Famous writers celebrate their favourite albums. It would make a brilliant introduction to both; great writers and interesting music. Like many essay collections, you will find some essays more interesting than others. Overall, however, it is an interesting read. It would be interesting to listen to the albums while reading the essays.

If you are a music lover this is a must read as it's an interesting and thought provoking collection of essays about music and how it shaped the life of the writers.
I discovered some new musician, listened to some of the albums and love what I read.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Really enjoyed this book, fabulous opening essay about the importance of music but also of albums and listening to them in one go, rather than the pick and mix of streaming playlists. How albums developed the art form in various ways, as reflected in the following smaller pieces from an assortment of writer's, writing about an album that was significant to them. Some really embraced the challenge and write delicate beautiful pieces on their albums, Marlon James on Bjork's Post, David Mitchell on Joni Mitchell's Blue, Daisy Johnson on Lizzo and Bernadine Evaristo on Sweet Honey in the rock, to name a few. All genres of music are featured, including jazz, classical, rap, hip hop, folk, pop, rock, indie. A book you can dip into, that got me digging through my music collection. Wonderful.

With thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Do you ever just sit and listen to an album? I mean really listen, not just as background music but as the main thing that you are doing?

I have to say that I’ve not done that for a long time, just sat and listened from the start to the end of an album. This book has changed that for me.

Gatti has asked a number of famous authors, such as Bernardine Evaristo and Ali Smith, to write a short essay on the album that changed their lives. It was fascinating to read about how the albums impacted on the lives of the authors. Marlon James’s essay on Bjork’s album Post has made me reach for my Spotify account so that I could listen to it. Whilst thanks to David Mitchell I’ve now got Joni Mitchell’s Blue album on repeat. I also have a new found respect for the work of Ms Dynamite and how her music pushed forward a feminist agenda.

If you love authors and music then this makes a great read, and may make you really appreciate just sitting and listening to a whole album again.

Thanks to @bloomsburypublishing for gifting me advance e-access to the book which is out now.

Gatti invites a host of contemporary authors to select one ‘cherished’ album (an important distinction is made between cherished and favourite) and write a brief entry about their relationship with it. From Mozart to Ms. Dynamite, Long players provides insight into how the authors featured have been touched by particular albums in both their personal and professional lives. While the albums discussed skew old and white, as indeed the contributors do, it's a rewarding read for any fan of music and literature.

I was excited at the prospect of reading Long Players; I liked the concept and admired many of the contributors. I hoped it would change my love/hate relationship with anthologies, but sadly, it just confirmed my suspicion that all too often these collections are curate's eggs. Oh, and there's always one contributor who can't stick to the brief and just choose one, and bores us with a list of favourites instead.

Let me start by that I love the idea of people talking about their favourite albums. There is some beautiful writing here, often surprisingly moving. The most successful fixed the time and place of their early engagements with the albums with genuine emotion and affection. One or two were so persuasive that I've resolved to seek out unfamiliar albums and try them for myself. However, several contributions are pretty dull if truth be told. A couple are self-consciously pretentious, with writers working to hard to be seen as profound or worthy.

It was a brave attempt by Tom Gatti - and for the most part very enjoyable - but perhaps one or two submissions could have been cut to make this a more satisfying read for me.

Books and music – what’s not to like? This compendium of articles from the New Statesmen is inevitably a slightly mixed bag, ranging as it does across a wide spectrum of music, written about by over 40 different contributors. As someone who at least occasionally reads the NS, I was familiar with the format and had even read a few of the articles previously, which in the case of Long Players was probably neither help nor hindrance.

Ultimately, much of what one makes of this will depend on the mood you find yourself in. Looking to read about an old favourite or an album you’ve never heard of? A genre that you could have a crack at as your specialist subject on Mastermind or something you know absolutely nothing about? I must confess I didn’t race through this book, but again, this isn’t really designed to be a page-turner as such; it’s more the kind of thing you’ll turn to when looking to fill a commute perhaps (if we ever go back to those…) or maybe even as a means of finding out about 'new' artists (or rediscovering old ones!)

So – inevitably – there are some highs and lows here, or, if you will, smash hits sitting alongside the odd piece of album filler. But overall an enjoyable read for sure.

Everyone has “that” album don’t they. The one that defines that critical point in their life, soundtracks those transformational times. Simon Bates “Our Tune”. But longer. Here Tom Gatti (Deputy Editor of the New Statesman and a former editor of the Saturday Review section of the Times) collects together fifty articles previously published in the NS where a variety of journos / authors / poets tell us about “their” album. What could be more enticing? Top quality wordsmiths setting out what made their ears tingle. We are promised “an intoxicating mix of memoir and music writing, spanning the golden age of vinyl and the streaming era, and showing how a single LP can shape a writer’s mind.”

