This is a book to shock and awe the deepest music nerd, and at the same time to work as a heady gateway drug for the uninitiated. Throughout, race is a powerful touchstone: just as there's always been a 'Black' audience and a 'white' audience, with more or less overlap depending on the moment, there is Black music and white music (and some very white music), and a whole lot of confusing of the issue, if not to say expropriation. A move by Barry Weiss to reconfigure ownership over his RECORDS label has resulted in deal that buys out his former partners with a new going-forward joint venture directly between him and Sony. Sanneh debunks cherished myths, reappraises beloved heroes, and upends familiar ideas of musical greatness, arguing that sometimes, the best popular music isn't transcendent: it expresses our grudges as well as our hopes, and it is motivated by greed as well as inspiration. Even the stuff you don’t care about.From his own adolescence, when his allegiance was to punk rock, to his work as one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture at the New York Times and the New Yorker, Kelefa Sanneh has made a deep study of how our popular music unites and divides us, the tribes it forms, and how its genres, shape-shifting across the years, give us a way to track larger forces and concerns. Major Labels somehow manages to unspool everything you need to know about 50 years of music, but more impressively, he makes you care about all of it. Sanneh is hoping to kick-start a few new disputes and revisit some older ones in his first book, Major Labels, a history of the past 50 years of popular music told through the stories. ‘Kelefa Sanneh has achieved the impossible. This is a book to shock and awe the deepest music nerd, and at the same time to work as a heady gateway drug for the uninitiated. Pop revolution The monster with seven letters The triumph of poptimism The most popular records in the country Pepsodent smiles The perils of (new).

Distilling a career’s worth of knowledge, he explores the tribes music forms, and how its genres, shape-shifting across the years, give us a way to track larger forces and concerns.

From his allegiance to punk rock in his adolescence to becoming an essential voice on music and culture, Kelefa Sanneh makes a deep study of how popular music unites and divides us.

Major labels a history of popular music