Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres

I purchased this book as a gift for my 14 year old grandson. He had become interested in learning about older music. I thought is would be great research for him. The language is too advanced for his age. However, perhaps he will keep it for a reference in later years.

Too narrowly focused and written from a New York perspective.Only read 50% of it and quit from overwhelming boredom.

This is an ambitious book. The history is illuminating, especially the sections on dance music and hip hop. The section on pop was disappointing. It completely ignored the role of producers (like Max Martin) on current pop. I wonder if there is a better conclusion here, beyond saying that this history may be irrelevant because off Spotify. I wanted something more definitive in the end, but the journey was fun.

I bought this as a gift for a music lover, and he truly enjoyed this book. I would repurchase it.

This dude is a genius. So many thoughts I never would’ve thought before. Eye opening! Anybody who thinks about music at all will enjoy this book.

It's hard to say exactly what "Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres" is -- but it's safe to say it's not really a history.Yes, former New York Times' pop music critic Kelefa Sanneh does touch on the roots of the seven genres he discusses, but as a history, "Major Labels" really isn't. Instead, I'd call it seven historical essays on the various genres, with modern music genres -- dance and hip-hop -- getting more history and the earlier ones relying more on analysis than timelines.Regardless, however, "Major Labels" is an insightful, well-written book about popular music through 2020, and there's much to learn and ponder here. For the most part, Sanneh does his homework (though mentioning King Crimson and Styx as though they were at all similar is an error of staggering proportions) and his research, so what he didn't experience personally he still writes about knowledgably.For me, the chapters about punk, hip-hop and dance were the most interesting because they covered less familiar ground, but all were worth reading. Though veteran fans will enjoy hearing old names again, perhaps the greatest value would be for younger readers who haven't lived through a lot of 20th century music. "Major Labels" will add perspective and depth to what they're listening to today, and also will open some doors to older bands they may come to appreciate.

I've read a few of Sanneh's thoughtful and insightful profiles in The New Yorker over the years, and was excited to see what he would do with 500 pages and such an ambitious title. Unfortunately, the answer is -- not much. Maybe the fault is mine, the book takes the subtitle quite literally, with seven essays giving the potted history of rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance, and pop music. In each, he traces the genre's origins, goes through a long list of notable acts, touching on various subgenres, and then moves on to the next. Naturally, the book leans toward American artists (a better subtitle might have been "A History of American Popular Music in Seven Genres" so there's plenty of important stuff from the UK and elsewhere that gets left out (for example, no Stone Roses, no Massive Attack, etc..). And some bizarrely obscure stuff that makes it in -- for example, never in a million years would I have expected to find a mention of Ray Cappo (look him up) in a mainstream music history like this.Sanneh does weave in his personal experiences with each genre along the way, probably to greatest effect in the punk and hip-hop chapters, but even this wasn't as interesting as I'd expected. I guess I would recommend it for readers interested in expanding their knowledge of certain genres -- for example, I'd always heard of "Outlaw Country" as a subgenre, but had no sense of it until I read the "Country" chapter. Similarly, I vaguely knew that "techno" music didn't start in Germany, but came from Detroit and was somehow related to Chicago "house" music, but hadn't seen all the dots connected until the chapter on dance music. So, not bad as history of some forms of modern popular music, just be aware that there's no particular argument being made, or insight advanced on a grander level.

The large print on the cover is ever so slightly misleading. This is not a complete history of popular music, but one since 1970. It is also fundamentally Anglo-Saxon, really only covering the USA and its mini-me, the UK. So World Music is omitted altogether, including Latin and Reggae. Still covering the 50 years of his seven chosen “genres” in such detail is quite an achievement. The author’s other achievement is to seem to like almost everything, rather uncritically. Still as the book is more of a classification exercise than a critical one, this is may not be a bad thing.The book’s achievement is to provide a recap of six of the popular music genres over the last 50 years. It is hard to argue with any of his conclusions, except to criticise some of the emphasis. I thought also that he lost some of the geological niceties. He just about manages to show differences in taste and approach between the US and UK, but skates over the quite significantly different trends and movements within the US.Significant parts of the book are written from the point of view of a fan boy in the USA, which might explain why some movements are covered rather sketchily, for example, the British New Wave of the 1980s, Britpop in the 1990s and UK Indie Rock generally. I’m not sure I remember the Bristol trip-hop scene, the Libertines or Amy Winehouse being mentioned. They certainly don’t feature in the extended index.The weakest part of the book is the last chapter, the one on “Pop”, because, of course, the author has set himself an impossible task. Pop is not a genre. It is far to diffuse for that, taking in Abba (also not in the index!), novelty songs, the Cliff Richards’s and Celine Dions, boy bands, X-Factor spin offs, etc. etc. Frankly the chapter peters out into filler material, where the author tries to make a stand for the unfashionable, while not being clear what exactly he is standing up for.A decent attempt, but it’s really rather too balanced and “New Yorker”. I would prefer something a bit more red-blooded and partisan. Lester Bangs would have hurled the book under a (tour) bus, Kindle reader and all.

More about the trials and tribulations of being a popular music critic, and about the musical tastes of the author, than about the music described by the title.