your favorite band is killing me by steven hyden

I wanted it to be a little bit broader and touch on other things. I knew from the beginning that I didn’t want to write just a straightforward music book. The inherent drama of conflict is always interesting to people, but I also liked how open ended it was. No one had ever done a book on these rivalries before, so that was good. What attracted me to it was that on the one hand it seemed like a simple idea you could describe to someone in a sentence or two, which is always a good thing to have for a book you want to sell. I didn’t at the time, but I started brainstorming and this idea popped up early on. The boring part of the story is that I had an agent approach me, and he asked me if I had any ideas for a book. Steven Hyden: I’m not sure exactly why this came to mind.

Was that particular pairing a catalyst for your idea for the book? I actually refused to listen to Oasis for a long time the way you did with Blur. For people in our rough generation bracket and of a certain music geekiness, Oasis vs. I laugh because when I was reading your previews for the book, you talked about that essay in particular and how people would be upset about your opinions about it. And since Aquarium Drunkard is cited in the book (see page 75), we talked with Hyden via phone about pop culture rivalries, how a lot of things can change during writing a book, the demise of Grantland, and the ever changing definition of classic rock.Īquarium Drunkard: I have followed your writing pretty closely for a while now, and I really enjoy it, which makes it all the tougher for me to start off by telling you how wrong you are about Oasis and Blur. Club, the defunct Grantland, and now his newest gig at Uproxx. Hyden has spent a decade and a half writing for sites like The A.V. That’s part of the thesis behind Steven Hyden’s new book Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About The Meaning of Life. At times as much the creation of commercially driven record labels and promotion people as it is the artists themselves, they make for an interesting study of the culture, but maybe even more so of ourselves. Rock rivalries inhabit a weird part of rock and roll’s unruly history.

Your favorite band is killing me by steven hyden