Your Favorite Band is Killing Me (2024)

"Axl Rose is commonly perceived to be a tough guy. But Axl Rose is not a tough guy. Axl Rose was once beat up by Tommy Hilfiger."

I am a total sucker for the whole music criticism/slightly memoir-y genre, and who hasn't been passionate about an artist enough to immediately dislike something else out of loyalty? Hyden does a nice job of picking rivalries from practically every walk of life, from genre to level of engagement from the musicians themselves. Ultimately it says more about us as fans why we imbue our picks with such meaning and power, and Hyden doesn't shy away from sharing his own personal experiences here.

I knocked off a star because Hyden only begrudgingly admits respect for Damon Albarn's solo record after refusing to listen to any of his music due to Oasis loyalty. Just kidding, I just wish this had gone on longer or had a final chapter to ease out of the book. It felt like it cut off jarringly. But seriously, dude, you could have taken one for the team and listened to a Blur album all the way through. Or Gorillaz. (But hey, I like Oasis too. You're totally right about "Acquiesce.")

This is the sort of book that is really made to make me cackle maniacally as I read it: nerding out about music, musicians, bands and all that stuff is one of my favorite things to do, and obviously, it’s also one of Steven Hyden’s favorite things to do – but then, he is a music journalist! The idea of taking a closer looks at pop music rivalries is somewhere between culturally interesting and terribly trashy gossip, and I am so here for it, even if I was relatively unaware of some of the rivalries he puts under the microscope.

But mostly, what I find interesting about a book like this, its this struggle to find out why we care so damn much about these things. The way we ascribe symbolic and moral value on artists we love, the way we feel we identify and relate to them: that stuff is both magical and a little weird and Hyden understands that well because he is kind of a fanboy himself.

I will not attempt to summarize any of it; but if you enjoy reading about music and pop culture, you will have fun reading this. If you enjoy Chuck Klosterman’s books, you will probably enjoy this. If you are a cynical asshole who finds comfort in music, you will probably enjoy this.

I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because I would have loved a chapter about the Clash vs. the Sex Pistols and there wasn’t a word about them in there, and I took it quite personally. I am also able to admit that since this is already a much-written about rivalry, it might have been redundant, and that since the Pistols imploded when Sid Vicious stabbed his girlfriend to death, the rivalry was rather short-lived, and has a clear (yes, I am biased) winner. Still totally awesome and worth your time.

Often interesting, frequently funny, largely enjoyable reading covering the same ground as Steven Hyden’s usual essays and podcasts on music. I read much of his stuff and listen to his podcast occasionally, he’s exactly my age and shares a lot of the same perspectives on music as I do.

Each chapter is a meandering music + [whatever seems relevant at the time] discussion framed in the context of some kind of a rivalry between the artists. Some rivalries are real--like, they were popular at the same time and genuinely hated each other, or at least there was a myth that they did. Others aren’t really rivalries per se, just interesting comparisons.

These latter kind, on the whole, are a much stronger bunch--loved the chapter on Hendrix vs. Clapton, which explores the real cultural difference between burning out and fading away. Hyden can be very good at discussion-oriented pieces that delve into new ways of thinking about, or relating to, music and culture. Other chapters seemed to struggle for a thesis and just rehashed who said what at which made-for-tabloids awards show. I skimmed and skipped these as needed to maintain good mental health.

My music geek heart loved this book of essays, ostensibly about some of the biggest rivalries in popular music - Oasis/Blur, Nirvana/Pearl Jam, Madonna/Cyndi Lauper, Tupac/Biggie. But he connects those rivalries to things bigger than simply that, like what it means to be a fan, why men have a hard time making friends with other men, anxiety about getting older and relaxing into being totally "uncool." You don't have to know a lot about these rivalries to enjoy this engaging, funny, smart book.

I loved this quotation on page 34: "If you're reading this book, there is probably an artist or band whose music you have an intense personal relationship with. I would also guess that this artist or band came into your life during a time when you were highly vulnerable. if this is the case, this artist or band might be the closest thing you had to a confidant. in fact, he, she, or it was better than a confidant, because his/her/its music articulated your own thoughts and feeling better than you ever could. This music elevated the raw materials of your life to the heights of art and poetry. It made you feel as if your personal experience was grander and more meaningful than it might otherwise have been. And naturally you attributed whatever that music was doing to your heart and brain to the people who made the music, and you came to believe that the qualities of the music were also true of the music's creators. "If this music understands me, then the people behind the music must also understand me," goes this line of thought. "

List of reasons I didn’t enjoy this book-
1. Subtle misogyny in the writing- Hyden ascribes so much importance to male artists in his personal life and in society at large but when it came to mentioning female artists this is what he had to say- ““If you side with Christina (sorry: Xtina) Aguilera over Britney Spears, you may feel that young girls should emulate a seminaked woman who can sing like Etta James over a seminaked woman who can sing like an oversexed ATM. (Or maybe you’re prejudiced against cyborgs”. He also calls Miley Cyrus “whor*-ah Montana” while describing the VMA 2013 performance. :/ There’s also a whole chapter about Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Britney Spears & Christina Aguilera in which the treatment and narrative built around these artists felt markedly different than the other chapters focusing on things like their sexual appeal, their personal lives and such. He also refers to Lauper as “music for teenagers” and Britney and Christina as “kiddie-pop” while being compared to male artists who were deemed “adult”. Make of these comments what you will, but I cringed hard at his handling of female artists throughout the book.

2. He draws on interesting books and theories to link these pop music rivalries to human behavior and social dynamics but more often than not these links fall flat. The theories he references are hardly relevant to the rivalries in any meaningful way. He showed some self-awareness about this at one point but that did nothing to salvage the chapter, it still seemed like strings of vaguely associated thoughts thrown into a chapter.

