Reading Lyrics: More Than 1,000 of the Twentieth Century's Finest Song Lyrics Hardcover - 2000

First line

BY HALF a dozen years the oldest contributor to this book, Boston-born Anne Caldwell was active in Broadway musicals for more than twenty years, beginning in I907.

Media reviews

“Indispensable, stellar new anthology. This eclectic book provides enough humor, romance and sophistication to make you forget that Seussical even existed.”
—Jason Zinoman, Time Out New York

“This music is an amazing art form; it’s a substantial cultural phenomenon.”
—Newsweek

“Reading Lyrics is both a groundbreaking social document and its own pleasure dome. Its seven hundred and six pages confirm the accomplishments of the greats, but they also provide surprises.”
—The New Yorker

“America was the laboratory that proved Plato’s contention that songs are ‘spells for souls for the creation of concord.’ If you read between the lines of many of the lyrics in the anthology, you hear an alarmed society calming its frazzled nerves.”
—The New Yorker

“[Reading Lyrics] defies literary categorization. It’s reference work. It’s a singalong book . . . It’s a shadow history of taste and mores over much of the past century. It’s a valentine to a now-vanished artistic craft. And it’s an act of fond provocation.”
—The Boston Globe

“Reading Lyrics demonstrates one of the may magic tricks that words can do: the way that letters and lines on a page can (with years of practice) learn how to carry a tune.”
—Elle

“With around 170 lyricists on offer, the book makes its share of worthwhile rediscoveries . . . That’s the fun of Reading Lyrics. Readers can hum along with songs they know, while songs they don’t will have them hurrying off to the nearest music megastore.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Sparklingly entertaining, Reading Lyrics exalts the lyrical sublimity of such cunning wordsmiths as Porter, Gershwin, and Coward.”
—Vanity Fair

“Tuneless, but what joy! . . . For no sooner do the lyrics appear before one’s eyes than reading gives way to song.”
—Billboard Magazine

“This wondrous and magical concoction is highly recommended.”
—Wall Street Journal

“This is one of the finest collections of words there is. To quote P.G. Wodehouse. . . ‘And I wish someday I could find my way/To the land where the good songs go.’ That land is Reading Lyrics. ‘S wonderful.” —Newsday

Citations

• Booklist, 08/01/2000, Page 2096
• Choice, 05/01/2001, Page 1604
• Library Journal, 08/01/2000, Page 107
• Library Journal Prepub Alert, 04/15/2000, Page 65
• New York Times, 12/03/2000, Page 7
• New Yorker (The), 12/11/2000, Page 120
• Publishers Weekly, 12/18/2000, Page 74