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Wil Lodge

How Music Works by David Byrne (2/5)

David Byrne may know ¨how music works¨, but his insight is pedestrian and his long-winded chapter-spanning anecdotes are unwanted. Byrne´s ¨Masterwork¨ is an attempt at an exploration of the different factors influencing music mixed with autobiographical elements. The book's title, How Music Works, tells the reader a general idea of what to expect from the beginning: some compelling bits of musical analysis cherry-picked from actual musicologists with degrees. This does not prepare the reader for the extremely cumbersome and unsubtly self-aggrandizing autobiographical chapters in-between. I simply do not care whether or not David Byrne experimented with tape recorders during his youth, and the reader is further alienated by his attempt to link this anecdote to the rest of the book by likening it to how humans have discovered new musical styles throughout history. Much of ¨his¨ early musical analysis in the book only has merit because it is directly taken from musicologists with credibility. His attempt to splice analysis of the current music scene with his own personal experience is hilariously biased. For example, when complaining about venues shutting down, he essentially gives one example: the club that the Talking Heads first played at, and he laments at great length about this business failure for a good 50-60 pages. Much of the later chapters of the book are devoted to informing the reader of how influential and groundbreaking David Byrne´s music is, but the final chapter decides to drop upon the reader a hitherto unexplored concept: Byrne postulates (or, rather, steals the idea) that all sounds are music and that ambient music is the true music of the future. Much of this deeply concerning and confusing idea-slinging gives the impression that Byrne heard the phrase ¨Music of the Spheres¨ and decided to write a chapter about it in order to give the book more reading time. But there is still value to be salvaged from the book, as Byrne gives an interesting summary of the modern music industry´s method of extracting value from artists. In sum, this book´s flaws far outweigh its occasional interesting sections. I would recommend the book to someone who loves David Byrne as much as he loves himself if that is in fact possible, but to casual readers and any who do not deify Byrne for his musical achievements, this book is easily something to avoid.

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