Pick of the podcasts

Songbook

Music books almost seem pointless. Surely the idea with music is to listen to it and reading, if you’re lucky, mostly involves sitting quietly.

Yet the genre of music literature is filled with classics. From Bob Dylan’s sublime Chronicles:Vol 1, to Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run or Patti Smith’s Just Kids, these works are more than just dry recollections of setting up amplifiers or the time they played Glastonbury.

They’re great, lyrical books in their own right which conjure up the music in your head as you read along; and you don’t even have to be a fan of the artist to enjoy their story.

Indeed many of the best music books aren’t even about artists themselves.

The UK’s leading music imprint White Rabbit Books have launched a new podcast, Songbook, presented and written by the award-winning journalist, broadcaster and author Jude Rogers. Rogers looks at some of these classic books, and the series kicks off with an episode dedicated to Fred Vermorel’s wickedly sharp, multifaceted – and often eyepopping – oral history of pop fandom, Starlust.

This one was chosen by Jude who discusses it with a stellar guest, one of her favourite musicians from her teenage years, Brett Anderson of Indie pop icons Suede, above.

Songbook is dedicated to music books and each episode will feature Jude in conversation with a special guest dissecting one exciting music book in detail. From cult classics to gripping memoirs, page-turners to potboilers, overlooked mainstream gems to indie curios, Songbook celebrates the art and the thrill of music writing and the way these books allow us to immerse ourselves in the world of our favourite musicians or the world that surrounds them.