Everything We Do is Music : How 20th-Century Classical Music Shaped Pop

Author: Alker, Elizabeth

Music

Published on 28 August 2025 by FABER & FABER in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 336 pages
240 x 162 x 32 | 544g

SHORTLISTED FOR THE RPS STORYTELLING AWARD A FINANCIAL TIMES AND IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR'Revelation after revelation . . . I love music more for reading it.' Guy Garvey'Alker joins the dots by following myriad musical ley lines. A fascinating journey into sound.' Mark Radcliffe'Reveals so much about the hidden connections between the sounds we love . . . A must read.' Sara Mohr-PietschA panoramic exploration of the ways in which pop and rock were transformed by the pioneering visionaries of classical music.

The worlds of pop and rock owe a much greater debt to the classical canon than we realise. A direct and fascinating lineage draws from the experimentalism of Pierre Henry to The Beatles' 'Tomorrow Never Knows', from Stockhausen to Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' and from Bruckner to Sonic Youth via Glenn Branca. In Everything We Do is Music, Elizabeth Alker shines a light on the fertile ground that exists between the borders of classical music and pop. She showcases the innovators of the former and their fans and collaborators in the latter, and explores how together these artists challenged the notion that such musical worlds are mutually exclusive.

** Featuring interviews with Sir Paul McCartney, Steve Reich, Nils Frahm, Soweto Kinch, Jonny Greenwood, the Blessed Madonna and more. **