QTheMusic.com

Last week we revealed Q's albums of 2011 - get our current issue Q306 now for the full roundown, interviews and more - and today (5 December) we have an online exclusive, our top ten music books of 2011, as edited by Matt Yates @matthewyates1.

1. 33 Revoltions Per Minute
Dorian Lynskey
Faber & Faber
This compelling history of protest songs could not have been timelier, perfectly pre-empting the recent Occupy sit-ins. From Billie Holiday to Green Day, Q writer Lynskey plots the history of activist movements against the songs that inspired them and asks: is protest music dying out? A hard-hitting and often harrowing read.

2. Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco and Destiny
Nile Rodgers
Sphere
Raised by junkie parents, sniffing glue at 11, a Black Panther by his mid-teens, producer Nile Rodgers takes the rags-to-riches memoir to a new level of absurdity. A fabulous raconteur, his tales of narco-fuelled Studio 54 craziness, '80s mega success with, among others, Bowie, Madonna and Duran Duran, and the mother of all crash and burns will leave you breathless.

3. Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction To Its Own Past
Simon Reynolds
Faber & Faber
Is popular culture stuck on loop? That's the question posed by Simon Reynolds in this probing look at music's knack of repeating itself. Even more impressive than Reynolds' witty writing style is how prophetic the book has proved - in 2011 alone, The Stone Roses, Black Sabbath and, er, Steps have all since reunited for nostalgic trips down memory lane.

4. Twenty
Pearl Jam
Atlantic Books
A companion piece to Cameron Crowe's Pearl Jam Twenty film, this book, put together by Jonathan Cohen, acts as a comprehensive oral history of the grunge legends. It's a story well worth telling and Cohen cuts no corners, with the accompanying pictures, dug from the archives, adding the feeling that you're routing through the band's personal diaries.
Listen to the accompanying PJ20 double album now

5. The Glamour Chase: The Maverick Life Of Billy Mackenzie
Tom Doyle
Polygon
Q writer Tom Doyle's absorbing account of the late Associates singer - updated here with a new foreword by Bjork - reveals a gifted but fragile wheeler dealer, who enjoyed the trappings of fleeting fame in the '80s before succumbing to depression and an untimely death at just 39. Sad, funny and frequently frustrating, Mackenzie's tale is one of a singular talent, ultimately tragic but utterly compelling.
Read an extract now

6. Do It For Your Mum
Roy Wilkinson
Rough Trade Books
An autobiography in the traditional form wouldn't befit a band as wonderfully idiosyncratic as British Sea Power. Instead, here their history is told through the eyes of former manager and brother of two of the members Roy Wilkinson, himself distilling the barbed opinions of his 80-year-old father. The resulting book further cements BSP as underrated national treasures.
Read an extract now

7. Black By Design: A 2-Tone Memoir
Pauline Black
Serpent's Tail
Black, the sharp-dressed singer of 2-Tone mainstays The Selecter, was adopted by a white couple in '50s Romford, and her ensuing search for a racial identity provides the key thrust of this gritty biography. There's plenty of pointed reminiscences, too, such as the riotous 2-tone tour of late-'79 where punks, skins and mods came to dance, drink and scrap.

8. 40 Years Of Queen
Harry Doherty
Goodman
Endorsed by the band themselves, this lavishly produced tome, written by journalist Harry Doherty, not only features such pictorial delights as, er, mud wrestlers backstage at Knebworth and Brian May serenading the family cat, it also comes stuffed with all manner of memorabilia, from tickets, posters, CD and lyrics, that will have fans slavering.
Check out a gallery of images from the book now

9. This Is A Call: The Life And Times Of Dave Grohl
Paul Brannigan
HarperCollins
From Washington, DC's punk clubs via the globe-eating success of Nirvana to the Foo Fighters enduring stadia-headlining appeal, former Kerrang! editor Paul Brannigan draws on 10 years' worth of interviews with Grohl himself, as well as friends, associates and band members, to produce the first definitive biography on "the nicest man in rock".
Read an extract now

10. Lady Gaga x Terry Richardson
Hodder & Stoughton
Photographer Terry Richardson bagged 10 months' unlimited access to the world's biggest superstar for this, Lady Gaga's first official book, which features more than 350 unseen portraits. Be it in the studio, on the treadmill or asleep on the kitchen floor, Richardson successfully captures a raw intimacy at the heart of the Gaga pop cultural maelstrom.

Matt Yates, Al Horner, Eve Barlow, Niall Doherty

10:08 AM | 05/12/2011