Across the 50 writers contributing mini essays are some names I knew and a lot I didn’t. The Word magazine alumni are well represented via David Hepworth (“Sail Away” – Randy Newman), Mark Ellen (“The B-52’s” – B-52’s) and Kate Mossman (“The Rhythm of the Saints” – Paul Simon). There’s also Will Self, Billy Bragg, David Mitchell, Alan Johnson, Clive James, Iain Rankin, Neil Gaiman, Tracey Thorn and Neil Tennant. Plus a much longer list of writers which mostly made obvious my ignorance of British authors that don’t write crime books.

The albums covered are diverse and occasionally familiar– hip hop to mop tops, Mos Def to Miles Davis. You’d expect to find Bowie, Joni Mitchell and REM. Safe bets. I would also have bet on – and lost money on – Hendrix, Cream or CSNY. No doubt my middle of the road taste in reading, and old man’s musical interests.

Reading them back to back in one tome, rather than as a shortish article in a magazine like NS proved to be less of a page turner than expected. Why? Well for one thing, there’s the problem of a writer you don’t know eulogising about an album you haven’t heard. And I suppose because not one of the 50 albums spoke to me as it did to the writers (who to be fair, here and there paint some vivid pictures). Also, my familiarity with the ex Word contributors left me nonplussed – Hepworth not choosing Springsteen? Ellen not going for Dylan? Mossman not writing about Queen?

The original articles (still to be found on the NS website) came with a bio and pictures. The version I read (Kindle) gave just the author’s name and the album, and my frustration levels had already climbed – having to Google each unknown name before I read their essay – by the time I found the thumbnail summary bios at the back of the book. They really should be ahead of each album, ideally with pictures of the author and the album cover.

In fact the bit that worked the best for me was Gatti’s introduction. The only longer form piece, a well crafted description of how the way music is experienced has changed which draws heavily on Gatti’s history, and is all the better for it. Few will agree with his choice of “Thriller” as the ultimate long player, but I enjoyed how he made his case.

Fifty writers, including Ali Smith, Ben Okri and Daisy Johnson, were tasked with identifying the album that means the most to them.

The contributors range in age from vinyl era, through cassettes and Walkmans, to CDs and on to Spotify. Some first hear the music at raves, at live events, on The Tube (an anarchic Channel 4 live music TV show), or while hanging out in the local record shop, others are introduced to the album by a brother. Some played it to death at a particular point in their life, others still listen to their choice regularly, decades later, and are so familiar with it that they recognise every ‘nylon-string-squeak’. On first hearing their selection, some authors have an instant ka-POW! moment, ‘like a bomb going off in my head’ (Meg Rosoff), while for others, the album is a slow burn.

The albums selected include rock/pop classics and lesser-known acts, plus classical recordings and a soundtrack.

I went in expecting a track-by-track listing, but few authors do this, giving a more general appreciation of the music in relation to themselves, often at a specific point in their lives.

First impressions are that this book is a compilation album bought for just one or two thrillers, with the remaining fillers making up the run time. But, as you go deeper, an overarching narrative takes hold. In writing about an album, the authors write about the impact of music on their lives, and about what music means to the listener.

Often, the album speaks at some level to the writer. Marlon James’ selection ‘caught me at a particular time in my life’. Neil Gaiman’s choice ‘made me who I am’. David Mitchell recognises that ‘when writing is good, people pay attention for fear of missing out on the next fresh pleasure’. George Saunders describes listening to his album for the first time as being a moment of clarity in which ‘a window was thrown open in my mind: to make something beautiful might mean to make something even you, the artist, don’t fully understand’, and he quotes director Hiro Murai ‘finding by doing’.

Memories prompted by music are specific, with times of day, weather conditions, the smell of a record shop, and whether the listener was standing or sitting.

Music can be nostalgic, a reminder of ‘lost innocence…of tragic waste and dreams that will never materialise’ (Lionel Shriver). It can be a mirror on the soul, a directive on how to be, who we could be. It can be an escape ‘I shed skins to that music’ (Preti Taneja), or escapist theatre. Music is a belonging, an ownership, an influencer and informer (Gaiman’s choice sent him ‘to the school library aged thirteen to borrow 1984’). Music is a place ‘Morrissey’s voice had a grain of pure Englishness. It’s a voice that locates itself as part of the north in social and political decline’ (Daljit Nagra).

I didn’t recognise all the contributors, in fact, probably only about half the total by name alone. An appendix in the end papers lists the authors with a one-line micro-biography. I would have preferred the biography at the end of each piece.

My thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) for the ARC.

I like books and my other passion is music. Put the two together and this, for me, was a fascinating and insightful read. It’s an eclectic mix of music and people with a range of individuals writing an essay, basically, on the album or musician that influenced or shaped them. I was familiar with some of the albums and I’ve certainly had pointers to others that I’ve since investigated and in a couple of cases, downloaded. So to that extent, this is a book which has actually shaped my musical taste.

