David Byrne: How Music Works

David Byrne's internationally bestselling magnum opus on the subject of music

How Music Works is David Byrne's bestselling, buoyant celebration of a subject he has spent a lifetime thinking about. Drawing on his own work over the years with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and his myriad collaborators - along with journeys to Wagnerian opera houses, African villages, and anywhere music exists - Byrne shows how music emerges from cultural circumstance as much as individual creativity. It is his magnum opus, and an impassioned argument about music's liberating, life-affirming power.

"It was wildly ambitious to try and turn this galaxy of theory into a readable work of scholarship but Byrne has done it, and done it with style. Brian Eno might as well cancel that book deal now" Mark Ellen ― The Observer

"As well as being an investigation into the context in which music is made, How Music Works is an accomplished celebration of an ever-evolving art form that can alter how we look at ourselves and the world" Fiona Sturges ― Independent

"Brilliantly original" ― New York Times Book Review

"As accessible as pop yet able to posit deep and startlingly original thoughts and discoveries in almost every paragraph . . . this book will make you hear music in a different way" Oliver Keens ― The Sunday Telegraph

"A very involving read - Byrne is good company - he has a gift for a telling analogy that makes complex points easily grasped" Keith Bruce ― The Herald

"How Music Works is a melange of bookish musings on how music is shaped by the places it is played and the technology used to create and disseminate it" Danny Eccleston ― MOJO

"An entertaining and erudite book . . . this is a serious, straight-forward account of an art from that also manages to be inspiring" Peter Aspden ― Financial Times 

"Given the vastness of the subject, calling a treatise How Music Works seems intellectually arrogant, but it could also be seen as disarmingly frank, a fresh perspective from a down-to-earth mind. David Byrne's book, although a self-conscious art object (backwards pagination, upholstered cover and so on) contains plenty of plain-spoken, sensible observations: a dichotomy typical of the man" ― Guardian

"Incisive and intriguing" Nick Curtis ― The Evening Standard

"How Music Works is not just a noticeably handsome book but a beguiling and hugely perceptive one too" Jonathan O’Brien ― Sunday Business Post