3. This is personal but I wasn’t drawn by any of his opinions.

4. He called Bill Clinton “one of the coolest people alive” in the first 100 pages. BIG YIKES.

5. I added this book to my list after reading Hanif Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us essays, which might have set my expectations for this book too high. I LOVED Abdurraquib’s essays for their poignant and incredibly beautiful ways of linking his experiences with music to the human condition and that’s what I hoped to get more of from this book but it wasn’t even close.

The two stars I gave this book are for all the knowledge I gained about artists that pre-date me that I’ve never had the opportunity to learn about and get to know in the level of detail that Hyden describes.

Well, you should probably take this review (or at least that fifth star) with a grain of salt because, as a Bearded White Dude Who Loves Pop Culture, I'm pretty much exactly this book's target audience. Google Image Steven Hyden, who wrote this book, for evidence of what I'm talking about.

Anyway, this is the second book from a former Grantland writer that I've read this year (the other one being Shea Serrano's hilarious/essential The Rap Year Book), and, at the risk of seeming like some sort of Grantland fanboy, I unabashedly loved both of them. Hyden's is all about using music rivalries as a jumping-off point for discussing a number of broader topics - Kanye v. Taylor becomes about "Default Smart Opinions," Nirvana v. Pearl Jam becomes about hero-worship, Dixie Chicks v. Toby Keith becomes about the unfair ways we perceive others, and, in my personal favorite essay, Black Keys v. White Stripes becomes about the pissing contest inherent in all male friendships.

So I guess if you're looking for a mostly informational run-down on what exactly happened with these rivalries and their impact on the parties involved, you'll likely be disappointed (although plenty of background on each rivalry is provided). This is really more about fandom than it is anything else, and about how music fans make sense of the world they live in through their relationships with bands/songs/albums/etc.

I've also noticed the other reviews here on Goodreads have called these essays meandering or unfocused, but they're actually way more tightly controlled than they seem. There were a few times when I thought to myself in the middle of a chapter, "Wait, how did he get here?" So I'd go back and re-trace his steps. And the thing that kind of bowled me over about it all is every seeming digression ties in just about perfectly with the larger point he's trying to make. And he just sort of trusts his reader to make those connections because to point them out might ruin the overall chatting-about-music-over-a-beer feel of the book.

So, highly recommended to all the High Fidelity-loving music nerds out there, and recommended to anyone else who's looking for a fun, funny book on pop culture that's smart and thoughtful without even pretending to take itself too seriously.

With "Your Favorite Band is Killing Me," regular AV Club contributing writer Steven Hyden has written a better Chuck Klosterman book than Klosterman himself did this year (and he might possibly agree, given that he provides one of the blurbs for the book's back cover). Hyden's book digs deep into several of the signal music rivalries of the last half century of music, and though he does work some well-trod territory (do we really need ANOTHER Beatles vs. Stones piece?), he nevertheless lives up to his book's title by providing insights into his subject matter that extend beyond the relative musical merits of the bands in question.

Highlights of the book include Hyden's anatomization of the one-sided connection between New Jersey governor Chris Christie and his having-none-of-it musical idol Bruce Springsteen; an examination of Jack White's hatred of the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach as an emblem of the difficulty of forming hom*osocial friendships in midlife; a look at the careers of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton as a model of the question "Is it better to burn out or fade away?"; and the 9/11-spurred ideological rivalry between the Dixie Chicks and Toby Keith, and how it allowed Hyden to grapple with his own mixed feelings about America. His examination of the neurosis of Smashing Pumpkins' lead ghoul Billy Corgan is uncommonly insightful ("His insecurity over cool people believing that he's awful has made him awful"); I got a huge kick out of both his personal breakup-album connection to Ween's bizarre "lo-fi scuzz" experiment "The Pod", and his designation of identities for both the Beatles and the Stones (Paul's the most musical, Mick's the smartest, and Keith's the one he'd save first if both bands were trapped in a burning building). And the book is entirely worth reading if only for Hyden's genuinely heartbreaking chronicle of Biggie Vs. Tupac, the rivalry that reminds both author and reader that "it stops being fun once you realize that taking this stuff too seriously can result in people getting killed."

Hyden does tread some well-worn territory that has been covered better elsewhere. David Konow's "Bang Your Head" makes more interesting use of the Kurt Cobain / Axl Rose backstage showdown at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, and though Hyden's linkage of Pink Floyd to Conan O'Brien's ill-fated gig as host of "The Tonight Show" is intriguing, nothing else needs to be written about those events after Bill Carter's seminal "The War for Late Night." And a few ideas, such as Hyden's linkage of the Taylor Swift - Kanye West boondoggle with "Crash"'s win for best picture at the Oscars in 2006, never quite thematically gel. But "Your Favorite Band is Killing Me" is swift, bottomlessly entertaining reading. Chuck thinks it's worth your time. And that usually means it probably is.

Finally, a question: Why is it that everyone who ever writes about Beatles Vs. Stones, when they opt to pick sides, is inevitably a Stones fan?

don't get me wrong, i thoroughly enjoyed this book. and i actually learned a lot from it, particularly in the chapter on neil young v. lynyrd skynyrd. i had no idea skynyrd was from florida????
the thing is, it's a fun piece of ephemera. i enjoyed it, i learned some stuff, but ultimately there was no point to most of what he was writing. he was reaching quite a bit on some of the larger themes he was trying to draw upon. some of his references were too self-congratulatory.

also, considering that the main thesis of his Prince v. Michael Jackson chapter was that prince won by virtue of surviving, i would think the publishers would have made some effort to correct the manuscript in the weeks after Prince's death. i get that the first run was probably already printed, but when his survival is tantamount to your thesis, the chapter falls apart. it was released after his death, so it's no longer pertinent.

it's fun and quotable. but it's not revelatory in any way.

Blur vs. Oasis: he writes about how this was primarily a British feud based on class rivalries that didn't translate well in America, where most people only knew Blur for "Song No. 2." The author is a huge Oasis fan and therefore abstained from listening to Blur or any of Damon Albarn's other side projects. He finally sits down and listens to Albarn's first solo album, and decides it's okay. He concedes an argument made by the Blur faithful — that Blur's overall discography was more consistent that Oasis, who put out two great albums and subsequently devolved into over-compressed imitations of their earlier work. But he still sides with Oasis cause those two albums were better than anything Blur ever did.

