Born out of a ‘Writing rock’ workshop which Marc Woodworth taught and Ally-Jane Grossan took at Skidmore College in 2008, How to Write About Music is two things. On the one hand, it is an anthology of writings about popular music. A significant part of these writings have been drawn from the first 12 years of Bloomsbury's very own 33 1/3 series – short books aimed at introducing individual albums across a range of popular music genres, combining academic and journalistic approaches – but not only: the anthology includes pieces originally published in mainstream newspapers and academic presses as well as in niche magazines and publishing houses. On the other hand, the volume is also a handbook for aspiring writers on music and their university instructors: it is neatly divided into 13 chapters – the last of which is cheekily entitled ‘Chapter 33 1/3’, each of which deals with a particular genre of writing about music: the album review, the live review, the artist interview, the artist profile, the personal essay, etc.

The book, therefore, can be read (or ‘used’, as the editors themselves put it on p. 5) in different ways. As an anthology, it is sufficiently varied that it provides the reader with an introduction – or a reminder – of the very many ways in which music can be written about. The pieces have been carefully and imaginatively selected; they were written between the 1970s and the present (although there is a distinct concentration on the last 10 or so years) and their subject matters range from Enya to Metal Machine, from Talking Heads to Taylor Swift. But it is not only the subject matter that varies: one of the reasons that makes this book a joy to read is that the editors acknowledge that writing about music can, indeed, mean many things. Perhaps the most extreme example is the inclusion of an excerpt from Marty Davis' 2012 graphic novel about Black Flag's 1981 album, Damaged. Such variation raises a number of questions which the editors do not always flag up explicitly; one of them is how much a does a writer need to know about music to write about music. The answer is multifarious: there is not that much about music qua sound in the pieces anthologised in Chapter 8 (the artist profile) or Chapter 12 (cultural criticism). But other pieces showcase their authors' extensive chops in music theory, analysis and aesthetics and, more importantly, their ability to invite their readers to look at the music from a different perspective: I am thinking, for example, of Jordan Ferguson's piece on J Dilla's Donuts, which Ferguson analyses in light of the concept of ‘late style’, which was first developed by Theodor Adorno in reference to Beethoven, or Owen Pallett using music theory to explain the genius of Katy Perry's ‘Teenage Dream’.

The volume can certainly be used as a teaching and learning tool as well, either to practise one's craft independently or as a textbook for a course on writing about popular music. To this effect, the editors provide a detailed writing prompt in each of the chapters: for example, in Chapter 6, devoted to the personal essay, students are asked to write a piece which reads like ‘some species of memoir written in light of a not-very-well-known musical interest of yours’ (p. 180). The editors also draw on the collective wisdom of some 50 professionals in music writing whose advice is presented at the beginning and end of most of the chapters; they are quoted both on the minutiae of specific writing genres and on broader issues concerning writing, such as writing and research techniques and professionalisation. The editors have put together a broad range of professional profiles (critics, journalists, broadcasters, editors, bloggers, academics writing across a range of genres and scenes), although I cannot help but remark that even though the editors seem sensitive to the gender politics of rock and of popular music more generally (they quote Ann Powers on the matter on p. 18), the gender balance among the expert writers definitely tips towards the male side.

Attention is paid to recent developments in music writing careers and opportunities, including a chapter on the blog piece. In the Foreword, Rick Moody rightly points out that the explosion of web content has made it possible to write about any music genre in any format; ‘everything is permitted’ (p. xi), he writes in an almost exhilarating tone. Fair enough – but, for the benefit of the college student considering writing about music as a career, perhaps the economics of writing about music could have been discussed more thoroughly – how viable is it nowadays to turn a passion for writing about music into a career? This notwithstanding, How to Write About Music is surely a welcome addition to the library of any student aspiring to write about music on a professional level, of those wishing to learn the craft independently and of simply anyone who is interested in good writing about music.