Biographical Dictionary of Popular Music

Getting musical input from someone you don’t know is a bit like asking the Internet what you should eat for dinner. You’ll get an answer, sure, but there’s no telling how it will fit in with your personal taste. Unless, of course, the person you’re getting said music information from happens to be Dylan Jones, the editor in chief of British GQ who has won countless awards, writes for other publications and happens to have written a few other books about music. His newest, the Biographical Dictionary of Popular Music, is also one of his most ambitious. It’s an A to Z reference of Jones’s thoughts on what he considers to be 350 of the most important artists from around the world. This excerpt about A Tribe Called Quest best describes why we want to read this book: “They have their detractors, too. ‘ATCQ?’ said a friend of mine, when asked. ‘Like yoga, Starbucks, Banksy, camping, political prisoners, hummus, and Facebook – they’re just more stuff white people like.’”