Nirvana vs. Pearl Jam: Hyden reminds us that in spite of the revisionist history claiming Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain were secretly mutual admirers, Cobain hated Pearl Jam when he was alive, and it was only his premature death that allowed Pearl Jam to retroactively frame themselves as a band that Cobain was sympathetic to. Hyden compares Vedder's unrequited hero worship of Cobain to New Jersey governor Chris Christie's unrequited hero worship of Bruce Springsteen.

Prince vs. Michael Jackson: in the 80's, Jackson the undisputed king of pop. But he got weird as he aged, so Prince emerged as the more beloved.

White Stripes vs. Black Keys: Jack White's disdain for the Black keys is kind of irrational, and the relationship between the two bands serves as a metaphor for the difficulty American men have in forming close friendships in adulthood. "The Black Keys are successful, but the White Stripes are legendary."

Taylor Swift vs. Kanye West: pretty much what you'd expect, here.

Beatles vs. Stones: the inter-band rivalries pale in comparison to the intra-band rivalries. Mick vs. Keith and Lennon vs. McCartney is more interesting than Beatles vs. Stones. If forced to choose Hyden would declare himself a Stones guy. "The Beatles are so perfect they can be a little boring."

Eric Clapton vs. Jimi Hendrix: is it better to burn out or fade away?

Sinead O'Connor vs. Miley Cyrus: Sinead ruined her career making an overtly political and sincere gesture on SNL that offended viewers. Miley launched her career making overtly sexual and inauthentic lewd gestures that offended viewers. Sinead writes Miley an open letter warning her about prostituting herself, but only comes across like a stodgy finger-wagging grandma and inadvertently helps Miley's career.

Roger Waters vs. the rest of Pink Floyd: how are bands like sports teams?

Smashing Pumpkins vs. Pavement: California self-confidence vs. an inherent Midwestern insecurity. Why it's not cool to appear like you're trying, even if your trying yields awesome arena-rock anthems.

Neil Young vs. Lynyrd Skynyrd: the two artists actually respected each other and the rivalry between the two acts was largely creating by fans as a stand-in for American regional rivalries between the conservative south and liberal north/coasts.

Biggies vs. Tupac: served as a warning for other hip-hop acts, as well as pop stars in general, to dial back the rancor a bit.

Toby Keith vs. Dixie Chicks: my favorite essay. "Being a patriot means that I believe in a version of American that's basically imaginary, but I hope one day will become real."

If you like Chuck Klosterman, you'll probably like this book. It's almost as funny, brainy, and well-written as Klosterman, but every bit as knowledgeable and fun. Hyden himself directly cites a Klosterman essay at one point, and there were other points where I noticed he was aping an argument that I've previously encountered in Klosterman's books. But I don't care. In recent years, Klosterman himself has graduated from writing about pop music to being more of an armchair sociologist, so this book is a welcome substitute if you miss reading stuff like Fargo Rock City and Killing Yourself to Live.

I wanted to like this more than I did. Music rivalries are an interesting topic to me, although I don't quite get that mentality. I'm kind of all-inclusive when it comes to music and I don't think you have to pick one when it comes to artists. The age-old question is Beatles vs Stones (a chapter is devoted to that one). I'm a Stones girl but that doesn't mean that I don't love the Beatles, too, and understand their impact on music. For that matter, I love the Kinks, as well! Criminally under-appreciated band.

But I digress. And that's the major problem I had with this book. He meanders all over the place. While I understand that music colors all aspects of life for many of us, he went on tangents about movies, politics, TV shows, his high school experience, you name it. I kept thinking, "Focus, man! Music rivalries, remember?"

There are a few passages that delighted me, however. When it comes to Kanye West's famous interruption of Taylor Swift's acceptance speech ("Imma let you finish," remember?) he says that as Kanye got up onstage and approached her, Swift looked like "Carrie before the pig's blood hits." Man, that made me laugh!

I also loved this, about the Beatles vs Stones thing:

"I'm just more attracted to the Stones. The Beatles are the person you want to marry, and the Stones are the person you want to f*ck. If I could marry a band, I would be a Beatles person. But our society has not yet recognized person-rock band marriage rights. I guess you can't have sex with a band, either, but 'Sticky Fingers' is the closest that rock music gets to sex, so I'm a Stones guy."

I think that is about the best take on the matter I've read.

I would definitely recommend this to a music fan, but not so much to a casual fan. It was kind of heartbreaking to read the Prince vs Michael Jackson chapter because at the time of publication, Prince was still alive. (I'm a Prince girl, by the way...but again, MJ was truly the King of Pop for a while.)

De eerste helft van het boek was scherp, grappig en goed geschreven. In de tweede helft lijkt hij vooral te zoeken naar onderwerpen zodat hij het boek verder gevuld krijgt. Daar raakte hij me ook een beetje kwijt. Desalniettemin een origineel boek met scherpe kritieken op popmuziek en popcultuur. Het autobiografische tintje had wellicht meer als rode draad door het hele boek gebruikt kunnen worden.

So like this book, I'm going to ignore the actual topic and digress into a personal anecdote. I really loved Grantland. In the wake of its closing, I try and support as many of its writers as possible, because I thought they were making something special there. Steven Hyden was one of my least favorite writers on Grantland (I probably only read Rembert Brown's reaction-gif pieces of the latest Kanye West tweet less), but I inevitably read a piece here and there because he talked about bands I cared about that didn't get much press elsewhere (besides noisy/Vice, and Vice is a terrible place for Hipsters who hate Buzzfeed to create Buzzfeed-esque lists). I do enjoy his recent podcast though, so it's probably just his writing and not his "takes" that puts me off.

