David Bowie, tired of the rock 'n roll Los Angeles lifestyle, picks up and moves to West Berlin. Sixteen-year-old Rod Stewart sneaks into a music festival and has a coming-of-age experience. Paul McCartney dreams of his deceased mother. The rest is music history. For lyricists and listeners alike, Origins of a Song is the inspiring collection of 202 true stories behind the world’s greatest lyrics. Delve into the compelling real-life stories behind the world’s greatest lyrics with Origins of a Song. Featuring profiles of 202 musical masterpieces that span genres and generations, this book explores the inspiration and creative process behind each song. Get glimpses into the inception of these timeless tunes, and learn about the individual creative process for these songwriters and musicians. Origins of a Song will not only leave you with a different perspective on your favorite songs, but it will also have you inspired to start crafting some yourself! Author Jake Grogan is originally from Ellenville, New York, and currently resides in Queens. He has a BA from Fordham University, where he studied journalism. The story behind his favorite song, "Dancing Queen" by ABBA, inspired him to pursue Origins of a Song.

A revisionist analysis of the major sources for Song history, explaining their master narrative as the product of political tension.

Story of almost a thousand years of song, from the time of the troubadours, to the present day.

Songwriters dramatically captured the details of how Americans lived, thought and changed in the first half of the twentieth century. This book examines 1033 songs about WWI and WWII wars, presidents, Women’s Suffrage, Prohibition, the Great Depression, immigration, minority stereotypes, new modes of transportation, inventions, and the changing roles of men and women. America invited immigrants and went to war to ensure democracy but within its borders, lyrics display intolerant attitudes toward women, blacks, and ethnic groups. Songs covered labor strikes, communism, lynchings, women voting and working, love, sex, airships, radio, telephones, the lure of movies and new movie star role models, drugs, smoking, and the atom bomb.History books cannot match the humor, poignancy, poetry and thrill of lyrics in describing the essence of American life as we moved from a rural white male dominated society toward an urban democracy that finally included women and minorities.

The book offers a radically new perspective on the origins of the love song and human sexuality in an evolutionary context. By comparing different human societies and animal species, past and present, it reveals that love songs, romantic love and exclusive pair-bonds are not the original evolutionary features of Homo sapiens. One of the key findings of the book is that early humans practiced multiple-partner sexual relations, similar to our closest relatives bonobos and chimpanzees, but, with the emergence of culture and sexual taboo, their behaviour had to adjust. It contends that, since the exodus from Africa and the rise of culture, humans started to distance themselves from the rest of the animal kingdom, drastically restraining their innate sexual nature. The book will appeal to both scholars and laypeople with an interest in evolutionary theory, socio-biology, anthropology, and the origins of culture.