Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City

by Paul Morley

Has pop burnt itself out?

Paul Morley takes the reader on an epic drive through the history of music to find out. A succession of celebrities, geniuses and other protagonists led by Madonna, Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, Erik Satie, John Cage and Wittgenstein appear to give their points of view. Detours and sights along the way include Missy Elliot, Jarvis Cocker, Eminem, Human League, Radiohead, Lou Reed, Now! That's What I Call Music , Ornette Coleman and the ghost of Elvis Presley.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History, Criticism, Philosophy

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Paul Morley is an English journalist who wrote for the New Musical Express from 1977 to 1983, during one of its most successful periods, and has since written for a wide range of publications. He has also has been a band manager and promoter, as well as a television presenter.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating culture-defining thesis on the postmodern influence of pop. Morley was around when the Sex Pistols were first tuning up in 1976 and, using his decades as an influential rock writer and thinker, lends academic weight to his poetic musings.

Essential for musical obsessives and aspiring dilettantes of sound.

[Tosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paul Morley, is one of the U.K.'s top music writers and 'thinkers' as well. In fact he thinks about 'pop music a lot. Maybe too much? That is up to the reader. But I am a firm believer in writer's obsessions and without a doubt Morley's obsession with Kylie Minogue is almost a step into total madness.'

The book I think is too long, but then again i could read less of it. It doesn't matter. What does mater is the author has a personal vision of pop and he makes that outlook an interesting read.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've tried reading this book by skipping over the incessant Kylie Minogue fantasy conversation. Not surprised that it does not let up. Morley is definitely an original voice in music critique. He certainly knows the connections one makes in traversing between genres. He imparts his deep knowledge of many genres.
While skimming through the book, I enjoyed his chapter on the value of music criticism beginning with Lester Bangs and Richard Meltzer. Morley may well have been among the large group of critics that brought their personalities and quirks to their craft, with the belief that that the rock writer, at least in his/her own view, can be just as important as the musicians.
There are some great lists within the book. Many artists and albums I've forgotten about over the years. I'm gonna give this one more shot in earnest. If only because I think that this style of music writing has mostly disappeared as of 2022.

[David Lai]

I struggled as far as about page 130 of this book before giving it up as a waste of time. Maybe it was written with a pervasive irony that went right over my thick head, but I found it intolerably tedious, consisting as it did of a schoolboy fantasy of Kylie Minogue driving into some mythical city, alternating with baffling references to disparate figures and events in the history of Western culture, all supposedly explaining the cosmic significance of Minogue's repetitious hit "Can't Get You Out of My Head", and the mystical enigma of Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting in a Room".

I'd always liked Morley's writing before, and for many years I owned a copy of his book Ask: the Chatter of Pop, which was a collection of entertaining interviews, but this book tested my patience to destruction, and what finished me off were his reflections on his supposed status as a great rock writer. Perhaps he is senile.

[Ron Mcfarlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe a bit much Minogue and too little Lucier. Still, damn near every time he made a list, I was familiar with at least 80% of the musicians, many of them obscure. I found it comforting that someone else could be so obsessive and nerdish in his musical tastes. On that note, if you're not obsessive and nerdish about your experimental, post-punk, post-rock, electronic, ambient, minimalist, ETC. styles; probably not something you'd enjoy.

[Adrian Turner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Paul Morley is one of the most stylish music journalists from the NME school of the late-70s and early-80s, but comes unstuck here with a dreadful book-length attack of stream-of-consciousness rambling…

The book begins with a typically provocative starting point, as Morley declares his two current favourite records to be Alvin Lucier’s avant-garde artistic tape loop piece “I Am Sitting In A Room”, and Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”. He then attempts to draw a direct line between them, establishing their differences and commonalities and using this as an entry-point to telling the story of the entire nature of popular song itself. So far so good (and ambitious!), but Morley almost immediately strikes out into Tristram Shandy levels of diversions, tangents and off-shoots so apparently deliberately witless and annoying, that eventually you conclude he must simply be being paid by the word, especially by the final chapters, wherein he resorts to including pages upon pages of lists of records, and the unfunny formalist jape of having footnotes far longer than the accompanying text itself…

However, if only by the law of averages there’s some interesting stuff in here - a long interview with Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker for instance, and especially an extensive year-by-year review of the arts and technologies of the past century or so, an expanded version of which might actually have been a better book idea. As it is, Words And Music is a waste of Morley’s undoubted knowledge and writing talent, a needlessly annoying book which would have been twice as enjoyable if it had been half as long. Shame.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential for those who believe music is the wordless answer. Essential for those who want about 300 new albums to listen to. Essential for those who are interested in how Pop music mutated in the twentieth century. Essential for those who love to go into poetic flights that don't really mean much, but still have an effect. Essential for those who like unconventional approaches to nonfiction, approaches that fragment the subject and color them with the tiny dazzling rays of the author's intellect. Essential for those who think that indulgence is natural and humbling. Essential for those who like repetition and word games. Essential for those who love to explore the network of relationships between artists, producers, releases, influences, and critics.

