With informative biographies, essays, and "music maps, " this book is the ultimate guide to the best recordings in rhythm and blues. 20 charts.

This fun-to-read, easy-to-use reference has been completely updated, expanded, and revised with reviews of over 12,000 great albums by over 2,000 artists and groups in all rock genres. 50 charts.

Arranged in sixteen musical categories, provides entries for twenty thousand releases from four thousand artists, and includes a history of each musical genre.

Listen to Soul! Exploring a Musical Genre provides an overview of soul music for fans of the genre, with a focus on 50 must-hear singers, songs, and albums that define it. Listen to Soul! Exploring a Musical Genre provides both an overview and a critical analysis of what makes soul music in the United States. A list of 50 songs, albums, and musicians includes many of the best-known hits of the past and present as well as several important popular successes that are not necessarily on the "best-of" lists in other books. Like the other books in this series, this volume includes a background chapter followed by a chapter that contains 50 critical essays on must-hear albums, songs, and singers, approximately 1,500 words each. Chapters on the impact of soul music on popular culture and the legacy of the genre further explain the impact of these seminal compositions and musicians. This volume additionally includes a greater focus on soul music as a genre, making it a stand-out title on the topic for high school and college readers.

This comprehensive guide profiles the careers of hundreds of major artists, such as Aphex Twin and the Prodigy, and reviews thousands of the best electronica recordings. Incisive essays explore electronica's widely varied subgenres. 20 charts.

Since his professional debut in 1962, Stevie Wonder has recorded sixty-four singles that have made the Billboard top 100, including ten that reached number one. Wonder was one of the first Motown artists to have complete control over the writing, arranging, and recording of his songs, and achieved that stature before he was 20 years old. He has won 17 Grammy awards, was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, and earned the Grammy's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996. Equally important, his work as a producer, arranger, and instrumentalist on other artists' recordings has put him in the highest rank of musical collaborators. This is the first work of criticism on this important documentarian of American life, as well as the introductory volume in The Praeger Singer-Songwriter Collection. Through a combination of biography and critical analysis, James Perone's groundbreaking new book reveals the many ways in which Stevie Wonder's body of work emerged, developed, reflected its time, and influenced myriad other artists. After revealing the social, cultural, and political context of Wonder's work, the book provides detailed analysis of his compositions and recordings, with a focus on both his well-known songs and those known only to his hardcore fans. The volume also contains discussions of cover versions of Wonder's compositions, a discography of his recordings, a song title index, an annotated bibliography, and a general index.