Love Songs
The Hidden History
Ted Gioia
Reviews and Awards
"[a] wide-ranging and fascinating study" - PD Smith, The Guardian
"In this wide-ranging and fascinating study, music historian Ted Gioia examines the surprisingly ancient and diverse origins of the love song and its enduring power over us." - Peter Smith, The Guardian
"A fascinating new book... clearly a work of love itself." - Daily Express, Jenny Selway
"[A] richly researched and heartfelt song book of the ages... Gioia boldly and brilliantly enters the space between the noises of ancient fertility rites and the sexualised music videos of YouTube to discover how melody and love songs, like hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate, are never out of date." - The Times
"An illuminating and entertaining book... As with his previous book on work songs, and his well-known history of jazz, Gioia shows a gift for condensing a vast mass of detail into a graceful narrative... Vast and fascinating." - Telegraph, Ivan Hewett
"[Gioia] is one of those rare writers who [is] as comfortable with the comprehensive picture as with the telling example: clear-headed and persuasive as the overall argument of this intriguing book is, it is also packed with fascinating detail about everything from the love story of Dido and Aeneas to the twerking of Miley Cyrus... [Overall] this is an absorbing, provocative but consistently thoughtful study of a somewhat neglected area of musical history, a pioneering and useful complement to Gioias existing studies of Work Songs and Healing Songs." - London Jazz News, Sebastian Scotney
"Extremely comprehensive, covering a huge swath of global music history in a conversational yet knowledgeable style." - The Australian, John McBeath
"Gioia's book covers a tremendous amount of ground and gives you something to remember on almost every page." - The New Yorker
"Gioia has constructed a mind-expanding, deep-focus piece of scholarship here..." - The Atlantic
"Gioia's is always an intellectual odyssey worth attending to." - The Buffalo News
"Taking a somewhat chronological approach to the subject, Gioia has used his extensive knowledge of love songs throughout time and human history to write an unorthodox examination of this topic. The reader is transported from bird song to ancient Rome, from the troubadours to folk songs, from crooners to contemporary rappers. This is a fascinating approach. Essential." - Choice