It’s a pot pourri; you turn the page not knowing what taster is coming next. Really enjoyed it and an interesting diversion that I’ve nibbled in short snacks.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.

The title of this book piqued my curiosity. Although not a regular reader of non-fiction, the idea of reading about the albums that had affected the lives of various writers and journalists was an intriguing one.

For me, although it did introduce me to albums that I didn't know and some of which I might investigate, I was a little disappointed to find that there were very few that I recognised. But that says more about me and my middle of the road taste than it does about the book. Artistes featured range from Beethoven through David Bowie to Mos Def with diversions that lead to Miles Davis and The Beatles, and I enjoyed reading about the listening experiences of others, how these albums played such a pivotal role in their lives. It made me quite sad to realise that I have never come across any album in my life that had a similar effect, I feel as if I have missed out.

Nevertheless, if you like having a sneaky look into the listening experiences of other people, pick this up.

Really enjoyed this, especially since the focus on writers was nothing like we've seen before. Gained a few recommendations and insights into authors lives.

In his introduction to this pretty fascinating — if frustrating — book, Tom Gatti confesses that the project began life as a newspaper feature article. You can actually see this in the final product and it is at once its greatest strength and weakness.

To talk about it as a strength first, Gatti has assembled an interesting and diverse array of writers to discuss an album that particularly influenced them (as opposed to being merely a personal favourite). Some of the choices are prosaically obvious (you kind of know that Neil Gaiman will go for a Bowie album but it’s somehow more surprising that Deborah Levy does also) but some are more unusual and the best of these personal reflections are the ones that don’t so much talk about the albums themselves but use them as a springboard for a more intimate and sometimes even confessional piece.

Before we even get to these, it’s worth spending some time on the longest sustained piece of writing in the book; that of Gatti’s introduction. This is almost worth the price of admission on its own and it’s a detailed, thoughtful and personal rumination on the former importance of album as an artform in itself and its subsequent decline in the rise of the streaming playlist. I probably take exception with Gatti’s claim that Michael Jackson’s Thriller represents the album’s peak as an artform. It may reign supreme in terms of sales figures but I’m not sure that can ever be the full story. There are surely albums that had more lasting cultural impact than Thriller — The Dark Side of the Moon or Ziggy Stardust, for example — and in terms of sheer chronology, Thriller was the hardly the last album that was also a global cultural landmark. (I’d perhaps reserve that honour for Nirvana’s Nevermind.)

But really all this does is demonstrate Gatti’s premise that the album’s power comes from subjectivity and our personal responses to those that speak most directly to us. And Gatti’s wide-ranging discussion on the rise and fall of the album is certainly well-argued and persuasive. (Although again I might dispute the ‘fall’ side of the argument and the extent to which the album has been usurped by the DIY playlist. There are, I feel, a great many excellent albums being produced and listened to today and while streaming might have diluted their impact, I’d argue that the concomitant decline in bricks-and-mortar retailers and of a centralised and influential music press play an equal part in the album’s decline).

I mentioned frustrations above and the first of this is one of format. I’m reading an electronic ARC so of course I may not be experiencing the book in its final form but it seems rather text-centric at the moment. In his introduction, Gatti rightly points out that one of the album’s central attractions was its artwork and it seems to me the book is crying out for some sort of coffee-table format that could highlight this crucial aspect. However, it might be that the book merely hasn’t had its artwork or design finalised yet or that there may be prohibitions in getting the permissions to reproduce the artwork.

The second frustration is that while the vast majority of the writers’ contributions are fascinating in their own right, most feel way too short. Some are only a few paragraphs long and some give the impression of being dashed out hurriedly. This works for some, which are offer an evocative snapshot of a time and place, but some are rather maddening in setting up a fascinating discussion that uses the album in question as its springboard and which are not allowed to reach their full potential. There’s definite scope for a longer book here, or one that went for quality rather than quantity.

That said, one of the real joys of the book is the constant element of surprise it offers. There’s something really rather nice in discovering a new album because it’s been paired with a writer you admire — and vice versa, discovering a new writer because you unexpectedly share their taste in music.

There are lots of absolute gems in here — and perhaps just a couple of disappointments. It’s surprising, for example, given the prominence of pop and music culture is in their work at just how lacklustre the contributions of Gaiman and Ian Rankin are. However, this is more than made up elsewhere, with fascinating and insightful pieces of Clive James, Ben Okri, Will Self, Rachel Kushner, Sandeep Parmar, Marlon James and Daljit Nagra in particular.

