83 Books Like Listen to the Dance Music

I would be remiss not to include this fantastic, concise, beautifully illustrated biography of my favorite band. They influenced my picture book series from color palette choices to little easter eggs.

This book begins with the lads as children, and takes us along the way through their meteoric rise, showing the hard work in Germany and then how they landed a number one in America. This makes for a great inspirational read. 

This encyclopedia is a brilliant, deeper dive into many instruments. There’s a selection of more unconventional ones from all over the world too. It includes a range of vocal voices and even the computer as an instrument!

Each instrument is given a gloriously characterful illustration of an animal playing it and is accompanied by a description and interesting facts alongside. You can even scan a QR code that links to a short video meaning you can hear the instrument too, so you can listen and learn at the same time. 

This has to be one of the funniest books about music. I bought it maybe ten years ago or so from the children's bookshop Kinderboekwinkel in Amsterdam. It made me laugh out loud, even though I can’t read or speak Dutch. The illustrations speak for themselves.

Valentijn is a terrible violin player, and after ruining a party for the Queen’s birthday, the townsfolk banish him. He can’t understand why as he thinks he’s great. He performs heroic deeds elsewhere using his playing to help folk, even though it’s terrible. He carries on blissfully unaware and ends up helping a knight in peril and eventually saves the town from invaders and finally performs for the King and Queen, even though everyone has their ears covered.

The illustrations are so lively and energetic, and you can hear how bad the violin must sound from all the reactions of the people and animals… show more.

A wonderfully witty picture book. Rhythmic rhyming text along with lines from rock songs scattered throughout for the adult reader to chuckle at, as well as some great animal band puns. The illustrations are packed with humor.

This book shows us how Badger loves noise and wants to find an outlet for it. He tries choirs, recorder orchestras and an ant marching band, but nothing is the right fit. That is until he stumbles upon a flyer for a rock and roll band and he finds his tribe.

It’s a great story about identity and empowerment in a fun way. It will resonate with young readers who probably find they’re told to be still and quiet, when inside they might feel the opposite! 

War for the Oaks is a fantasy set in a very real Minneapolis (I’ve read parts of it on location) and concerns a war between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts for the city’s soul. As the fey are immortal, each side needs to recruit mortals to infect them with mortality or no victory will be possible. Eddi McCandry, a rock and roll singer, is chosen to fight alongside the Seelie Court.

Eddi starts playing an active role in their strategy and grows into the hero they need. It’s difficult not to love Eddi and her new band – some mortal, some fey – and the fact that the city she’s fighting for is real makes the story even more gripping than the battle for Gondor.

The Bible as far as I am concerned. As I was becoming a rock and roll fantastic in the early 80s, this was my go to source whenever encountering a new act that I hadn’t heard of. I would look up the new act, get an overview of their career and then dive in. It was always fun to see how they reviewed each album, using a scale of 1 to 5 stars. I bought every edition of this book (and will continue to do so, if they keep publishing them) and it was also interesting, and great feature of these books, that in each subsequent edition they would revisit their reviews and often change them, along with their star ratings.

Set in the 1990s alt/goth scene of Birmingham, Alabama – yes, it did have one – Silk was Kiernan’s first published novel, and it immediately attracted a loyal readership. Daria is trying to hold together a relationship and a band (the wonderfully named Stiff Kitten), while her junkie boyfriend Keith shoots up with his father’s antique rig. Meanwhile, weirdness is going on with local curio shop owner Spyder Baxter, whose pet black widow spiders aren’t her only arachnoid allies. This is a hard novel to describe, but for the right sort of reader, it will become a cherished one.

We need a documentary made from this exquisite history of how rock and roll came to Great Britain by the redoubtable Pete Frame, best known for his intricately calligraphed and intensely researched Rock Family Trees. He walks readers through the rise of Tommy Steele and the 2I’s club in Soho, where Cliff Richards, England’s Elvis, and other nascent stars of the new sound were discovered. He skillfully entwines the strains of skiffle, trad jazz, and early British r&b into his narrative and brings to life early British rock and rollers such as Marty Wilde, Billy Fury, Vince Taylor, and others who never made their way across the Atlantic, setting the stage for the emergence of the Beatles and nothing less than an explosion of British culture on a global scale after the many long, dark years following World War II. This brilliant book is stuffed full of original research and… show more.

Rock star romances have been my jam since back when my teen bedroom walls were filled with Tiger Beat pinups. The beautifully-orchestrated banter that keeps the beat of a rock and roll love affair fraught with hit and miss encounters helps build the tension towards a satisfying crescendo. (Full disclosure: I begged author Kelly Kay to disclose her real-life inspiration, and it was exactly who I’d pictured!) The hotel pool scene where Meg and rockstar Ian do nothing more than talk (fully clothed) lives rent free in my head as one of the steamiest scenes I’ve ever read. 

Tom Petty is one of my favorite songwriters, musicians, and singers of all-time.

While I had the opportunity to see him in concert many times starting in the early 1980s, I never knew how he got there. This book shares Petty’s inspiring journey from his humble beginnings in Gainesville, Florida to becoming a rock & roll hall of fame.

His voice and looks may not have been immediately embraced by everyone when he first started, but his story of perseverance is inspiring as is his creative songwriting and storytelling.