The Best Music Books Released in 2025

Every year, we read a lot of new music books, and it’s not only so that music-loving readers have holiday gift ideas for their loved ones, or just themselves; it also saves you time reading the bad or mediocre books that don’t end up on this list. Here, in no particular order, are six great music-related books released in 2025 that would be a blessing to crack open on Christmas morning or really anytime. Head over to your favorite bookstore and grab a copy.

The Uncool
By Cameron Crowe
It’s not news that the best music book of 2025 was Cameron Crowe’s long-awaited The Uncool (Avid Reader Press), his memoir detailing the true stories behind Almost Famous, the 2000 motion picture Crowe wrote and directed about his charmed 1970s experience as a teenage rock journalist, but it’d still be a crime not to recommend this spectacular book. Of course, to make Almost Famous, Crowe had to whittle his amazing, almost unbelievable adventure down to maybe 1 percent of its whole, and amalgamate real-life characters he got to know as a kid reporter for Rolling Stone (Robert Plant, Glenn Frey, Dickey Betts, etc.) into one unforgettable fictional rock star played by Billy Crudup—so The Uncool, the real stories, is a must-read for music lovers and journalism aficionados alike.

The months Crowe spent with an out-of-his-mind David Bowie in the mid-’70s — when Crowe was barely old enough to drive and Bowie was living on cocaine, red peppers and milk, just trying to hang on to himself between the Ziggy Stardust years and the Brian Eno trilogy years — make for a particularly captivating read. The only real disappointment is that Crowe stops his book just after getting successful in the movie industry in the 1980s, so his memorable adventure as part of the Seattle music scene in the early 1990s (as captured in the grunge rom-com Singles, featuring young Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell) is absent, perhaps to be covered a sequel to The Uncool. The Uncool finds Crowe not just detailing his high times as a high-school reporter flying around the country with Led Zeppelin and others; it’s also a lesson in how to interview, how to get to know people, and how to love, support and attempt to understand family and friendsl even when they drive you crazy.

I Dream of Joni
By Henry Alford
Henry Alford’s I Dream of Joni ( Gallery Books) is, on its face, something most may loathe reading: a book about a living musician that includes no new interviews, no contact between the writer and the rock star. However, Alford (a longtime New Yorker contributor) won us over quickly with his nerdy wit, and we could not put this equally ridiculous, funny and beautiful love letter to Joni Mitchell down. Just when Alford writes a cringe-worthy, stalker-style sentence about his heroine (“She lerrrves her cats; she likes to make up songs for them, and she sometimes turns into a kitten when playing with them.”) that makes you question whether to go on, he crafts a gorgeous, intimate passage about Graham Nash staying with Mitchell’s parents when they were a couple. Alford’s homeruns throughout the book thankfully shed exquisite light on Mitchell’s songwriting just as much as her relationships, fashion and childhood.

The Secret Public
By Jon Savage
The Secret Public (Liveright)is a deep dive into queer culture in popular music from Little Richard to David Bowie and everything in between, including Dusty Springfield, Lou Reed, Andy Warhol and so much more. Homosexuality was illegal in much of the United States until 2003 (sodomy laws are still on the books in some states, but nearly impossible to enforce), and what was rock and roll about in its 1950s heyday if not rebellion? Even Elvis was deemed evil by the gaslighting Mike Johnsons of his time, in part for flaunting a feminine look, and the Beatles’ beloved manager Brian Epstein might still be alive if he hadn’t been tortured by his era’s insistence on staying closeted. Throughout rock history, LGBTQ geniuses have been at the forefront of many waves of artistic progress, but — in his very detailed, very English way — Jon Savage goes to encyclopedic lengths to show how they more often than not did the cannonballs that made those waves.

Mood Machine
By Liz Pelly
Liz Pelly wasn’t the only one to point of the countless reasons you should quit Spotify if you haven’t already — ads for I.C.E., donations to battlefield-A.I. companies, trying to avoid paying 80 percent of the artists on the platform, creating fake social-media profiles for fake artists, filling popular playlists with tracks from “ghost artists,” so much more — but she made headlines with her amazing book Mood Machine (One Signal / Atria). The 288 pages are filled with expert reporting on Spotify’s ongoing history of dark deeds. What does she ultimately prove Spotify wants? “Passive” zombie listeners, “normalization of everyday streaming surveillance,” and indentured servitude on the part of artists. Please read this book and pass it on.

Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival
By Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour
Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival (St. Martin’s Press) is a trip back in time to a 1990s world where $20 could get you a ticket to a traveling, all-day festival featuring Pavement, Cypress Hill, Sonic Youth, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Beck and more. This oral history is a captivating, entertaining and educational ride boasting contributions from a boatload of musicians and industry insiders who were there for, as an example, Jane’s Addiction fighting on stage in 1991; Ministry hiring a guy to pick up road kill across the U.S. in 1992 and use the bones as stage art; and Pavement getting pelted with mud and rocks in West Virginia. Open this book and hold on.

London Calling New York New York: Two Songs, Two Cities
By Pete Silverton
For anyone with a modicum of interest in the Clash, Peter Silverton’s London Calling New York New York (Trouser Press) is an absolute must-read from 2025, written wonderfully by a longtime friend of Joe Strummer who unquestionably embodies what Cameron Crowe, paraphrasing Lester Bangs, calls “The Uncool.” The Daniel Johnston art collection, I’m Afraid of What I Might Know (Rizzoli), is also a stunning, emotional 2025 highlight. But if you only read a few new music books from 2025, please include Band People (University of Texas Press), Franz Nicolay’s important exploration of the lives of what used to be called “sidemen,” the almost-famous, hard-working and super-talented musicians who make stars and their songs sound great, make a lot less money, and understandably have a lot to say about what makes a good bandleader. We only hope Colorado’s own Stelth Ulvang, Steve Varney and others will be interviewed if there’s a sequel.