Music Is My Life: Book Review

by Myles Tanzer, Illustrated by Ali Mac

My two daughters are voracious learners, so when we found this book about 80 notable musicians on the library shelves we borrowed it. My older daughter is 9, and she’s probably at the lower end of the target audience for Music is my Life – it’s a fun and colourful music primer that would probably suit a reader between 9 and 14.

Music Is My Life is best enjoyed with a phone or laptop at hand so you can listen to samples of the artists – it helpfully recommends sample tracks for each artist. The organisation of artists by theme – eg. “Chill Out To”, “Dance Around With” – is a nice touch. The book’s light, with a few paragraphs on each artist, which makes it nice for browsing.

It makes sense for a book that’s designed for tweens to skew heavily towards more recent music. This means that Music Is My Life is over-represented by recent female R&B artists; including SZA, Lizzo, Kelis, Beyonce, Kehlani, Rihanna, Ariana Grande, Solange, and Janelle Monae in an 80-artist book feels like overkill. The book pointedly features a 50/50 gender split, but more diversity in female artists by considering more established artists like Billie Holiday, Kate Bush, or Fiona Apple would have helped.

Music Is My Life tries to represent as many countries as possible, which throws up some excellent, yet unexpected, choices like Japanese pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto and Spain’s Rosalía. It’s a shame that influential German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk aren’t included, as Germany isn’t otherwise represented. James Taylor is a controversial inclusion – it’s hard to justify his place when more significant vintage male artists like Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye, and Neil Young are omitted.

Inevitably it’s easy to quibble about a music list, but Music is my Life does a good job of providing a fun and colourful primer for popular music.

9 Comments

manvmusic

January 12, 2021 / 11:35 am Reply

I’ll definitely give this a look for my youngest nephew, thanks for the share!
keepsmealive

January 13, 2021 / 1:13 am Reply

Leaving out major artists and countries (and over-representing others) makes me wonder if there was an overriding theme they were trying to convey, and maybe Bob, Neil and Marvin and the rest didn’t fit it?
- Aphoristical
  
  January 13, 2021 / 8:09 pm Reply
  
  I think the country spread was really good – probably better than our blogs! Just the push for female artists and modern music combined meant that there was a lot of R&B. More genre diversity would have been better I think – could have gone for all sorts of things, like Emmylou Harris, Donna Summer, Billie Eilish, PJ Harvey, or even your personal “favourite” Lorde.
  - keepsmealive
    
    January 14, 2021 / 12:31 am Reply
    
    Personal favourite? Haha
badfinger20 (Max)

January 13, 2021 / 9:04 am Reply

Books are great at that age…they got me started. Our Librarian would order Beatle books for me.
- Aphoristical
  
  January 13, 2021 / 8:10 pm Reply
  
  Did they have Beatles books aimed at kids?
  - badfinger20 (Max)
    
    January 14, 2021 / 1:51 am Reply
    
    The one she ordered for me was “The Boys From Liverpool” by Nicholas Schaffner. A book aimed at teens.
    I looked up the name and now they have quite a bit.
    Teenagers Guide To The Beatles aimed at teens and Who Where the Beatles aimed at kids by Geoff Edgers
J.

January 13, 2021 / 10:03 pm Reply

Sounds like a good gateway book. Perhaps there’s scope for an ‘advanced’ edition that digs in to more diverse artists and those who are essential.
- Aphoristical
  
  January 14, 2021 / 1:27 pm Reply
  
  Yeah, I guess the next level up would be edgier acts for older teens, or for adults. Notably nothing too risque or with a dodgy backstory (like Led Zep!) in this book, except maybe Missy Elliott on the risque part.