Do not read if you are unwilling to listen to the specific language of someone else's mind. Do not read if you want a straightforward biography of Kylie Minogue. Do not read if you want a final meaning. Do not read if you think that weird sounds ruin music. Do not read if theory makes you yawn or people who use theory make you roll your eyes. Do not read if you hate timelines. Do not read if you hate games.

The soundtrack to this book is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F97j...

[Ilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morley explains towards the end of the book that his style is designed to capture in words what great music feels like, rather than just dryly classify the new in comparison to the old. That makes for a highly idiosyncratic history of pop – with lots of wordplay, repetition, lists, digressions and absurdly long footnotes. Occasionally this can get tiresome, although Morley's tongue is always in his cheek when attempting his flights of fancy, and I found the book very funny rather than merely irritating. The spine of the argument is the way contemporary pop music has been influenced by avant-garde experiments with electronic music during the 20th century – although Morley would never say it so bluntly. Ultimately I prefer my music books to be more robust and less flamboyant in their analysis, but this was still a great deal of fun to read.

[Ian]

A very esoteric history of pop. A ride in a very fast car. Insightful and entertaining. Lots and lots of lists some of which will interest you and some won't. It will alomost certainly make you curious about some artist or genre you have never heard of. Plenty of philosphy and ideas - for example a discussion of celebrity. Goes well beyond a history of pop and leaves out as much as it takes in. Eclectic and wacky. I still take it off the shelf to get inspiration as to what to listen to next- or what to challenge amazon music with.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

An invaluable survey of experimental, avant-garde, and pop music from the past 300 years, plus a revelation of how their respective threads interweaved and influenced one another throughout time.
Contains many many many great recommendations for movies, books, and albums to discover.

Paul Morley does get a little tiresome and full of himself sometimes in his self-referential exposition though. You can skip the last 100 pages of this book and really not miss anything. All the good lists are in Chapters 1-2-3.

[Mike Higgins · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book - somewhat dated now (which I am sure the author would admit), but a truly fascinating way of approaching pop music in a broader context.

[Gavin Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A super fun and thought-provoking journey. Really fun!

[Philip Taffs · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing rock writer writes about Kylie, electronica, the history of music, a mythical city, and rock writers.

[Eamonn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Baffling.

[Marco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morley ha un ego sovradimensionato. E' uno che ha colto al balzo la palla del postmoderno e ha stabilito che decostruzione, rizoma e balle varie erano l'occasione giusta per mettere il proprio smisurato ego al centro di ogni singolo discorso sottodiscorso metadiscorso.
Questo libro non dice assolutamente nulla di interessante. A dire il vero, questo libro non "dice" proprio: dovessi riassumerlo, sarei costretto a sostenere che parla essenzialmente di "I Can't Get You Out of My Head" - cosa falsa. La cita. La impiega come tassello e passepartout per costruire un labirinto di liste rimandi e sonore balle che ha, sempre, al centro Mr. Morley stesso.

La tragedia �� che tutto questo �� divertente. Che il ragazzo (?) sa scrivere nonostante e forse proprio grazie al suo sconfinato narcisismo. "Metapop" non dice niente, s��, ma lo dice bene, e a ogni pagina ti chiedi "chiss�� adesso cosa si inventa?", "chiss�� ora come ritorna al filo principale?" (come se ci fosse un filo principale), "quanto sono veri gli pseudo-fatti che sta riportando?".
E cos�� la lettura scorre veloce, pagina dopo pagina, lista dopo lista senza lasciare apparentemente nulla. Nulla di musicale, in ogni caso. Eppure, qualcosa rimane: l'immagine di quella giungla di citazioni, invenzioni, nodi e collegamenti. La "rete" di Mr. Morley, quella la si dimentica, ma ci si ritrova inevitabilmente catapultati nella propria.