Anyways. Your Favorite Band takes famous musical rivalries and uses them as a backdrop for Hyden to talk about his life. It's not all that interesting , and one "side" inevitably dominates the conversation. Hyden is from Minnesota, so Prince vs Michael Jackson just discussed Prince's brilliance for a chapter and rarely mentioned MJ. Oasis vs Blur was a love poem to Oasis with a passing mention that Blur is a band that exists.

I don't particularly pay attention to the "meta" that surrounds music. I never read a Jack White interview so I had no idea he despised the Black Keys. Maybe that makes me the wrong audience for his book, or maybe I just have a different view on what a rivalry is. As mentioned in the Beatles-Stones section, those bands liked each other. Most artists really don give a sh*t that another artist exists in the same space. The Stones were told to look different so people who hated the Beatles had someone to latch on to (and had records to buy to spite Beatles fans). That's the exact same way sports fans get hyped up (Bears-Packers tickets cost an arm and a leg even if neither team is good because f*ck the Packers), and politicians rally the base. It's also why I bought this book (as a middle finger to ESPN). It's all a marketing ploy, and it gives music critics something to talk about (why else would we still write articles about Pavement 20 years after their brief flirtation with relevancy). To me, looking at the branding efforts of labels and artists seems much more honest and telling than analyzing songwriters' attempts to out-genuine each other in Billboard and Rolling Stone interviews.

Armchair psychoanalysis of collective pop culture criticism, pitting one band's fandom against another's? Yes, please.

Here's the review I want to write:

It's a fun bit of mental masturbation that was recommended to me because I adore Chuck Klosterman's pop culture analyses, but it lacks the oomph of grand-daddy Klosterman's work. It is Klosterman-like, though. Call it Klosterman-lite. Hyden is a touch less witty and reveals less personality in his writing, so while Klosterman's pieces often shine brightest as a window into his own mind through the context of pop culture this work tends to read more like an academic paper comparing and contrasting subsets of music fans (albeit a casual one built on personal anecdotes with some jokey asides). And Klosterman usually declared his (often outlandish) thesis and developed it with a more thorough examination of a single thread of thought, while Hyden meanders and shifts across a broader range within each section.

Here's the honest truth:

If you showed me an excerpt from this book alongside an excerpt from Klosterman (something newer of his, not a page out of "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs" which I've read and re-read over and over) with the authors' names removed, I would be hard pressed to tell which was which. Hyden takes a little bit more time to get rolling but his pop criticism is on par with anybody else's out there. Consider the gloriously pretentious craftwork: "Eric Clapton makes me contemplate the inevitable decline of my own life, and this makes me uncomfortable...When I put on Journeyman, what I hear are the gears that keep my own life grinding monotonously forward. Eric Clapton is not my hero, but he is my avatar." Ah! To be a music critic! To toss out such declarations, to spin opinion as fact with unbridled confidence! It's cheeky verging on smug and simply delightful. The only reason I like Klosterman more is I found him first and I'm not terribly familiar with the music of at least half the bands Hyden examines here. But examining middle school awkwardness in the context of Prince vs. Michael Jackson or the difficulty of making new friends as a grown-up in the middle of a White Strips/Black Keys rivalry just feels so right.

4 stars out of 5.

(Read in 2017, the twenty-fifth book in my Alphabetical Reading Challenge)

I don't know when, but at some point Steven Hyden started recording my thoughts and conversations. That seems the only plausible reason why a majority of ideas about music (including hyper specific references and examples) end up in his writing. It's either that or we grew up with so many freaking things in common that our shared (but not shared at all) life experiences created the same understandings of music and pop culture. In all seriousness, Hyden finds easy and coherent ways of stating things I have tried to drunkenly describe to Eric Olson for years.

Somewhere in the past few weeks I read a line saying, "The world needs more readers, not writers." So long as funny, intelligent, well meaning, and dedicated people like Steven Hyden keep producing works, I will be happy to consume instead of produce.

Hyden does a wonderful job tying non music related ideas and examples into the text to bring about as full of a picture as possible. It helps that I am probably in his demographic sweet spot to understand and know these pop culture references.

Last thought, this is another author (along with Shea Serrano and, to a less extent, J. Abrams) who has used social media to connect to eager readers and early adopters. In particular, I got a sweet ass Axl Rose book mark autographed by Hyden just for showing my pre-order confirmation. It's cool that these writers and finding innovative ways for us to feel like we are a part of something, even when we're not. It's similar to what loving a band used to feel like.

Steven Hyden has a brilliant way to tie in all things awesome with popular music. I'm talking about the NFL, Saturday Night Live, the 1992 VMAs, politics, and more. It made me nostalgic at times and has led me to dusting off old CDs that I haven't listened to in years. This book has also inspired me to make a mix CD of strictly Kanye West and Taylor Swift songs...

It made me laugh (Jack White's pettiness in the White Stripes vs. the black Keys), it made me cry (the Michael Jackson vs. Prince chapter...written before the death of Prince), and it made me remember so much that I had forgotten.

My favorite chapters were Roger Waters vs. Pink Floyd, Taylor Swift vs. Kanye West, Miley Vs. Sinead 'O Connor and of course the Beatles vs. the Rolling Stones. In a future book I would love to see Billy Joel vs. Elton John, Katy Perry vs. Lady Gaga or Backstreet Boys vs. 'N Sync.

I cannot wait for the next book!

I really enjoyed this book, probably because I share very similar views on music with Steven Hyden. He's also very funny. His fundamental premise is that music rivalries (real or perceived) are interesting because what people think about music has less to do with actual music than it does with how they see themselves and the world.

The best and most surprisingly poignant example of this concept is an anecdote about NJ governor Chris Christie. Christie is a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, and as two of the most famous New Jersyans, they have plenty of changes to interact. However, Bruce does not like Chris Christie and avoids him whenever possible. This prompts Christie to make public pleas to Bruce and suggest that Bruce's message and that of the Republican Party are not that different. This statement might seem crazy to most Springsteen fans, but Christie clearly believes it. As Hyden observes, people love music and they want it to love them back.

