All pop musicians are fake, or so think the authors of this new book. I agree with the reviewers major criticism: “The weakness of Faking It, otherwise a fascinating and nimble investigation of pop’s paradoxes, is its failure to explore the political implications to which it so often points. Barker and Taylor have escaped the authenticity trap, but only by embracing the pleasures of inauthenticity. There’s nothing wrong with entertainment, they insist. True enough; but there’s nothing wrong with taking music seriously, either, even when it’s ‘fake’.” Link (via)

Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor, two publishing professionals who have turned out their personal record collections to produce a persuasive defence of inauthenticity as the defining characteristic of great popular music, borrow the title of their book, Faking It, from a suicide note – the most authentic, and also the stupidest, genre of all. “The fact is,” wrote Nirvana’s singer Kurt Cobain shortly before eating the muzzle of a shotgun in 1994, “I can’t fool you, any one of you . . . The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I’m having 100% fun.” (The italics are Cobain’s.)