The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present
by Paul McCartney, edited by Paul Muldoon, Allen Lane £75/Liveright $100
The Beatles used to chuck lyric sheets in the wastebasket after recording a song: Linda McCartney fished them out and saved them. The Lyrics is the deluxe version of her scrapbook, an expensive, handsome, two-volume compendium of Paul McCartney’s work as a lyricist, accompanied by photos and Macca’s engaging reminiscences.
Set the Night on Fire: Living, Dying and Playing Guitar with the Doors
by Robby Krieger, with Jeff Alulis, White Rabbit £20/Little, Brown $29
Robby Krieger is recruited to a band in 1965 and meets its singer, “a shaky-voiced, corduroy-clad introvert”. First impressions don’t count. The meek warbler is The Doors’ lord of misrule Jim Morrison, whose chaotic energy (“Jim had a particular technique for jumping out of windows”) courses through the guitarist’s memoir.
Crying in H Mart: A Memoir
by Michelle Zauner, Picador £16.99/Knopf $26.95
“Stop crying! Save your tears for when your mother dies,” Michelle Zauner’s mother drilled into her. Crying in H Mart is the result, a book about grief, Korean-US identity and Zauner’s complex memories of her dead parent. Korean food linked them, music parted them: the author fronts indie band Japanese Breakfast.
Books of the Year 2021
A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance
by Hanif Abdurraqib, Allen Lane £18.99/Random House $27
“We are all outside the borders of someone else’s idea of what Blackness is,” Hanif Abdurraqib writes in his freewheeling study of African-American cultural performance, depicted as acts of resistance to racism. Music recurs: the book’s title comes from Josephine Baker’s self-description as “a little devil in America”.
Rememberings
by Sinéad O’Connor, Sandycove £20/Mariner Books $28
As a child, Sinéad O’Connor was a compulsive shoplifter. “If a thing ain’t nailed down, I’m stealing it. I don’t even know why,” she writes. Her memoir is similarly vagrant, ransacking a memory that she admits is faulty for bracing, funny, jagged recollections of a life of vertiginous highs and lows.
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