Susan Rogers’ first claim to fame is that she was the chief engineer on Prince’s critically acclaimed and immensely popular Purple Rain album. After a subsequent glittering career as a record producer she became a cognitive neuroscientist. This career path set her up nicely to write this interesting book about why we like the music we like.
The book is divided up into chapters covering various aspects of music that we respond to: authenticity, melody, lyrics, timbre and so on. Each is illustrated by scientific studies, discussions of how the brain works, and also anecdotes from Rogers’ experience. (This book seems to be written entirely by and about Rogers. There are occasional mentions of Ogas but it’s not clear what roles he played that justify his co-authorship. I guess he did a lot behind the scenes.)
The points are also illustrated by actual music. At various points we are told to go off to Spotify (or wherever) and listen to a specific song before reading on. It’s pretty much essential to do something like this when writing about music. Otherwise, as Frank Zappa said, it would be “like dancing about architecture”.
This book strikes a good balance between interesting anecdotes and hard information. Rogers’ enthusiasm shines though. And I am grateful that it introduced me to the Shaggs, whose album Philosophy of the World provides a listening experience like no other.