Listen Without Prejudice - Washington Free Beacon

This sounds like a great book for any music lover
The Number Ones succeeds in large measure because it takes its subject matter more seriously than pop’s detractors but less seriously than its monomaniacal fanboys. Breihan mostly avoids, for example, the pathology of ascribing huge cultural change to individual songs or artists, a trend that tends to burden the medium with more weight than it can bear. The closest he gets to a Talmudic reading of any of these numbers is an attempt to find more meaning in Bob Dylan’s lyrics for "Mr. Tambourine Man" than is likely there, but that too can be forgiven. If you’re not overreading Dylan, you’re probably not fit to be a music critic.