Fear of music - Garry Mulholland

If there had been a music book of the year award in 2002 Garry Mulholland's This is Uncool: The Greatest 500 Singles Since Punk and Disco would have walked away with it. The review coverage was extremely impressive. Virtually unlike any other music journalist in this country Garry Mulholland has that knack of writing about music with such clarity that brings it all back again, and has you searching for some long-lost dusty record.

But despite going to great lengths to demonstrate the superiority of the single format over the full length album in This Is Uncool, the next logical step is Fear of Music: the Greatest 261 Albums Since Punk and Disco, which roughly follows the original successful, chronological formula of This Is Uncool but, naturally, focuses on albums rather than singles. Or, in Garry Mulholland's words: 'Entire albums don't slap you in the face when blasted out of a radio in the hairdressers. You have to buy them, listen to them, and form a deeper relationship . . .'

The book features plenty of Mulholland's witty, irreverent and insightful criticism, taking in classics from the last thirty years by everyone from Television, David Bowie and The Smiths, through to Eminem, Snoop Doggy Dog, Earth, Wind and Fire and The Prodigy.