The Bad Penny’s Top 10 Music Books of 2025
Most music fans can’t read music. But they can read about music – the larger-than-life personalities, the history of various genres, the often-times truth-is-stranger-than-fiction dynamics that keep one of the entertainment industry’s least profitable yet universally beloved pillars standing.
For the first time ever, The Bad Penny shares what we consider to be the most essential nonfiction books about music that came out in a year during which citizens across the country tolerated book bans and censorship in Authoritarian America. Mark these words: What happened this year and is still happening in libraries and schools in the U.S. will go down as one of the most shameful “chapters” in this country’s history.
Read whatever books you want to read, and enjoy doing so, because in this unpredictable hellscape, who knows what rights we might lose next.
1. Patti Smith – Bread of Angels: A Memoir (McNally Jackson)
Buy here.
2. Stacy Buchanan – Blood of Gods: Metal. Mayhem. Wine (Feral House)
Buy here.
3. Roddy Bottum – The Royal We (Akashic Books)
Buy here.
4. Sahan Jayasuriya – Don’t Say Please: An Oral History of Die Kreuzen (Feral House)
Buy here.
5. D. Randall Blythe – Just Beyond the Light: Making Peace with the Wars Inside Our Head (Da Capo)
Buy here.
6. Neko Case – The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir (Anti–)
Buy here.
7. Paul McCartney – Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run (W. W. Norton & Company)
Buy here.
8. Henry Alford – I Dream of Joni: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell in 53 Snapshots (Simon & Schuster)
Buy here.
9. Preston Lauterbach – Before Elvis: The African American Musicians Who Made the King (Da Capo)
Buy here.
10. Ozzy Osbourne with Chris Ayers – Last Rites (Hatchette)
Buy here.
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