This was a fun read. My only problem is that it had me thinking of all of the pop music rivalries I wish he had covered. Here is my list of rivalries Hayden should have covered that I could think of off the top of my head (in no particular order):
1. Yes vs. Genesis
2. Adele vs. Amy Winehouse
3. Beach Boys vs. Jan & Dean
4. Bob Dylan vs. the Byrds
5. The Smiths vs. The Cure
6. The Replacements vs. Husker Du
7. John Lennon vs. Paul McCartney

But I suppose he had an editor...

Still, Go! Read!

I really enjoyed reading this book for two main reasons:
1. I love the subject matter - popular music is very important to me, and
2. Hyden is genuinely funny. So funny, in fact, that he kept me interested even when talking about musicians and bands that I either don't like or haven't listened too.

Was hoping it would be similar to Chuck Klosterman's essays but was sorely disappointed (there's only one Klosterman!). Hyden drones on in a self-serving style not appealing to the reader and crosses the thick line of pretentiousness.

Beatles or Stones? Michael Jackson or Prince? Tupac or Biggie? Oasis or Blur? The Who or Led Zeppelin? One of the pleasures of musical obsession, and which applies to fans of any art form, is arguing about which band is better. The possibilities opened up by musical rivalries are endless, wide ranging, and can lead to fights or epiphanies, depending on the company you keep.

I have friends, for example, who swear by the unsurpassable excellence of The Who but find Zeppelin to be unlistenable garbage and vice versa, but I also know plenty of others who find that they must search their very souls before awarding the laurel. (In case you’re wondering, my picks in each of the matchups listed above are all the second options.)

This is the topic veteran music journalist Steven Hyden tackles in Your Favorite Band is Killing Me, which examines the larger meaning of classic pop music rivalries throughout the years. As you follow the tour through popular music’s back pages it becomes more and more apparent that musical rivalries are about more than just artistic excellence or street cred; it’s also about identity. It’s political, in a certain sense- more on this later. In the pop world, the self-made artists usually have it in for those who had the machinery of fame on their side. The need for exposure is a major source of anxiety for any artist, given the whims of the marketplace.

Michael Jackson and Prince were fiercely competitive because Prince was the underdog, an orphaned weirdo from Minnesota who used every bit of his talent and genius for self-presentation to make it. Jackson, incredibly talented himself, was also undeniably the beneficiary of family publicity, considering his prodigious and traumatic star turn as the lead of the Jackson 5 when he was barely out of diapers.

Evidently the self-created Prince took this contrast to heart and challenged Jackson to a private table tennis match, wherein he triumphantly spiked the ball into the self-proclaimed King of Pop’s groin. This was long before the gross details of Jackson’s private life were made known, but it foreshadowed the fact that as far as reputation and cunning was concerned Prince was the one who knew how to play the game.

Madonna and Cyndi Lauper is another example. We all know Lauper’s infectious hits like “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” but her star rose high and fell hard in the early eighties, while the Material Girl’s “run from the early 80’s up through the mid-aughts is amazingly consistent for an artist courting mass acceptance and achieving it more often than not.” I tend to agree with Hyden’s assessment that Madonna did her best work in the Clinton era, and that there are quite a few pop singers following in her wake who were never able to even approach what she was able to mean artistically or culturally. Think of the extravagant failures of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera to survive being teenybopper sex symbols with their sanity intact.

So long as we’re talking pop provocateurs, there’s also the interesting feud between Sinead O’Connor and Miley Cyrus. When O’Connor wrote an open letter to Miley Cyrus warning her of the perils of her sexualized music videos, it didn’t go well. Hyden argues convincingly that this is indicative of a generational divide; what O’Connor’s unprecedented and still spine- chilling Pope-shredding live protest once did to an outraged public (and her own career) isn’t remotely what Miley’s gleeful eroticism of her own youth does to a millennial generation saturated with media and rhetoric of empowerment by sex appeal.

Socially speaking, there’s a tendency for musical rivalries to become quite political. Pop stars often become stand-ins for social groups and represent the dreams and aspirations of their fan base. It’s only natural that the ideologies they represent will butt heads in a big way.

There’s the classic example of the clean-cut Beatles vs. the sleazy Stones, or whether Nirvana or Pearl Jam truly represented the alternative underground, or consider the Britpop feud between so-called working class hooligans Oasis and art school snobs Blur, cutting a swathe through a social fault line that has always existed in British culture but came to a head when each band’s records went head to head by being released on the same day. Hyden doesn’t really pick a side in these fights- even though he’s got his favorites he’s broad minded enough to know and enjoy every artist’s work. Instead, he engagingly lays out the facts and shows where both sides were misinterpreted.

The granddaddy of this kind of rivalry is the classic case of Lynyrd Skynryd vs. Neil Young, considering the prickly criticisms of “Sweet Home Alabama.” Is it about heritage or hate? Young’s “Southern Man” certainly takes Dixie hypocrisies to task, but who wouldn’t? According to Ronnie Van Zant, it was written as “more of a joke than anything else” and on close inspection “Sweet Home Alabama” actually has more anti-racism in it than you notice at first, booing George Wallace and giving a shout-out to the Montgomery boycott. And it’s worth noting that Ronnie Van Zant was a huge Neil Young fan, as Young was of him, even playing the song at his funeral.

Is the controversy really more of a case in point of how the pubic read what they wanted into the song rather than the artist’s intended meaning- a rock version of the good old intentional fallacy?

It’s over ten years old now, but I still remember the nationwide fracas caused by The Dixie Chicks publicly dissing George W Bush as an embarrassing fellow Texan and Toby Keith’s Iraq War- era promise to “put a boot in your ass.” With the fresh hell of the Iraq war in the news and patriotic fervor everywhere, The Dixie Chicks had their records burned and Toby Keith became the symbol of macho boorishness for liberals everywhere, turning up the heat on national obsession with red state/blue state tensions that are sadly still relevant today.

