Harper Horizon Announces Anthems We Love: 29 Iconic Artists on the Hit Songs That Shaped Our Lives By Music Writer Steve Baltin
Out October 25, 2022
Harper Horizon Announces Anthems We Love: 29 Iconic Artists on the Hit Songs That Shaped Our Lives By Music Writer Steve Baltin
Featuring Interviews On Songs By Aerosmith, The Beach Boys, Carly Simon, CHIC, Linda Ronstadt, Linkin Park, Shania Twain, TLC + So Many More
Read An Excerpt With Gerard Way Of My Chemical Romance On “Welcome To The Black Parade” Over At The Daily Beast
Harper Horizon announces Anthems We Love: 29 Iconic Artists On The Hit Songs That Shaped Our Lives (due for publication on October 25, 2022), a new collection from veteran music writer Steve Baltin that investigates the stories, serendipities, and moments of inspiration that went into some of the songs that have most authoritatively soundtracked the past century. Featuring interviews with a wide-ranging assortment of musical legends — from Carly Simon and The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson to TLC’s Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas and Edge from U2 — about the stories behind some of their most classic songs, Anthems We Love is an essential look at how a song’s legacy is built that seeks to better understand the universal power of popular music in all its forms.
Today, The Daily Beast shares an excerpt from Anthems We Love: An interview with My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way about “Welcome To The Black Parade,” an emo epic that pushed the band into superstardom and will be a highlight of many nights of their upcoming reunion tour. Read the excerpt on My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome To The Black Parade” over at The Daily Beast.
Guided by Baltin’s informational, direct style, Anthems We Love gets to the heart of pop hits from throughout the 20th and 21st century, across a wide range of scenes and years. Whether it’s U2 examining how “One” became a rallying cry at varying points of history (including post-9/11 and through the AIDS epidemic), The Doors’ Robby Krieger examining the metaphorical potential of the lyric “Light My Fire,” Janis Ian explaining how “At Seventeen”’s exuberance was abetted by an amateur rhythm guitar player joining her in the studio, and Linkin Park guitarist Brad Delson tracing his band’s meteoric rise alongside their hit “In The End,” Baltin expertly unspools the various musical, political, social, and personal threads that make up the fabric of a song’s existence as both a piece of art and a cultural artifact.
“I have done thousands of interviews over the years and one of the most common refrains, no matter how big the artist, is songs are like children. Anthems is what happens when those songs have grown up,” Baltin says. “All 29 of these songs have gone into the world and been a huge part of people’s lives, whether they’ve been played at weddings, funerals, births. And my favorite part of writing this book was hearing from the artists how they’ve been moved — and even shocked — by the way these songs have become part of the fabrics of listeners’ worlds in ways the artist could never have imagined. Anthems proves that when a song leaves the nest, it becomes the world’s.”
Anthems also includes a foreword from Cameron Crowe, a prologue by Spencer Proffer, and an original chapter written by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. Keep an eye out for news about book events for Anthems We Love,and pre-order Anthems We Love here.
About Steve Baltin
Once a proud teenage music geek, Southern California-based author and journalist Steve Baltin has turned that passion into a career that can only be described as a rock and roll fantasy. As a writer for Rolling Stone, L.A. Times,Chicago Tribune, Billboard, Playboy, and many more, as well as the host of the podcast My Turning Point and the Amazon Prime/Hulu streaming series Riffing With, Baltin has interviewed a who's who of music luminaries. Among his favorite interviews are Alanis Morissette, Slash, Stevie Wonder, Dave Grohl, ASAP Rocky, B. B. King, John Mellencamp, Aretha Franklin, Adele, and a list of artists in the thousands.
About Harper Horizon
Harper Horizon is a Nashville-based imprint within HarperCollins Focus, publishing nonfiction literature across a number of categories, including self-help, memoir, health and wellness, cooking, and other inspirational topics that reflect the values and cultural diversity of America's Heartland. Harper Horizon exists to empower the minds of readers to all things possible, whether that is learning a new skill, building community, improving the environment, or having the courage to embody their beliefs. Learn more at www.harper-horizon.com.
Anthems We Love
Foreword by Cameron Crowe
Prologue by Spencer Proffer
The Temptations, “My Girl”
The Beach Boys, “God Only Knows”
The Doors, “Light My Fire”
Jefferson Airplane, “White Rabbit”
Neil Diamond, “Sweet Caroline”
The 5th Dimension, “Aquarius / Let The Sun Shine In”
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “Our House”
The Jackson 5, “ABC”
Carly Simon, “Anticipation”
Don McClean, “American Pie”
The Spinners, “I’ll Be Around”
Barry Manilow, “Could It Be Magic”
KISS, “Rock and Roll All Nite”
Janis Ian, “At Seventeen”
Hall & Oates, “Sara Smile”
Aerosmith, “Walk This Way”
Bob Marley, “One Love”
Earth, Wind & Fire, “September”
CHIC, “Le Freak”
TOTO, “Africa”
Linda Ronstadt, “Skylark”
Tears For Fears, “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”
Fleetwood Mac, “Big Love”
U2, “One”
Shania Twain, “You’re Still The One”
Tom Waits, “Take It With Me”
TLC, “No Scrubs”
Linkin Park, “In The End”
My Chemical Romance, “Welcome To The Black Parade”
Connect With Steve Baltin / Anthems We Love