The musical bibliography is often nourished by biography, but it is clear that not all of them have the same interest. The best, without a doubt, are those of those artists who tell us about their lives almost without realizing it, while they are writing pages that are more memory than biography. There, Patti Smith, the veteran American rocker (76 years old), stands out with mastery, with a few titles already to her credit, books that often include images captured by herself. A path that has led her to her new work that, like almost all of her work, here she publishes Lumen: The Book of Days. A delicious and suggestive volume –like his records, like his concerts– with 366 photographs, one for each day of the year –leap–, accompanied by very brief texts, often a short photo caption, where he summons above all those names and places that They have been his inspiration throughout the years. From Rimbaud to Dylan, from John Coltrane to Robert Mapplethorpe. From New York to Paris. A book that was born after her late subscription to Instagram – she did not have a mobile, she confesses, until 2010 – after her old Polaroid camera ran out of spare parts.

Biography in the strictest sense is that of Peter Guralnick Elvis (Kultrum Books). Two thick volumes –Loves that kill: the destruction of man and Last train to Memphis: the construction of the myth– originally published in the 1990s and now available in Spanish translated by Alberto Manzano. The closest thing to what is usually called a definitive biography of the number one rock myth, with special attention to his early years and the process that elevated him as the King. For mythomaniacs but not only.

More lives of musicians. Also in Kultrum, Why Sinatra Matters, by Pete Hamill, a portrait of the Voice whose main value is being written by someone who really knew this extraordinary and sometimes controversial singer and actor firsthand. And from the quintessential crooner to one of the most forceful rock’s essential voices, that of the hard group AC/DC. Brian Johnson recounts in The Lives of Brian (Contra Publishing) how he came to become the singer of the Australian band after the death of Bon Scott. And more lives of rock classics: at Ediciones Cúpula we will find that of a pioneer, The Extraordinary Life of Little Richard, by Mark Ribowsky; and that of a legendary group, The Stone Era. 60 Years of Rolling Stones, by Lesley-Ann Jones.

Another way of biography is proposed by the veteran music journalist Carlos Galilea in Caetano Veloso (Blume), a portrait of the great Brazilian musician through 19 interviews conducted over almost three decades, completed with other biographical notes and a complete discography.

After publishing Mark Lanegan’s autobiography (Sing backwards and weep. Sing backwards and cry), Contra now presents the latest memorial text from the former leader of Screaming Trees, The Devil in a Coma, a naked account of a wild musician faced with the ravages of the covid pandemic that, in the end, ended his life.

Those who offer double options are Radiohead, one of the key bands to understand the music of the turn of the century. On the one hand, Steven Hyden in This is not happening. Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ (Liburuak) tries to decipher the reasons that made that album by the British possibly the first classic of the 21st century. And on the other hand, fear haunts the territory! (Sixth Floor), where bandleader Thom Yorke and artist Stanley Donwood compile and amplify texts and drawings that served as inspiration for that work.

And in a fully essayistic key, two small works, both suggestive and thematically related: Dance you (Anagrama) by Luis Costa and Edit (Caniche) by Sonia Fernández Pan, about dance and club culture. And also about spaces that host music, This is not the book by Sidecar (66RPM), by Roberto Tierz, memories and tribute to one of the most charismatic venues in Barcelona on its fortieth anniversary for one of its founders.

Also the classic call has someone who writes and reads it. For example, about opera and its greatest representatives, those we know as Divos, and that is the title of his book Jesús Ruiz Mantilla (in Galaxia Gutenberg), about several generations of singers who have marked the turn of the century, of the “vilified and envied” Three Tenors to names like that of the mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, “simply, the best”. And from the voices to the batons: Master music. From Mahler to Dudamel (Fórcola), by Rafael Ortega Basagoiti and Enrique Pérez Adrián, an encyclopedic compendium of conductors from the 19th century to today.

To finish this selection, perhaps nothing better than a title like The infinite rhythm (Ariel), signed by Michael Spitzer. A universal history of humanity through music, because not only music “is essentially human” but also “it makes us human.