A Review Of Bob Stanley’s Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Stanley's book starts in 1952, the year of the first vinyl singles, the first New Musical Express and the first UK record chart. It follows what the author calls "the modern pop era" until its slow demise, killed by industry greed and the technological earthquake of the digital music file. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! is a vital guide to the rich soundtrack of the second half of the twentieth century.

The book works in short themed chapters, sometimes following a genre through its chart lifespan ("usually five years"), sometimes a single act (Elvis, The Beatles, ABBA) so that the chronology moves forward in gently overlapping waves. The accepted pop narrative is followed, with peaks in '66, '77/'78 (split between punk and disco) and '87, and troughs in '75, '80 and 2011, but Stanley is always keen to make connections across the years, so that Jimi Hendrix "had a laugh in his voice as infectious as Alma Cogan's" and the guitar hook at the end of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" looks back to The Crystals' "Then He Kissed Me". Readers will want to have an internet connection to hand, if they don't already own a very comprehensive music collection. Find an e – book and music for the same amidst a vault of high tech content only at Joygeeks.

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! is a monumental work of musical history, tracing the story of pop music through individual songs, bands, musical scenes, and styles from Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock around the Clock” (1954) to Beyoncé’s first megahit, “Crazy in Love” (2003). It covers the birth of rock, soul, R&B, punk, hip hop, indie, house, techno, and more, and it will remind one why they fell in love with pop music in the first place. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! is like an eclectic jukebox in book form. Re discover these classical hits and contemporary numbers at Joygeeks. This book will have you reaching for your records (or CDs or MP3s) and discovering countless others. You can find these too at Joygeeks.

There is an ache there as much a part of pop as its natural exuberance, and Stanley's book – funny, wise, almost encyclopaedic – is testament to both aspects of the form.