Essays on the major American song lyricists who wrote for the Broadway theater, the Hollywood motion-picture musicals, and the sheet music and recording industry collectively known as Tin Pan Alley. The period surveyed is generally regarded as the golden age of American songwriting. Provides historical information on Broadway, movie musicals, "original cast" LP albums, and the movement toward integration of song and plot in the stage and screen musical....

From Irving Berlin to Cy Coleman, from "Alexander's Ragtime Band" to "Big Spender," from Tin Pan Alley to the MGM soundstages, the Golden Age of the American song embodied all that was cool, sexy, and sophisticated in popular culture. For four glittering decades, geniuses like Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Harold Arlen enticed unforgettable melodies out of thin air. Gershwin, in his brief but incandescent career, straddled Tin Pan...

When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, a debate raged. Some celebrated, while many others questioned the choice. How could the world's most prestigious book prize be awarded to a famously cantankerous singer-songwriter who wouldn't even deign to attend the medal ceremony? In 'Why Bob Dylan matters', Harvard Professor Richard F. Thomas answers this question with magisterial erudition. A world expert on Classical poetry,...

"For five decades, Carole Bayer Sager has been among the most admired and successful songwriters at work, responsible for her lyrical contributions to some of the most popular songs in the English language, including "Nobody Does It Better," "A Groovy Kind of Love," "Don't Cry Out Loud," and the theme from the movie Arthur, "The Best That You Can Do" (about getting lost between the moon and New York City). She has collaborated with (and written for)...

Songwriter and actress Linda Thompson breaks her silence for the first time to share the extraordinary story of her life, career, and her epic romances with two of the most celebrated, yet enigmatic, modern American superstars--Elvis Presley and Bruce Jenner. Contains lyrics to many of her songs.

Jack Malik was just another struggling songwriter... but that was yesterday. After a mysterious blackout, Jack discovers he is the only person on earth who remembers The Beatles! As he rockets to fame by passing off the Fab Four's songs as his own, Jack risks losing Ellie--the one person who has loved him and believed in him from the start. Before the door to his old life closes forever, Jack must decide if all he needs is love, after all.

"When Lyric Wilde's not whipping up the best food in town at the Dark Horse Dive Bar, she's making a name for herself as a rising singer-songwriter. And if any of her online followers cross the line from friendly to fanatical, well, Lyric figures it goes with the territory--she can take care of herself. But there's one fan she wants to get to know better--a silent, sexy biker named Viper. A man who makes her think mine every time she looks at him....

"Fifteen-year-old Mohana Prasad is as normal as an Indian girl can be. She is barely five-foot-three, and has a hopeless crush on the most popular guy in school. But there is something that sets her apart from the millions of other girls in the "background." She has a way with words. After winning a contest, she becomes the head songwriter for Jamie West. The pop superstar used to be Mohana's best friend; but now that she has become famous, Jamie...

"Carlisa "Carli" Henton is a musician and songwriter hoping to follow in her father's musical footsteps. But, biding her time until she makes it big in the music industry, she works as a junior account manager at a big-name media company to cover her New York City rent. Carli meticulously balances her work with her musical endeavors as a songwriter--until a chance meeting with rising star Tau Anderson sends her calculated world into a frenzy. Their...

"In 2017, New Yorker staff writer D.T. Max began working on a major profile of Stephen Sondheim that would be timed to the eventual premiere of a new musical Sondheim was writing. Sadly, that process--and the years of conversation--was cut short by Sondheim's own hesitations, then the global pandemic, and finally by the great artist's death in November 2021. Now, Max has taken the raw version of these conversations and knit them together into an unforgettable...