An NPR Best Book of the Year - Winner of the Virgil Thomson
Award for Outstanding Music Criticism
"This is the best book about the Beatles ever written"
--Mashable
Rob Sheffield, the Rolling Stone columnist and bestselling author of
Love Is a Mix Tape offers an entertaining, unconventional look at the
most popular band in history, the Beatles, exploring what they mean
today and why they still matter so intensely to a generation that has
never known a world without them.
Dreaming the Beatles is not another biography of the Beatles, or a
song-by-song analysis of the best of John and Paul. It isn't another
exposé about how they broke up. It isn't a history of their gigs or
their gear. It is a collection of essays telling the story of what this
ubiquitous band means to a generation who grew up with the Beatles music
on their parents' stereos and their faces on T-shirts. What do the
Beatles mean today? Why are they more famous and beloved now than ever?
And why do they still matter so much to us, nearly fifty years after
they broke up?
As he did in his previous books, Love is a Mix Tape, Talking to Girls
About Duran Duran, and Turn Around Bright Eyes, Sheffield focuses on
the emotional connections we make to music. This time, he focuses on the
biggest pop culture phenomenon of all time--The Beatles. In his singular
voice, he explores what the Beatles mean today, to fans who have learned
to love them on their own terms and not just for the sake of nostalgia.
Dreaming the Beatles tells the story of how four lads from Liverpool
became the world's biggest pop group, then broke up--but then somehow
just kept getting bigger. At this point, their music doesn't belong to
the past--it belongs to right now. This book is a celebration of that
music, showing why the Beatles remain the world's favorite thing--and
how they invented the future we're all living in today.
