The Sound of Being Human: How Music Shapes Our Lives

The Sound of Being Human explores the emotional and cerebral power of popular music, combining memoir, analysis, anecdotes, and personal chronicles to show how it shapes our lives from birth to death. It is 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, and combines memoir and historical, scientific, and cultural enquiry to show how music can shape different versions of ourselves, provide comfort, epiphanies, and sexual and physical connection, and help us tell our own stories and make them sing.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 28 April 2022
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co

Too often, we treat popular music as mere wallpaper, surrounding us as we go about our lives. However, Jude Rogers demonstrates the profound emotional and intellectual depth that such music can possess. It's a personal journey that transcends boundaries and becomes universal.

Ian Rankin's The Sound of Being Human is a captivating blend of memoir, analysis, anecdote, and personal chronicle. It weaves together a mosaic that evokes the profound significance of music in our individual and collective lives. This is a candid and beautiful read, as Stuart Maconie aptly describes it.

The Sound of Being Human delves into the intricate reasons why music plays such a central role in our existence, from our earliest days to our final moments. At its core is Jude's own story: how songs have aided her in grappling with the grief of losing her father, shaping her sense of self, enhancing her relationships, both real and imagined, propelling her into the world of work, adulthood, and parenthood, and guiding her toward a future filled with hope.

The book is structured around twelve songs, spanning a diverse range of genres and artists, including ABBA's "Super Trouper," Neneh Cherry's "Buffalo Stance," Kraftwerk's "Radioactivity," and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas' "Heat Wave." Through a combination of memoir, historical, scientific, and cultural inquiry, the book explores how music can shape different versions of ourselves, serve as a source of comfort, provoke epiphanies, and facilitate sexual and physical connections. It sheds light on how we grow alongside songs and how songs grow within us.

At its essence, The Sound of Being Human is about music's incredible power to help us tell our own stories, regardless of their nature, and infuse them with melody and resonance. It reminds us of the profound impact that music can have on our lives and the profound connection it establishes between individuals and the human tribe.

Weight: 420g
Dimension: 218 x 144 x 36 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781474622929