Peter Watts’ Denmark Street (Paradise Road, 2023) tells the story of one of Britain’s most iconic musical thoroughfares. Known as Tin Pan Alley, Denmark Street was once a hive of music publishers, demo studios, and publicists. The Sex Pistols lived there, the Rolling Stones recorded there, and David Bowie camped out in the back of a converted ambulance. Melody Maker was founded on the street, the NME launched Britain’s first music chart there, and in an office at the end of the road, The Beatles signed the contract that ultimately lost them their songs. Watts captures these and many other stories in a richly layered history told with flair and precision. Blending archival research, personal anecdotes, and interviews with musicians, producers, and industry insiders, the book charts how this small Soho street became the engine room of British pop. Watts traces its evolution from a hub of sheet music sales in the early 20th century to its creative heyday in the 1960s and 70s. What sets this book apart – and is a real highlight – is Watts’ sensitivity to the street’s changing fortunes, particularly in the face of gentrification and redevelopment. His writing is affectionate but never sentimental, handling the cultural significance of Denmark Street with journalistic rigour and a touch of melancholy. A wonderful read for anyone curious about the history behind the sounds that shaped a nation. Mike Press (Aug 2025)
A celebration of “three people who really love pop music”, Ramzy Alwakeel’s “How We Used Saint Etienne To Live” (Repeater Books) pays effusive tribute to Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell – those advocates of “persistent melody, evocative storytelling, dry humour and laser-precise arrangements”. Long-time fan Alwakeel opens with a charming origin story – he reveals that he first discovered Saint Etienne during Britpop’s zenith via the inclusion of their luminescent infidelity banger He’s On The Phone on Now That’s What I Call Music! 33. This feels entirely appropriate, given SE founder member and pop obsessive Bob Stanley has pinpointed receiving Benny Hill’s “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)” as a Christmas gift in 1971 as an entry point for his own subsequent Damascene conversion. Placing these Home Counties pop sages in the lineage of pre-WW2 American song-gatherer Alan Lomax and hip-hop’s cut n’ mixers via their trademark synthesis of 60s aesthetic and modernist sensibility, Alwakeel contemplates the enduring appeal of Saint Etienne’s three and a half decades’ worth of negotiating memory and a sense of place via a singular approach to disinterring archive sound, neatly described here as an unswerving ability to “use the past in a way that could only be contemporary”. With Saint Etienne’s forthcoming LP being described as “their final album-length statement”, we end with a lengthy inventory of the author’s most cherished St Et acquisitions: an apt conclusion for a book dedicated to a group who, in Stanley’s own words, were “born out of a love of records”. Matt Tomiak (Jul 2025)
I love books that place music in the context of social history – and if they include maps, that’s an added bonus. Aniefiok Ekpoudom’s Where We Come From: Rap, Home And Hope In Modern Britain (Faber & Faber, 2023) provides both. This compelling social history explores the evolution of UK rap and grime, offering a vivid account of the vibrant scenes in South London, Birmingham, and South Wales. Ekpoudom highlights the diverse communities that have shaped the music in these regions. Rather than focusing on mainstream figures, the book shines a light on lesser-known artists such as Cadet, Astroid Boys, and Despa Robinson. Through their stories, Ekpoudom illustrates how rap and grime have given voice to marginalised communities, reflecting their struggles, resilience, and aspirations. His writing is both lyrical and empathetic, skilfully weaving personal narratives with broader socio-cultural analysis. He traces the roots of these genres back to the post-Windrush era, linking them to the everyday experiences of Black and working-class Britons. This is a readable and illuminating book that ties music to a strong sense of place. It is as much about the history of these locations and their communities as it is about the music they produce. A vital contribution to understanding the people’s music of modern Britain. Mike Press (Jul 2025)
I first met Jakko in the late 1970s when he fronted a band with the enigmatic name 64 Spoons. Who’s The Boy With The Lovely Hair? The Unlikely Memoir Of Jakko M. Jakszyk (Kingmaker Publishing) tells the story of his childhood, his quest for his birth parents, his musical journey and how he met and worked with his musical heroes – up to and including (spoiler alert) Robert Fripp and joining King Crimson as vocalist and second guitarist. I have to declare an interest. I have Jakko’s solo albums, the 64 Spoons album, and the King Crimson triple CD collection Live in Vienna on which he sings. The narrative takes some unexpected twists and opens with a conversation with his American stepbrother, which I read twice with incredulity before moving into the book itself. Having said all that, there is some social commentary about growing up in the Watford area in the 1960s and having adoptive parents neither of whom had English as their first language. His father was Polish and his mother French. The revelation close to the end of the book reveals the source of its title and I won’t spoil that for you. The book was published in late 2024 and I read it over four days between Christmas and New Year. Jakko is a fine storyteller, he makes you smile, he makes you laugh out loud, he makes your eyebrows raise in surprise and in passages, brings a lump to your throat. There is an impending CD to accompany the book called Son Of Glen with music that I believe that Jakko was inspired to write while researching and writing the book. Ian Ashleigh (Jun 2025)
Heartbreak Is The National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music by Rob Sheffield (Harper Collins) in which the long-time Rolling Stone staffer provides a droll, spirited fan’s eye view of Taylor’s dizzying rise to global supremacy. And what a ride it is. In Heartbreak Is The National Anthem we follow her career from preternaturally assured adolescent, personally delivering home demos to the country music bigwigs along Nashville’s renowned Music Row, via feuds, mass fandom and eventually the gargantuan success – or “Taypocalypse” – of the world-conquering Eras Tour. Memorably encapsulating her appeal to legions of young admirers (think, Sheffield tells us, “The Beatles times Motown times Bruce Springsteen times Britney times strawberry ice cream …”), he deploys an Anglophile 80s pop prism – there are namechecks for Morrissey, Paul Morley and the first Depeche Mode LP – to frame Swift’s work, reminding us of the mind-blowingly high standards that she’s maintained throughout an Imperial Phase that’s now, remarkably, approaching a full two decades. Matt Tomiak (May 2025)
