The Sound of Being Human: How Music Shapes Our Lives

Jude Rogers' The Sound of Being Human transcends a casual appreciation of pop music; it's a profound and deeply resonant exploration of the intensely personal and universally felt connection between our lives and the songs that soundtrack them. Ian Rankin rightly notes its fascinating journey from the personal to the universal, revealing the often-underestimated emotional and cerebral weight that popular music carries.

Stuart Maconie beautifully captures the book's essence, describing it as "moving and absorbing," a mosaic expertly blending memoir, insightful analysis, personal anecdote, and cultural chronicle. Rogers avoids the simplistic notion of music as mere background noise, instead meticulously dissecting why it plays such a deep-rooted role in our existence, from our earliest days to our final moments.

At the heart of this compelling work lies Rogers' own story: how specific songs became anchors in her life, helping her navigate the profound grief of losing her father, forge a sense of self during a lonely adolescence, fuel the intensity of early relationships, propel her through working life and parenthood, and shape her outlook on the future.

Structured around twelve carefully chosen songs, spanning ABBA's anthemic 'Super Trouper' to Neneh Cherry's defiant 'Buffalo Stance', Kraftwerk's stark 'Radioactivity' to Martha Reeves and the Vandellas' exuberant 'Heat Wave', the book transcends simple memoir. Rogers seamlessly weaves in historical, scientific, and cultural enquiry to demonstrate the myriad ways in which music shapes different versions of ourselves. She illuminates how we rely on it for solace, for moments of profound epiphany, and for the visceral connection of sex and physicality. The Sound of Being Human avoids sentimental clichés, instead offering a nuanced and deeply felt understanding of how we grow with songs, and how songs, in turn, grow within us, aiding us in confronting grief, the passage of time, and the power of memory. Ultimately, this is a powerful testament to music's extraordinary ability to help us articulate our own stories, whatever they may be, and to make them sing.