{"title":"Books","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"33-1-3-series-stevie-wonders-songs-in-the-key-of-life-by-zeth-lundy","title":"33 1\/3 Series: Stevie Wonder's Songs In The Key of Life by Zeth Lundy","description":"\u003cp\u003eLike all double albums, Songs in the Key of Life is imperfect but audacious. If its titular concern - life - doesn't exactly allow for rigid focus, it's still a fiercely inspired collection of songs and one of the definitive soul records of the 1970s. Stevie Wonder was unable to control the springs of his creativity during that decade. Upon turning 21 in 1971, he freed himself from the Motown contract he'd been saddled with as a child performer, renegotiated the terms, and unleashed hundreds of songs to tape. Over the next five years, Wonder would amass countless recordings and release his five greatest albums - as prolific a golden period as there has ever been in contemporary music. But Songs in the Key of Life is different from the four albums that preceded it; it's an overstuffed, overjoyed, maddeningly ambitious encapsulation of all the progress Stevie Wonder had made in that short space of time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eZeth Lundy's book, in keeping with the album's themes, is structured as a life cycle. It's divided into the following sections: Birth; Innocence\/Adolescence; Experience\/Adulthood; Death; Rebirth. Within this framework, Zeth Lundy covers Stevie Wonder's excessive work habits and recording methodology, his reliance on synthesizers, the album's place in the gospel-inspired progression of 1970s R'n'B, and many other subjects.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Yearbook Records","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44413490135123,"sku":null,"price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0620\/3670\/5363\/files\/42-SongsInTheKeyofLife.jpg?v=1775574527"},{"product_id":"33-1-3-series-nine-inch-nails-pretty-hate-machine-by-daphne-carr","title":"33 1\/3 Series: nine inch nails' pretty hate machine by Daphne Carr","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhat is the world that Nine Inch Nails made, and what was the world that made Nine Inch Nails? These are the questions at the heart of this study of the band's 1989 debut, Pretty Hate Machine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe album began as after-hours demos by mercenary new wave keyboardist Trent Reznor, and was disciplined into sparse industrial dance by a handful of the UK's best industrial producers. Carr traces how the album became beloved in the underground, found its mass at Lollapalooza, and its market at the newly opened mall store Hot Topic. For fans, Nine Inch Nails was a vehicle for questioning God, society, the family, sex, and the body. In ten raw, heartbreaking oral histories woven through the book, fans living in the post-industrial Midwest discuss the successes and failures of the American dream as they are articulated in Nine Inch Nails' music. Daphne Carr illuminates Pretty Hate Machine as at once singular and as representative of how popular music can impact history and change lives.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Yearbook Records","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44413505929299,"sku":null,"price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0620\/3670\/5363\/files\/78-prettyhatemachine.jpg?v=1775574688"},{"product_id":"33-1-3-series-holes-live-through-this-by-anwen-crawford","title":"33 1\/3 Series: Hole's Live Through This by Anwen Crawford","description":"\u003cp\u003eCourtney Love has never been less than notorious. Her intelligence, ambition and appetite for confrontation have made her a target in a music industry still dominated by men. As Kurt Cobain's wife she was derided as an opportunistic groupie; as his widow she is pitied, and scorned, as the madwoman in rock's attic. Yet Hole's second album, Live Through This, awoke a feminist consciousness in a generation of young listeners.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLive Through This arrived in 1994, at a tumultuous point in the history of American music. Three years earlier Nirvana's Nevermind had broken open the punk underground, and the first issue of a zine called Riot Grrrl had been published. Hole were of this context and yet outside of it: too famous for the strict punk ethics of riotgrrrl, too explicitly feminist to be the world's biggest rock band.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLive Through This is an album about girlhood and motherhood; desire and disgust; self-destruction and survival. There have been few rock albums before or since so intimately concerned with female experience. It is an album that changed lives – so why is Courtney Love's achievement as a songwriter and musician still not taken seriously, two decades on?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Yearbook Records","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44413531553875,"sku":null,"price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0620\/3670\/5363\/files\/103-LiveThroughThis.jpg?v=1775574796"},{"product_id":"33-1-3-series-liz-phairs-exile-in-guyville-by-gina-arnold","title":"33 1\/3 Series: Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville by Gina Arnold","description":"\u003cp\u003eAlthough Exile in Guyville was celebrated as one of the year's top records by Spin and the New York Times, it was also, to some, an abomination: a mockery of the Rolling Stones' most revered record and a rare glimpse into the psyche of a shrewd, independent, strong young woman. For these crimes, Liz Phair was run out of her hometown of Chicago, enduring a flame war perpetrated by writers who accused her of being boring, inauthentic, and even a poor musician.