performance, it sadly became a footnote in cast members' bios. The enormous cost of reassembling the star-studded cast made the creation impossible to stage and tour. However, The Real Ambassadors: Dave and Iola Brubeck and Louis Armstrong Challenge Segregation caps this jazz story by detailing how the show was triumphantly revived in 2014 by Jazz at Lincoln Center. This reaffirmed the musical's place as an integral part of America's jazz history and served as an important reminder of how artists' voices are a powerful force for social change.

Becoming Noise Music tells the story of noise music in its first 50 years, using a focus on the music's sound and aesthetics to do so. Part One focuses on the emergence and stabilization of noise music across the 1980s and 1990s, whilst Part Two explores noise in the twenty-first century. Each chapter contextualizes - tells the story - of the music under discussion before describing and interpreting its sound and aesthetic. Stephen Graham uses the idea of 'becoming' to capture the unresolved 'dialectical' tension between 'noise' disorder and 'musical' order in the music itself; the experiences listeners often have in response; and the overarching 'story' or 'becoming' of the genre that has taken place in this first fifty or so years. The book therefore doubles up on becoming: it is about both the becoming it identifies in, and the larger, genre-making process of the becoming of, noise music. On the latter count, it is the first scholarly book to focus in such depth and breadth on the sound and story of noise music, as opposed to contextual questions of politics, history or sociology. Relevant to both musicology and noise audiences, Becoming Noise Music investigates a vital but analytically underexplored area of avant-garde musical practice.

The hitmakers behind Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" and "Jailhouse Rock" recount their rise to songwriting stardom while authoring the classic American R&B sound of countless chart-topping singles. In 1950 a couple of rhythm and blues-loving teenagers named Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller met for the first time. They discovered their mutual affection for R&B and, as Jerry and Mike put it in this fascinating autobiography, began an argument that has been going on for over fifty years with no resolution in sight. Leiber and Stoller were still in their teens when they started working with some of the pioneers of rock and roll, writing such hits as Hound Dog, which eventually became a #1 record for Elvis Presley. Jerry and Mike became the King's favorite songwriters, giving him Jailhouse Rock and other #1 songs. Their string of hits with the Coasters, including Yakety Yak, Poison Ivy, and Charlie Brown, is a part of rock 'n' roll history. They founded their own music label and introduced novel instrumentation into their hits for the Drifters and Ben E. King, including On Broadway and Stand by Me. They worked with everyone from Phil Spector to Burt Bacharach and Peggy Lee. Their smash musical Smokey Joe's Cafe became the longest-running musical revue in Broadway history. Lively, colorful, and irreverent, Hound Dog describes how two youngsters with an insatiable love of good old American R&B created the soundtrack for a generation.

Virtuality has entered our lives making anything we desire possible. We are, as Gorillaz once sang, in an exciting age where ‘the digital won’t let [us] go…’ Technology has revolutionized music, especially in the 21st century where the traditional rules and conventions of music creation, consumption, distribution, promotion, and performance have been erased and substituted with unthinkable and exciting methods in which absolutely anyone can explore, enjoy, and participate in creating and listening to music. Virtual Music explores the interactive relationship of sound, music, and image, and its users (creators/musicians/performers/audience/consumers). Areas involving the historical, technological, and creative practices of virtual music are surveyed including its connection with creators, musicians, performers, audience, and consumers. Shara Rambarran looks at the fascination and innovations surrounding virtual music, and illustrates key artists (such as Grace Jones, The Weeknd), creators (such as King Tubby, Kraftwerk, MadVillain, Danger Mouse), audiovisuals in video games and performances (such as Cuphead and Gorillaz), audiences, and consumers that contribute in making this musical experience a phenomenon. Whether it is interrogating the (un)realness of performers, modified identities of artists, technological manipulation of the Internet, music industry and music production, or accessible opportunities in creativity, the book offers a fresh understanding of virtual music and appeals to readers who have an interest in this digital revolution.

The 1960s saw the nexus of the revolution in popular music by a post-war generation amid demographic upheavals and seismic shifts in technology. Over the past two decades, musicians associated with this period have produced a large amount of important autobiographical writing. This book situates these works -- in the forms of formal autobiographies and memoirs, auto-fiction, songs, and self-fashioned museum exhibitions -- within the context of the recent expansion of interest in autobiography, disability, and celebrity studies. It argues that these writings express anxiety over musical originality and authenticity, and seeks to dispel their writers' celebrity status and particularly the association with a lack of seriousness. These works often constitute a meditation on the nature of postmodern fame within a celebrity-obsessed culture, and paradoxically they aim to regain the private self in a public forum.

The Belwin String Builder is a string class method in which the violin, viola, cello, and bass play together throughout. Each book, however, is a complete unit and may be used separately for class or individual instruction. The material in this book is realistically graded so that only a minimum of explanatory material is required. Each melody is interesting and will provide the basis for a fine left hand technic and bow arm. Available in three levels for violin, viola, cello, bass, piano accompaniment, and teacher's manual.

Brother and sister Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn enjoyed a rare bond: they were intimate companions and theirs was one of the most significant musical relationships of the 19th century. They shared and commented on each other's compositions, each highly appreciative of the other but also offering frank, critical advice. Their travels produced some great music - Felix's best loved works, the Hebrides Overture and the Scottish Symphony, were inspired by his 1829 visit to Scotland, whilst Fanny's innovative piano cycle Das Jahr was a musical response to the tour of Italy she made in 1839-40. Combining letters and sketches with an accompanying narrative describing their journeys, this is a wonderful celebration of the two Mendelssohns and a portrait of Scotland and Italy of the time as seen through the eyes of two of the Romantic movement's most acclaimed composers.