The Sound Of Being Human: How Music Shapes Our Lives

Description

Too often we treat popular music as wallpaper surrounding us as we live our lives. Jude Rogers shows the emotional and cerebral heft such music can have. It s a personal journey which becomes universal. Fascinating
Ian Rankin

Moving and absorbing, The Sound of Being Human mixes memoir, analysis, anecdote and personal chronicle into a mosaic that evokes what music means to the individual and the human tribe. A candid, beautiful read
Stuart Maconie

The Sound of Being Human explores, in detail, why music plays such a deep-rooted role in so many lives, from before we are born to our last days. At its heart is Jude s own story: how songs helped her wrestle with the grief of losing her father at age five; concoct her own sense of self as a lonely adolescent; sky-rocket her relationships, both real and imagined, in the flushes of early womanhood, propel her own journey into working life, adulthood and parenthood, and look to the future.

Shaped around twelve songs, ranging from ABBA s Super Trouper to Neneh Cherry s Buffalo Stance , Kraftwerk s Radioactivity to Martha Reeves and the Vandellas Heat Wave , the book combines memoir and historical, scientific and cultural enquiry to show how music can shape different versions of ourselves; how we rely upon music for comfort, for epiphanies, and for sexual and physical connection; how we grow with songs, and songs grow inside us, helping us come to terms with grief, getting older and powerful memories. It is about music s power to help us tell our own stories, whatever they are, and make them sing.

About the Author

Since 2003, Jude Rogers has written about arts and culture for the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, Times Saturday Review, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Word, MOJO, Q, NME, The Quietus, Wire and The Gentlewoman. She has made acclaimed documentaries for Radio 4, including the 2021 series A Life in Music , and presents the White Rabbit music books podcast, Songbook. She has interviewed artists from Paul McCartney to Dolly Parton, Damon Albarn to Billie Eilish, Laurie Anderson to Michael Stipe, Debbie Harry to the Pet Shop Boys.