Nothing is Real: The Beatles Were Underrated And Other Sweeping Statements About Pop Paperback – Big Book, 21 March 2019

The writer is very honest, independent & perceptive.

I liked the book - and unsurprisingly, i used it to read.

Dave Hepworth is a brilliant writer who knows his stuff and puts the pompous in their place. He is witty as well as knowledgeable with fantastic remarks about everything from sub-genres in music, the differences between male and female musical appreciation and Jools Holland. Hepworth is easy to read and so enlightening. What are you waiting for?

Hepworth's years in the music bizz have armed him with a thousand stories but his real genius lies in being able to marshal the facts into coherent lines of thought and argument.

I've seen a few complaints about this book being little more than a collection of The Word essays strung together. I don't have any problem with that having forgotten the few issues I read many years ago. I was more disappointed at how flimsy the articles were. It's a short read - I finished it in under two hours, and the articles range from a couple of thousand words to a couple of hundred. There's a strong...focus seems the wrong word because there really isn't much focus across the whole thing, so let's say an emphasis on the '60s and '70s, with influences of the blues given a short once over, but ultimately it really does feel like, to put in musical terms a collection of B sides, rarities and oddities - the sort of thing record companies will put out when a band is out of contract and that's all they've got left to push. It's an odd collection of personal thoughts, many of which feel like notebook noodling (there aren't many record shops around any more, why I don't like to be asked about music at parties, iTunes isn't as good as putting together an old compilation etc), of a old man shouting at the kids on his lawn. There are a few fairly random top ten lists (music trilogies, best gigs, songs about travelling), that you could find on anyone interested in music's blog, and there's little to no deep insight on any of them that that same blogger couldn't do as well or better. Overall disappointing and given how much I enjoyed Hepworth as a presenter and journalist doesn't make me want to rush out to get any of his other books. The back cover blurb says he's one of the best music writers around, 'a dream author', a 'clever writer', and 'sublime' - those things may well be true, and the more holistic praise may be because this is a collection of essays, but as a volume the pieces feel very light weight and thrown together.