Books: The Art of Noise: Conversations with Great Songwriters

The Art of Noise was a 2013 Guardian and New Musical Express Best Music Book of the Year, but it wasn’t published in America until October 2014. However, that’s not as surprising as it might seem when you look at the table of contents and realize every single songwriter is British.

Author/interviewer Daniel Rachel is clearly drawn to Britpop of the 1990s and to a certain type of thoughtful pop-rock that preceded and followed it. Among those he talks with are Damon Albarn of Blur, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, Noel Gallagher of Oasis, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe of Pet Shop Boys, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze, Andy Partridge of XTC, Bryan Ferry, and Billy Bragg.

Essentially, The Art of Noise is a British version of Paul Zollo’s classic Songwriters on Songwriting, which included interviews with Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Brian Wilson, Leonard Cohen, David Byrne, and others. As the names listed indicate, discussions of male songwriters tend to predominate in books written by male authors, an issue Rachel confronts directly by asking his mostly male interviewees why they think there are so few female songwriters. “Sexism,” they tend to answer, although a few, like Cocker, seem genuinely baffled: “I wouldn’t know that at all. I don’t think there’s any reason why that should be.” Of course the situation isn’t as dire as Rachel suggests — even in Britain. The names of interesting female songwriters he might have interviewed come quickly to mind: PJ Harvey, Kate Bush, or KT Tunstall.