Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty, Paperback

A remarkable new book . . .Ratliff] goes leaping from Beethoven to Big Black, from Morton Feldman to Curtis Mayfield, identifying continuities while delighting in contrasts. ---Alex Ross, The New Yorker

What does it mean to listen in the digital era? Today, we can listen to nearly anything, at any time, from Detroit techno to jam bands to baroque opera. The possibilities in this new age of listening overturn old assumptions about what it means to properly appreciate music---to be an educated listener.
In Every Song Ever, veteran New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff reimagines the very idea of music appreciation in this day and age. As familiar subdivisions like rock and jazz matter less and less and music's accessible past becomes longer and broader, listeners can put aside the intentions of composers and musicians and engage music afresh, on their own terms. The result is a new mode of listening that can lead to unexpected connections and astonishing possibilities---as well as dangers.

Encompassing the sounds of five continents and several centuries, Every Song Ever is a necessary field guide to our musical habitat, and a foundation for the new aesthetics our age demands.