But what’s important to remember is that the social media hysteria that attached itself to the controversy overwhelmed the fact that Toby Keith was a Democrat whose songs generally landed on the goofy side and the millions of records the Dixie Chicks had sold proved that their country cred had been solid for years. As Hyden wisely notes: “Sometimes what you actually feel matters less than what your actions signify to the public…Because it’s not about what you said but rather about what people believe (or want to believe) you said.”

Hyden’s voice on the page is lively and engaging. I enjoyed his informed and resolutely chatty prose so much I found myself reading the book over several times. Reading it often feels like a conversation with an informed and passionate friend. The many jokes work as a way of enhancing the argument while entertaining, as in a chapter contrasting Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix about the virtues of accepting the inevitability of age’s mediocrity or burning out with your legend intact: “life is what happens after you leave Cream.”

Unfortunately, one of the strengths of the book is also its biggest weakness. There’s a line where eagerness becomes ingratiating. A born enthusiast, Hyden is sometimes prone to awkward over-sharing. We find out what life was like as a gawky, dateless teenager (not fun), what he does when his wife is away (gobbling junk food and blaring his Strokes records), and what the preferred record of his weed-hazed twenties, Ween’s The Pod, sounded like (don’t ask). There’s no doubt that personal anecdotes have a role to play in criticism, especially in writing about pop culture, but sometimes critical distance is better.

But the many insights Hyden offers are quite brilliant. As a longtime Smashing Pumpkins fan, I never understood what the famous beef with Pavement was all about until Hyden unpacked it. Already notorious for their sarcastic hipper-than-thou nonchalance, Pavement casually brushed off the Pumpkins in song, only to exacerbate Billy Corgan’s already Nixon-like seething paranoia and insecurity. I never quite made the connection between Corgan and tricky Dick before, but once I did I couldn’t stop noticing it. It definitely changed the way I thought about Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, a grandiose double album I worshipped when I was half as old as I am now.

Hyden perceptively claims that the 1992 MTV Video Music awards were indeed a harbinger for the form the musical mainstream would take in the decade to come. Ultra-liberal Seattle grunge was poised to take the place of the self-indulgent machismo of Guns N Roses, and it turns out that these incompatible worldviews came to a head verbally backstage between Cobain and Rose before the show even began. If you were a musically curious teenager in the nineties and looking for a band to call your own, and by extension an identity of your own, the philosophical implications of this squabble was no small thing.

Choosing one’s declared artistic heroes can be a means of self-expression, even self-realization, considering the many issues of aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural value that come with it. Part of the fun of reading Hyden’s take on pop culture is in finding out how the music you love means as much to you as it does to him, and discovering the reasons why.

Although I don't consider myself someone who participates in a great many feuds, I must admit that I am clearly very aware of them as they relate to the pop music scene [1]. Whether the feud exists because of genuine dislike or because of the feeling that the pop scene isn't big enough for two people/groups, or because of marketing, or because of fundamental differences in perspective and approach, feuds are a fairly common if lamentable aspect of the world of music. Although the author in almost 300 pages does not manage to get all of the essential feuds in pop music history, he certainly manages to discuss a great many of them and provide a great deal of context about the way that people can be easily pitted against each other, even when they themselves may not want to be hostile to others. The author also digs pretty deeply into the insecurity that drives many musicians to lash out against others, as well as the business side of having to appeal to the prejudices of one's core audience even when one might want to rise above such matters.

This book basically consists of personal essays about the author's own taste in music and his own thoughts about various feuds divided into sixteen essays. The author begins with the Oasis vs. Blur feud and then moves on to discuss Nirvana vs. Pearl Jam, Prince vs. Michael Jackson, The White Stripes vs. The Black Keys, Taylor Swift vs. Kanye West, The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton vs. Jimi Hendrix, Sinead O'Connor vs. Miley Cyrus, Roger Waters vs. The Rest of Pink Floyd, Axl Rose vs. Vince Neil (with a lot of cameos concerning unfought celebrity boxing matches), Smashing Pumpkins vs. Pavement, a combo essay (Dr. Dre vs. Eazy-E, Dave Mustaine vs. Metallica, David Lee Roth vs. The Van Halen Brothers), a comment on female feuds (Madonna vs. Cyndi Lauper and Britney Spears vs. Christina Aguilera), Neil Young vs. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Biggie Smalls vs. Tupac Shakur, and Toby Keith vs. The Dixie Chicks. The posts allow the author to demonstrate his own journalistic credibility and to comment on the way that similarity and difference can both lead to conflict as people try to defend their legitimacy and claim turf in the larger popular culture. At times this prickliness can be deadly, as it was for both Biggie and 2Pac.

Overall, this book was a pleasure to read even if some of the author's comments failed to it the mark. The author seems to imply that Taylor Swift vs. Kanye West is over as an active feud, which doesn't take into account either Kanye's "Famous" or Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do," showing the feud to be as active as ever. Likewise, the author claimed that popular artists today were luckier and so most of them didn't die too young, but he wrote this without accounting for the deaths of either Chris Cornell of STP or Chester Bennington of Linkin Park, both dead far too soon. The author reminds us, if we needed to be reminded, that rivalry has its consequences and if it can sometimes seem a bit contrived, it has real consequences. Hopefully the author's optimism that feuds have become less violent in the aftermath of the 1990's is borne out, because it is one thing if people slag each other in articles or beclown themselves at awards shows that lack legitimacy, but it is an entirely different matter if people suffer violence over the silliness of pop feuds. For those who enjoy the spirit of competition but have no interest in participating in violence, one can always read this book.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2013...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2013...

