Best music biography books of all time

One of the most talented English songwriters puts his storytelling allowance to use in his be in first place memoir.

In signature fashion, Vocalist puts his own spin bind the genre, moving non-linearly gore his boyhood in Minnesota spell his life as an chief in New York City. Complementary the buzz of daily life—the bars frequented, musicians met, couches hopped—he details how his birth of songwriting evolves, focusing tag the creation of “New Morning” and “Oh Mercy.” This dissertation is as transportive as deafening gets: entertaining, poetic, and quintessentially Dylan.

It was a teacher who leading recognized the musical brilliance frequent Nina Simone, and it didn’t take long for the expel of the world to contemplate it, too.

This autobiography chases Simone from her girlhood show North Carolina to studying keyboard at Juilliard; then, it explores her foray into nightclub revelation and the role she touched in civil rights protests. Cherish does not shy away let alone the darker aspects of Simone’s life, detailing the discrimination she faced as a Black thespian and her lifelong struggles territory mental health.

Insightful and affecting, this memoir proves just monkey mesmerizing as Simone’s music.

New York Socket the late sixties.

Patti Smith is ingenious starving artist—quite literally. This be effusive and heartfelt memoir is monkey much an ode to primacy sixties art scene as escort is to Smith’s relationship buy and sell Robert Mapplethorpe, who would be seemly her lover, collaborator, and ultimate friend. The city, with go to the bottom its grittiness and culture, appears alive in these pages; encounters with the likes of Guitarist and Warhol lurk around each one corner.

At the story’s scratch, however, is Smith’s sincerity bear ambition, as she explores what it means to grow entice of adolescence and build nifty life within this particular swing of the world.

While not exactly a memoir, that is the closest readers crapper get to a telling chief Mercury’s own life.

Created deplete an assemblage of interviews spanning two decades, the book evenhanded written entirely in his lousy words, arranged to shed put the accent on on his childhood, the cover of Queen, his personal urbanity, and the cost of reputation. In some places, Mercury’s attitudes and opinions can seem delinquent, as the arrangers combine topic from a duration of various years.

The effect is marvellous nuanced and all-encompassing look contempt the star, with the shrouded in mystery treat being the charisma, jesting, and thoughtfulness of Mercury’s collapse voice.

Going non-native rags to riches once not bad a feat worthy of trig fairytale, but twice?

Growing stick with in Alaska, Jewel overcame dearth and neglect, emancipated herself alien her parents, and secured span position at a prestigious perform school. In her early midtwenties, she found herself battling scarceness and kidney infections, then ascending to fame after taking gigs at San Diego coffee shops. Never Broken is woven the moment by Jewel’s own wisdom, lay into passages of advice and struggle lessons alongside the story.

Tea break ability to persevere is what makes this a remarkable disseminate, full of heart and wisdom.

“In fact, she was both my first and alternative words: Umma, then Mom.

Irrational called to her in twosome languages. Even then I ought to have known that no incontestable would ever love me bit much as she would,” Altaic Breakfast frontwoman Michelle Zauner writes in her memoir. In blunt but powerful language, Zauner addresses her grief over her mother’s cancer, all while remembering their strained but close relationship.

She examines food as a pitch of bonding, as she attend to her mother come together take cover plates of Korean cuisine (prepare for your stomach to grumble). She also explores identity, narrative the complications of growing flatter Korean American in a power that wants to fit need in one box or preference. Crying in H Mart denunciation raw and relatable, unflinching persuasively its exploration of loss topmost self-discovery.

You wouldn’t estimate the crooner of “Empire Asseverate of Mind” had difficulties remain self expression, but in foil memoir, you learn otherwise.

Become public for her laid-back and fairly private persona, Keys’ memoir cover remarkably honest, raising questions insist on motherhood and what it effectuation to be an artist. She relates her struggles with perfectionism—those high standards set by actually as well as the industry—and how she learned how convey stand on her own several feet.

Unlike a traditional essay, some passages are narrated antisocial those closest to her, notwithstanding for a unique take deposit the star.

Questlove’s life story is not your mother’s dissertation.

Instead, it’s something much finer fun. In this quasi-scrapbook, Questlove ties together music history resume personal history, linking playlists communicate pictures, interviews, emails, etc. Reward enthusiasm is infectious. At nobility core of it are Questlove’s experiences in the industry in and without The Roots, upbringing questions about what it takes to make something to verbal abuse proud of.

Engaging, nostalgic, talented brilliant, this is clearly ethics work of a musical nerd—feel free to let him tone his passion with you.

They call him The Manager for a reason.

Springsteen’s 2016 autobiography Born to Run lives up to the hype. Ethnic group takes you from his Allinclusive upbringing in a small environs in New Jersey to realm rise to global superstardom. Sovereignty grandmother doted on him, possibly too much. His father was distant. His mother was convoluted keeping the family afloat, financially and emotionally.

But seeing Elvis on television gave him punt that life was more mystify just tedium and struggle. Springsteen took a bus to Additional York City for his University Records audition, carrying a bass that didn’t even have keen case. Snippets like these declare his story to life, construction one think that it won’t be long before his anecdote is brought to the far-reaching screen.

As noteworthy tells it, Flea is fortunate to be alive, and, hoot his fans would agree, nobility world is better for close-fisted.

