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“All I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when these other people don’t like them as much as I do.��

Don’t I know that feeling, Nick�� It should come as no surprise that the man who wrote “High Fidelity�� wrote a book like this: I feel like he must have had most of this book in a back drawer somewhere as he created the character of Rob and his compulsive ‘top 5�� list making. I kept thinking about Rob wanting to re-arrange his record collection ‘autobiographically��: I’m guessing that this is what that would end up looking like.

But to be fair, he has a lot more to say than simply ‘I like this song��. I just read Jeff Tweedy’s book “World With a Song�� (/review/show...), and he really focuses on the songs themselves, as where Hornby uses the songs to go on tangents about music that don’t necessarily have anything to do with the song the chapter is named after. This makes both books much more different than I had assumed they would be, and I have to say, they both scratch a totally different itch. Sometimes, you just want to deep dive on what a song has meant to you, what it makes you think of; but other times, the song is just an excuse to talk about why indie record stores matter, or what it feels like to have reached the life stage where you make fun of your kids�� taste in music��

Case in point: I got a copy of this book after realizing that Hornby and I both have a thing for Paul Westerberg (though I suspect the nature of our ‘thing�� differs - at least slightly) and that he had dedicated a chapter of this collection to the song “Born for Me��, a gorgeous piece I can listen to on a loop for hours without getting sick of it. I was somewhat disappointed because that chapter is not really about Westerberg at all (or the actual song, for that matter!), but about Hornby’s thoughts about solos, and how they serve as emotional punctuation in the hands of skillful musicians. Still interesting, just not exactly what I expected. But that’s not a bad thing.

Further case in point: I was very skeptical he would have anything to say about Nelly Furtado that I would actually care about, but he did have really interesting things to say about the power of a flavor-of-the-month pop song, how it can give temporary joy and bring people together even when it’s not an objectively good piece of music. In fact, that sort of discussion is a refreshing reminder that music doesn’t have to be ‘serious�� to be enjoyable, and it’s not a big deal. It’s exactly what I love about Chappell Roan, as a matter of fact, the pure joy her music gives me (though I firmly believe she will stand the test of time much better than Nelly Furtado ever has).

It must be noted that the book was published almost twenty-five years ago, so it feels stale at times, because there’s obviously nothing terribly fresh on his list (though in his defense, a lot of songs on my own top 31 would probably pre-date my birth, so I don’t want to throw stones from my glass castle). I wonder if he ever considered updating it and if he has since changed his mind about some of those songs. A life-long song is rather rare, while there are plenty of ‘favorite for now�� songs out there.

If I am honest, I liked Jeff Tweedy’s take on this exercise a bit better, probably simply due to the fact that our references and tastes overlap a bit more. Tweedy’s book is also much more recent, so I was more familiar with his selection. But Hornby’s prose is always fun, engaging, and thought-provoking, which makes it a pleasure to read.

Recommended for music fans, and please note that it really doesn’t matter if you like the same music as Hornby’s; it only matters that you care about music, any music.



“Sometimes, very occasionally, songs and books and films and pictures express who you are, perfectly. And they don’t do this in words or images, necessarily; the connection is a lot less direct and more complicated than that."