Is Steven Hyden, author of “Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me,” friends with Chuck Klosterman—or are they rivals? Klosterman blurbs the book, and Hyden thanks him in the acknowledgments. But then, in one of this collection’s essays, Hyden says he doesn’t really have any guy friends. Are they secretly enemies? Frenemies? I’m not saying they are, but there’s a case to be made: both about the same age, both from the Midwest, both wrote for the late, lamented Grantland, both obsessed with pop culture and ringing from it the meaning of life. The title is reminiscent of one of Klosterman’s books, “Killing Yourself to Live,” and the structure suggestive of something Klosterman would do.

Plus, they both look like Muppets.

The book purports to be a collection of essays, each chapter considering a particularly rivalry in popular music—the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Biggie and Tupac being the ideal types, but there are fourteen others. Not all of these are, strictly speaking, rivalries, and certainly not musical ones. Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix didn’t antagonize each other. The spat between Miley Cyrus and Sinead O’Connor was not about music. Taylor Swift and Kanye West—another pairing—shared an awkward moment, but didn’t feud. (The book came out before the recent brouhaha between Swift and Kim Kardashian-West.) A couple chapters try to shoehorn in several different groupings.

The real service of this conceit is to give Hyden a loose enough structure that he can inject lots of personal stories, and his musings as a one-time stoner, now a new father entering his forties. Can his interests be redeemed? Are they more than just teenage self-definition—the way he hewed to Nirvana and Oasis over Blur and Pearl Jam when he was young? What does it mean to have been raised on (radio and) pop culture and now be expected to shepherd another generation into maturity? Are there theories one can find?

Because Hyden really, really likes theories. He likes inventing them based on his interpretation of popular culture. And make no mistake—this is book about what it means to live within popular culture, and not see beyond it, except only occasionally.

As it happens, I saw Cynid Lauper performing last night, just a few days after I finished this book, and its chapter on Madonna versus Cyndi Lauper. She even mentioned Madonna, calling her “my evil cousin.” So there is a rivalry there! But what Hyden sees in the rivalry is that he doesn’t see Lauper anymore. Madonna managed to make herself relevant for years, while Lauper is tied to a specific cultural moment. Haden has little truck with he idea that Madonna survived because she reinvented herself—he thinks it’s the songs: she’s simply a better musician. The point he arrives at is, there is value in being tied to a particularly moment, just as there is value to remaining relevant. But the fact of the matter is, Lauper has continued to produce and perform new music, to expand herself. She’s made a living, even if she is not so intensely famous anymore.

But when you’re inside the pop culture world, fame is what matters. Haden also takes the Dixie Chicks to task, because of their spat with Toby Keith and criticizing George Bush. He’s not so sure about the wisdom of sloughing off fans. Fame is really important—it may be the most important thing, though, in the end, it’s only the second most important thing in what emerges as Hyden’s hierarchy. The real most important thing is what he tries to run away and hide from in the first chapters: authenticity. He loved Nirvana more than Pearl Jam because Nirvana seemed authentic, real, not in it just for the money, the bombast. Haden chides himself for this, recognizes its limitations.

But it still structures his values. Toby Keith is admirable because he’s just a beer-drinking lunkhead. Eric Clapton may not have been the incendiary talent of Jimi Hendrix, but he survived: he just kept working hard and doing his thing. Smashing Pumpkin’s Billy Corgan is a Midwestern boy trying hard, not like those too-smart-for-its-own-good Pavement. Liberal values, progressive politics—these are the things Hyden says he subscribes to, but the actual liberals and progressives—the Dixie Chicks, Neil Young—they don’t seem authentic to him. Neil Young was no different than the re-made Lynyrd Skynyrd that politicked for George W. Bush: both were trapped by their own images, but Lynyrd Skynyrd seemed more admirable.

I remember this line of thought from the early aughts: it was why all the good liberals hated the hippies and, sadly but necessarily, support the War.

It’s why we laugh at Gonzo, but admire Kermit.

One gets claustrophobic, at times, with this theater criticism from the stage—and it can lead Hyden astray. He’s not phoning it in, as late period Klosterman has done, all speculation. His musings on some musicians being tied to a particular time owes something to Klosterman’s theory of nostalgia—which is rooted in the particular forms in which music is packaged, CDs and vinyl more likley to promote nostalgia than iTunes; he is concerned about remaining cool and plugged in, but willing to let it go, too, unlike Klosterman who mourns the passing of his coolness before he can even decide whether he likes something or not. Hyden’s writing is rooted in detail, thickly remembered and re-lived prior to writing—even if that detail is always within the area circ*mscribed by popular culture.

Which is what causes the claustrophobia, and leads to the most unfortunate part of the book. In the chapter on the Biggie-Tupac rivalry, Hyden essays the theory that because this rivalry ended in real death, it chastened other musicians, made their rivalries and behaviors less intense. Which leads him to counting up the number of famous musicians who have died since Tupac, and then listing those he is surprised haven’t died. He admits it’s a little off-putting—but not so off-putting he doesn’t stop himself. I’d say its straight up nauseating, and the redeeming factor is . . . nothing really. Support for a half-baked theory.

Hyden is at his best when he breaks free from the theories he offers, and tries to see the cultural world from the outside. In the chapter on Prince and Michael Jackson—and I have to say that it is incredibly weird to be reading about Prince, in a book published in 2016, as though he is alive—Hyden brings up the theory that those who were considered quirky in high school go on to become successful, while the popular kids often flame out. But then he rejects this as too simplistic, noting that in real life everyone is high school is an amalgam of quirky and popular, depending upon group dynamics. Which leads him to think that Prince did better than Michael Jackson by surviving—again, weird!—but also that Prince made a kind of peace with the real world, while Jackson became increasingly sequestered.

Similarly, the memoirist-ic portions of the book are some of the most engaging, and probably would have worked well without the focus on rivalries; obviously, popular culture was intensely important to Hyden’s growth and development, so the story could not be told without them, but there was no need to force chapters on enmities-that-weren’t. Hyden is a talented writer. His jokes sometimes flop—they call them dad jokes for a reason, as Fonzie Bear learned avant-la-lettre—but his vocabulary is both wide and precise, his structure loose but dialectical—it’s odd at first, with Hyden seemingly interrupting himself for a tangent but pulls the threads back together at the end. He’s a creative thinker, too, putting together some unusual connections. He’s not afraid to be silly, either—the chapter on missed celebrity boxing matches is funny!