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith Exile in Guyville, Phair spoke for all the girls who loved the world of indie rock but felt deeply unwelcome there. Like all great works of art, Exile was a harbinger of the shape of things to come: Phair may have undermined the male ego, but she also unleashed a new female one. For the sake of all the female artists who have benefited from her work-from Sleater-Kinney to Lana Del Rey and back again-it's high time we go back to Guyville.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Yearbook Records","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44414089396307,"sku":null,"price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0620\/3670\/5363\/files\/96-ExileinGuyville.jpg?v=1775591957"},{"product_id":"33-1-3-series-sonic-youths-daydream-nation-by-matthew-stearns","title":"33 1\/3 Series: Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation by Matthew Stearns","description":"\u003cp\u003eDaydream Nation is the kind of gorgeous monstrosity (born of extremes, rife with difficulties, and mythic in proportion) that can crush the will of the most resilient, well-intentioned listener if the necessary preparations haven't been made. Matthew Stearns explores the album from a range of angles, including a track-by-track analysis and a look at the historical and cultural context within which the album was made. Featuring a foreword by Lee Ranaldo and exclusive interviews with the band, this truly is the definitive guide to Daydream Nation.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Yearbook Records","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44414097129555,"sku":null,"price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0620\/3670\/5363\/files\/39-DaydreamNation.jpg?v=1775592148"},{"product_id":"33-1-3-series-beastie-boys-pauls-boutique-by-dan-leroy","title":"33 1\/3 Series: Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique by Dan LeRoy","description":"\u003cp\u003eDerided as one-hit wonders, estranged from their original producer and record label, and in self-imposed exile in Los Angeles, the Beastie Boys were written off by most observers before even beginning to record their second album - an embarrassing commercial flop that should have ruined the group's career. But not only did \"Paul's Boutique\" eventually transformed the Beasties from a fratboy novelty to hiphop giants, its sample-happy, retro aesthetic changed popular culture forever.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Yearbook Records","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44414099914835,"sku":null,"price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0620\/3670\/5363\/files\/30-Paul_sBoutique.jpg?v=1775592339"},{"product_id":"33-1-3-series-joy-divisions-unknown-pleasures-by-chris-ott","title":"33 1\/3 Series: Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott","description":"\u003cp\u003eJoy Division's career has often been shrouded by myths. But the truth is surprisingly simple: over a period of several months, Joy Division transformed themselves from run-of-the-mill punk wannabes into the creators of one of the most atmospheric, disturbing, and influential debut albums ever recorded. Chris Ott carefully picks apart fact from fiction to show how Unknown Pleasures came into being, and how it still resonates so strongly today.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Yearbook Records","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44414103355475,"sku":null,"price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0620\/3670\/5363\/files\/9-UnknownPleasures.jpg?v=1775592599"},{"product_id":"33-1-3-series-elliott-smiths-xo-by-matthew-lemay","title":"33 1\/3 Series: Elliott Smith's XO by Matthew LeMay","description":"\u003cp\u003eMany albums could be cited to support the claim that great suffering yields great art. Elliott Smith's XO should not be one of them. Smith's 1998 major label debut defies the \"tortured singer-songwriter\" stereotype, and takes up this defiance as a central theme. At a time when Smith was being groomed for a particular (and particularly condescending) brand of stardom, he produced a record that eviscerated one of the central assumptions of singersongwriterdom: that pain is beautiful. XO insists that romanticizing personal tragedy can only leave you \"deaf and dumb and done.\" And it backs up this claim with some of the most artful and intelligent music of its day. Matthew LeMay writes an original take on a widely beloved album, steering clear of the sensationalist suicide angles that have dogged most analysis of Elliott Smith's extraordinary work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Yearbook Records","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44414149296211,"sku":null,"price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0620\/3670\/5363\/files\/63-XO.jpg?v=1775592711"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.yearbookrecords.com\/collections\/books.oembed","provider":"Yearbook Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}