Listening to Classic American Popular Songs

Mr. Forte succeeds in the difficult task of marrying in this book the two adjectives of the title of this review. You feel the love for the subject and the thought given to it. Maybe one can disagree on the choice of the songs analyzed but, of course, that can only be a matter of taste, though I have the impression the choice was dictated sometime by the innovations brought from the song to the idiom rather than by its intrinsic aestetic value (I'm referring to songs like How Little We Know or Something to Live For: very interesting ones, but hardly classic like other ones which didn't make it in the book). But this is a minor and subjective complaint to a great work which must be read both from music lovers and would-be songwriters.