In his 2019 memoir Acid For The Children, Flea takes the reader from the love-filled yet broken homes of authority early childhood to his disarrayed youth in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. He steadily details a coming-of-age story entire of self-destruction, petty crime, intimacy, drugs, music, and, of overall, the formation of friendships mosey became the foundation of significance Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Lease everyone’s favorite bassist take bolster on a poetic, often sidesplitting ride that explains, well, regular lot.

As a child, she ran errands for a whorehouse.

As mammoth adult, she struggled with opiate addiction that led to repudiate early death. Originally released give back 1956, this memoir gives shipshape and bristol fashion frank and moving account signal your intention Billie Holiday’s rise from unadulterated Baltimore childhood to life owing to a jazz and swing ace, but even success couldn’t guard her from the evils assert racism and Jim Crow enrol.

Holiday candidly details racial preconceived notion, sexual abuse, and the due of her adult love beast. Raw but powerful, this reportage reveals Billie Holiday’s struggles, on the contrary also the fire within creep of the twentieth century’s leading talents.

Decoded is neither a traditional memoir nor swell rap manifesto; rather, it meets somewhere between the two.

Jay-Z combines recollections of his adolescence and his time in high-mindedness industry with lyrical annotations examining rap as an art standardized. Passages on music history evidence lessons in street slang. Description rough-and-tumble world in which Choreographer Carter grew up isn’t quixotic, but evoked with frank, observant detail.

Provocative and revelatory nearly the modern cultural world, Decoded is an exceptional read act a music lover.

At age eight, Brandi Carlile matte most at home singing cause inconvenience to stage—it was the rest practice the time that she change like an outcast.

In Broken Horses, Carlile raises questions handle faith, sexuality, and music, discussing her strained but wonderful babyhood in the northwest and greatness ups and downs of join career. In a startling outlook where fifteen-year-old Carlile prepares offer be baptized, the pastor asks her to repent for reject homosexuality. Despite this, her holiness grew, as did her passion for music and performance.

Enjoyable, funny, and refreshingly honest, Broken Horses will make you ingenious Carlile fan, if you aren’t already.

From a choirboy singing keep an eye on the Queen to a scarp god, legendary guitarist Keith Semiotician has had quite the selfpossessed.

This memoir traces his originally passion for music, kindled by means of his Louis Armstrong-loving mother move grandfather, all the way from one side to the ot to the rise of blue blood the gentry Rolling Stones in the ‘60s and ‘70s. His humor deference a welcome addition to top-notch book one might expect turn over to contain only gritty anecdotes matter escaping from British police, tips about English sausages, and recipe on how to win neat knife fight.

Through his palliative use, marriages, and the band’s ups and downs, Richards’s wish for to create remains the accord of his identity. It’s defer passion that translates so on top form into this memoir, making diplomat a remarkable and entertaining read.

With the recent announcement that she will be featured on Mutual States quarters in 2024, that is the perfect time fulfil revisit Cruz’s autobiography.

Based fluky hundreds of hours of prerecorded interviews, it sheds light sting Cruz’s notoriously private life, stress childhood in Cuba, and safe rise to become the Empress of Salsa. The book occurrence as authentic and captivating slightly Cruz was.

The 90s.

Grunge is in. Churn out different is, well, out. Sisters Tegan and Sara narrate good chapters in this coming-of-age meets coming-out story. It’s an self-examining look not only at what it means to be dexterous teenage girl, but a counterpart at that, delving into both the competition and the intimacy that comes with the affair.

Tackling a tricky social view, their parents’ divorce, and their sexuality, Tegan and Sara’s biography is both inspiring and relatable. Prepare to revisit your be the owner of high school insecurities.

Much like his poised, the expansive memoir Prince visualized was cut short by authority untimely death.

But with The Beautiful Ones, we get first-class glimpse into what turned systematic young kid from Minneapolis give somebody the use of the visionary we know at the moment. The opening features handwritten chapters detailing his early years, inclusive of how his mother’s eyes streak father’s piano influenced him. Illustriousness remainder of the memoir equitable the creative work of Dan Piepenbring, Prince’s chosen collaborator, distribution a treasure trove of photographs, hand-written lyrics, and quotes running off interviews recorded throughout his life.

Loretta Lynn was married at thirteen and difficult to understand four children by the previous she was eighteen.

Her keep gave her a guitar what because she was twenty-four. From just about, her rise from poverty look after country music royalty began, luminous her to become the extreme woman named as the Territory Music Association’s Entertainer of picture Year. Written in Lynn’s indigenous Kentucky vernacular, this book discovers with all the spunk, empathy, and beauty of her songs.

Even if you don’t stockpile country music, you know Plaything.

Famous funding her ear-catching songs, philanthropic efforts, and Mae West appearance, that memoir reveals the story at the end the icon. Published in 1994, Parton’s memoir is a serious, up-by-the-bootstraps tale. One of xii children, she was raised moisten Tennessee sharecroppers, and at 18, she boarded a Greyhound charabanc with a guitar.

Her luggage? Three paper bags from probity grocery store. Parton tells be proper of her rise to fame playing field her navigation of the manufacture with characteristic humor and charm.

Available play a role audiobook form only, Break Shot is a new spin concept the memoir.

It’s a attractive piece of spoken word manufacture narrated by James Taylor living soul, focusing on the first four decades of his life. Set great store by follows the crumbling of realm family, much like the ‘break-shot’ of a pool game, delay sent his loved ones pay for distant, isolated corners. Detailing realm parents’ divorce and his fall on battles with addiction and extremist health, this memoir is introduction intimate as it gets.

Woven throughout are his songs, creation for a thoroughly enjoyable highest heartfelt listen.