His best attribute is the skepticism he has toward his own easy answers. This can be taken too far—as with the bits on Young, the Dixie Chicks, and his sympathy for Richard Nixon—but it serves him well. He challenges his own love for Oasis because it was so rooted in his self-image, and was less about the music, per se. He knows the bad reputation of the movie “Crash” and so forces himself to re-watch it. He recognizes his sympathy for Sinead O’Connor, in her “rivalry” with Cyrus, is based on his age, and that he’s now a father. He’s unwilling to play the old-white-guy card and dismiss out of hand Taylor and Britney and Xtina. The approach opens the book up and keeps Hyden from tripping over his own quest to be cool and insightful, bringing in a ragged, truthful realism.

It’s fun to be Waldorf and Statler, sitting in the balcony, throwing slings and arrows and quips. But, in the end, everyone has to leave the theater and go home. Even the Muppets.

Things I took away from this book:

Pearl Jam was music for frat boys? Didn't realize it at the time. Thought they were mountainy, lumberjack hard rockers. Maybe it's because I was raised in the mountains and cut down a tree once.

I'm on the fence with the Oasis/Blur thing, but lean toward working-class Oasis even though they are probably tools. Blur have their moments, but they pretty much speak for England. "Park Life" will never resonate in California.

I appreciate artists who are experimental and weird and basically say "Piss off" to their audience and do what they want from album to album, as demonstrated by Prince chapter. Even though some albums really suck. Radiohead is further confirmation of this.

I started playing guitar three and a half years ago. I never really paid a huge amount of attention to the blues, unless it was more contemporary artists like the White Stripes, Zeppelin, Black Keys, etc. I learned that as a male in my mid-40's, it is obligatory to start appreciating the blues. Part of a social contract of some kind. Can't be avoided. I play the blues now.

I have to rewatch the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. Apparently, it's incredible bouillibaisse of a heavy metal culture on the way down and a grunge/punk culture on the way up. With Bryan Adams, for god knows what reason!

The conflict between Jack White vs. Dan Auerbach explains why it's so tough for middle-aged guys to maintain friendships. We instinctively create rivals instead of friends. Competitiveness and self-sufficiency make our lives much less social than they otherwise could be.

I didn't care much about half the artists in here, but it was still a fun enough read.

This was a nice read. I guess you'll get more out of it if you're more trivia inclined but I feel like even if you don't actively know most of these people's backstories, you can get something out of it. There are enough snort worthy moments where you don't feel like it takes itself too seriously. Although sometimes when he would compare something to something else, I would lose the analogy for a second and forget we're in a music book, I think he generally proved his points. While I wouldn't mind a liiiiiiiittle bit more variety, he still covered a good amount of ground for being a white man born in the 70's (Gwen Stefani vs Courtney Love? Courtney Love vs Tori Amos vs Trent Reznor vs Marilyn Manson? T Boz and Chili of TLC vs Left Eye? Okay, so I'm just picking at straws here but I read the last half of the book today and there were too many interchangable male lead bands that I didn't Wikipedia while I was reading).
I guess in terms of essay books, it's worth reading every chapter of this book instead of picking your favorites, because sometimes there are callbacks to other chapters.

Wouldn't you know, another re-read? This is actually the second time I've re-read it, and it's one of those books that rewards re-reads (especially after you've been foolhardy enough to tackle James Joyce). Steven Hyden uses some of the most notable (and some of the most obscure) pop-music rivalries to really dig down deep into aspects of life that we can all relate to (especially those of us who are starting to feel too old to care about pop-star feuds or even pop stars). From the obvious (Beatles vs. Stones, Biggie vs. Tupac), the ephemeral (Sinead O'Connor versus Miley Cyrus, Madonna vs. Cyndi Lauper), to the strangely still relevant (Dixie Chicks vs. Toby Keith, Neil Young vs. Lynyrd Skynyrd), Hyden uses each rivalry not to settle such disputes but to highlight why we care so much (and how we can care too much, as in the case of Biggie and Tupac).

An enjoyable swift read about musical feuds from Blur vs. Oasis, Nirvana vs. Pearl Jam, Prince vs. Michael Jackson, White Stripes vs. Black Keys, Taylor Swift vs. Kanye West, the predictable chapter on Beatles vs. Stones, Eric Clapton vs. Jimi Hendrix, Sinead O'Connor vs. Miley Cyrus, Roger Waters vs. the rest of Pink Floyd, Smashing Pumpkins vs. Pavement, Neil Young vs. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Biggies vs. Tupac and Toby Keith vs. Dixie Chicks.

Basically the stories are mostly familiar and the reader gets to play an armchair sociologist, about how the lifestyle of iconic artists seems to have changed, what do these feuds represent, who do we identify the most and what does it say about us

This is a breezy read, and the mix of music rivalry history and author commentary is pleasant throughout. Unfortunately, the editorializing is simplistic and blunt without being particularly funny or insightful. Hyden is an affable guy as evidenced by the podcast "Rivals" which he co-hosts with a fellow music journalist. The show does get into the "meaning of life" aspects that the book's subtitle indicates, but the focus on the rivalries themselves is certainly more fun, and listening to him have a conversation is the way I'd recommend taking it in.

god, finishing this book took me literally forever

it was kinda heavy in the way that you couldn't really marathon it and some things he talked about didn't really interest me at all (or i was too young/not american enough to get them, i suppose). other parts of this book i actually really liked, i laughed out loud at some things and i really found myself musing over stuff and learning things about popular culture that i didn't know before.

Funny, thoughtful essays about perceived rivalries in the music world. Sometimes the point got off track in the essays, but they were still pretty interesting.