[Alex Koenig · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best music book I've ever read.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morley, one of the architects of both New Pop (as a concept/movement) and, arguably, Poptimism 1.0, is always a writer worth engaging with. With a frankly inhumanly encyclopedic knowledge of music, popular and otherwise, the sheer scope of this book would make it a worthwhile read. Fair warning, despite his often lyrical (no pun intended) insight, Morley is an intensely -male- writer-- not a mysoginist as such, but his tastes, with a few notable exceptions (the book uses an imagined discourse with Kylie Minougue, or the idea of Kylie Minogue--of whom Morley is a huge fan--as a framing device) are, in alrge part, a bit too phallocentric. Morley's brand of poptimism is of an older school, and today may well come across as stuffily rockist, and addresses only a smattering of non-white artists. In that sense, while the book is a deep dive into pop's history(/ies), it's breadth of representation and genre is, in the greater scheme, rather narrow. Still, worth tackling if only for the exhaustive lists, recommendations, and surprising ley lines of influences scribbled over the pop constellation.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically impossible to review: parts of the book were 4/5 stars, tremendous stuff and parts of it were sub-zero. I'm all for pop culture lists, but many of the lists were too-clever attempts to echo (one of) the book's theme about drone music. Instead of playing repetitive beats with minute variations, he provided pages upon pages of lists that required a careful eye to catch any variation (or point).

Additionally, I didn't really care for the Kylie Minogue biography conceit that tied the book's various pieces together (in a very loose way). It made sense in the second half, but required an unnecessary amount of slogging in the beginning.

All of that said, I'm going to pick up one of his essay collections at some point because I think I liked this. I'm just not sure. I did enjoy the idea of an unreliable narrator in what purports to be non-fiction (e.g., describing the White Stripes as a legendary band from the '60s).

[Jacken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyable/interesting charting of the relationship between pop and the avante garde, through a focus on Kyle's 'Can't Get You Out of My Head' and Alvin Lucier's 'I am Sitting in a Room' (i prefer the Lucier..)

sent me on countless searches for bits of music that get discussed during the course of the journey, and pointed out loads of connections between/aspects of peices of music that i already knew..

after a while the writing style feels a bit like wading through golden syrup though - it's one of the things that i really liked at first, but towards the end i found myself skipping bits, and just dropping in and out of the footnotes that interested me...

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

While he can be quite irritating (and the Kylie fixation just comes across as a bit pervy) he is so infectious because he is in love with POP - the imagination and the enthusiasm really grab you; this is a journey through modern music in the passenger seat of an imaginary car heading for the arhchetypal city...and it works. The stuff on the beauty and soulfulness of Kraftwerk are just spot on (rebuts all that lazy crap abouyt faceless Teutons), quite rightly venerates New Order...but does wander off into listiness to often...and it does run out of steam before the end - but definitely worth a read, so much better than most books about pop which are just so staid and unoriginal.

[Kim Bonfils · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Morley is one of those rare music writers that do not take sides in the battle between "pop" and "serious" music. He likes what he likes - and writes dazzlingly about it.
Not intended as a factual history in any way, the book is instead driven by Morley's relentless enthusiasm for the art of music.
And it doesn't stop at pop - the book spans an impressive amount of genres, including avant-garde works such as Alvin Lucier's experimental tape piece "I Am Sitting in a Room". That on the first page this work is juxtaposed with Kylie Minogue's "I Can't Get You Out of My Head" should give you an idea of just how eclectic this book is.

[GloriaGloom · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'Estetica come Categoria di riferimento del pop o il pop come Categoria Estetica? Succulento, sfizioso e bislacco libello rovinato da una traduzione a dir poco legnosa(ci si son messi anche in due). Ma l'editrice ISBN non è nuova a questi disastri(vedi Ajax, la squadra del ghetto o 64.748 mq.) In questi giorni si trova facilmente nei reimander a prezzo dimezzato: le barbarie editoriali non sempre pagano.

[Justin Cormack · Rating 1 out of 5]

Possibly the most pretentious book I have ever attempted to read. It had its moments, and yet, well, I couldnt finish it. Listen to Kylie or read about her? Or read about someone wondering whether there will be a picture of Kylie, the symbolism of pop impersonified drivingly on the cover or not. Of course there is. I am sure if you need to read this book it will find you.

[Jamil · Rating 2 out of 5]

too much noise & I couldn't focus. If I were the type of person to read books in small chunks (& if I weren't under the time restrictions of ILL) I might have liked it quite a bit. As it was, I just skimmed.

If I ever come back to it, it'll be because of the great timeline of "life and death, sound and silence...thought and escapade..." from 1624-2003 included within.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Completely exhilarating and bloody-minded history of pop and ideas, ideas about pop, popular ideas, and just about anything else Morley can shoe-horn in on a wafer-thin but infinitely-wide pretext. A big celebration of the avant-garde and the mainstream and an encouragement to listen more and think more. That's good.

[Stephen Spong · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favourites, albeit with the caveat that it's undeniably pretentious and frequently obtuse. It still provides a new way of looking at music and offers a lot of excellent and oftentimes obscure options for further exploration.

[Chadwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me realize how amazing Kylie Minogue is. Think about that statement.

[Summer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it! Fun and weird and smart and great.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

That words and music can be the same thing. That lists can be interesting. That I was right to follow the career of Paul Morley from 1978 to now.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars for the lists alone.