But another joy, if perhaps a subsidiary one, is that the book impels you to reconsider the albums in your own life and settle on the ones that influenced you. This doesn’t necessarily mean in a directly creative sense, although it can do. Nor does it mean ‘favourite’. More the ones that changed you, stayed with you, made you who you are, made you do what you’ve done with your life. Albums can do that (in a way that a playlist never will) and that alone makes this a worthwhile little book and one that you’ll almost certainly dip into time and again.

A short, easy to read book that asks writers to briefly explain albums that are important to them (which is not necessarily their favourite album).

This type of book is always going to be based on arbitrary views from the reader (do I like the writer? Did I enjoy the album?) but taking this into account, the editor has created an interesting overview of meaningful albums from a range of writers.

Reading through the book I was often reminded of a certain track, or a particular album and would pause to dig out a copy to listen to and remember my own recollections of the music. The aim of books such as this are to remind us of our own connection to the music that shapes our lives and in this regard, the editor succeeds well.

I was born in the mid-90s, which means I'm just about old enough to having witnessed and experienced the rise of the walkman, the joy of buying CDs and their overthrow by streaming services. In the age where everything is available digitally, however, there's magic to be found in the conscious, the analog, the Long Players. This is a love story dedicated to this particular sentiment.

So apparently this is the book version of an article published by the New Statesman in 2017, in which writers were asked to name their favourite albums. In here, reporter Tom Gatti allows them to expand on their choices, retell their memories of first listens and everything connected to the experiences that were to follow.

It's like a love letter to the power of music. Before diving into the guest features, Gatti dedicated about a fifth of the book to the development of music listening and while meant as only an introduction, this was probably my favourite part of this whole thing. He raises some interesting points, too, how the way music is listened to has always affected the product itself, and that it isn't a new phenomenon only emerged after artists had begun to get their songs into Spotify playlists.

The guest features are, as so often with these books, a mixed bag. I appreciate that in the appendix a short one-sentence biography of the writers featured in here was included, as with many, I had no clue who they were. I think the pleasure of this is the greatest if you do, and also know the music they chose to talk about. What they've got to say is sometimes nostalgic and sometimes relatable, occasionally however mundane and boring. Some things are amusingly relatable, like David Mitchell talking about Blue by Joni Mitchell (1971).

Gatti did a good job of covering a variety of writers and albums. To be honest, though, aren't many surprises in here; as one would expect the picked ones include artists like David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Radiohead and the Smiths, but you might not have seen Lizzo's Cuz I Love You (2019) coming, necessarily.

All in all, this was a quick read, feeling a bit like a coffee table book that one might pick up and read a page or two of before returning to more urgent matters. For those who like to dwell on the nostalgia of an album, this might bring comfort and a sense of their own sentimentality.

I enjoyed this celebration of music albums and how they affect our lives. My favourite part was the introduction by Tom Gatti (deputy editor of the New Statesman), in which he traces the history of albums, the threat from the trend for streaming and shuffling individual tracks, discusses format snobbery and talks about some of the most important albums in his life (including Radiohead’s The Bends, which is also one of mine). This is followed by fifty short pieces in which writers – some I already knew of, some I didn’t – talk about albums which mean a lot to them. It’s supposed to be about albums that are, or were, ‘cherished’ but not necessarily favourites.

There is a diverse representation of writers, genres and musical eras. David Bowie and Joni Mitchell are each featured twice. I hadn’t heard of some of the albums, while others I knew of but were not to my taste. However, I was quite excited to see four of my very favourites included: The Beatles’ Revolver (thank you, Alan Johnson), Kraftwerk’s The Man-Machine (via Neil Tennant), Radiohead’s OK Computer (from Sarah Hall) and Talk Talk’s The Colour of Spring (Jason Cowley). I do think there is a bias towards the albums or musicians that critics usually cite as the greatest. Everyone will be judged by their music taste in a book like this. No one is going to contribute something that will render them terribly uncool. Unless they did, and it wasn’t included. There are at least two snipes at Genesis (why do ‘musos’ hate them so much?), which reminded me of Paul Morley in A Sound Mind (also published by Bloomsbury) shuddering to think that a Genesis track could be the last song he ever heard.

Some of the pieces were very interesting, while others I had to skim. I preferred the writing which focused mainly on memoir, as it was more readable than descriptions of the music. In summary, I liked the book but not enough to want to re-read.

Thank you to Bloomsbury for the advance copy via NetGalley.

[NB. This review will be published on my blog - 3rd June 2021]

A variation on the 1000 albums to hear before you whatever, this is not an essential read but it's good fun. Having its origins in a New Statesman article, a number of writers write about an album that shaped or influenced them. Worth a look.

This is an interesting book for all music and literature lovers out there. I was mostly interested in the authors I'm familiar with but reading about the other authors, I realised that I should also read them because we have similar music taste! A good idea for a book.