Nothing is Real: Why The Beatles Were Underrated And Other Sweeping Statements About Pop

David Hepworth

Softcover | 12.7 x 1.5 x 19.8 cm | 240 pp

Black Swan | 2019 | 9781784166205

Pop music’s a simple pleasure. Is it catchy? Can you dance to it? Do you fancy the singer?

But what’s fascinating about pop is our relationship with it. David Hepworth is interested in the human side of pop. He’s interested in how people make the stuff and, more importantly, what it means to us.

In this collection of essays written throughout his career, Hepworth shows how it is possible to take music seriously and, at the same time, not drain the life out of it. From the legacy of the Beatles to the dramatic decline of the record shop via the bewildering nomenclature of musical genres; with characteristic insight and humour Hepworth asks some essential questions about music and, indeed, life: is it all about the drummer; are band managers misunderstood; and is it appropriate to play ‘Angels’ at funerals?

'After almost an adult lifetime of witnessing the music industry at close quarters, Hepworth is, in many ways, a dream author' Guardian

'David Hepworth is such a clever writer' Spectator

'In a lifetime's devotion to the music and several decades as a journalist and TV presenter, Hepworth has acquired deep reservoirs of knowledge and a towering stack of anecdotes' New Statesman

'Hepworth's writing is sublime' Daily Mail

About the Author
David Hepworth (b. 1950) is a British music journalist, writer, television presenter, and publishing industry analyst. He was instrumental in the foundation of a number of popular magazines in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Along with the journalist, editor and broadcaster Mark Ellen, he turned the pop magazine Smash Hits into one of the most popular UK music magazines of the 1980s. A presenter of The Old Grey Whistle Test in the 1980s, he co-presented the BBC broadcast of Live Aid in 1985.