The Sound of Being Human: How Music Shapes Our Lives

The Sound of Being Human explores why music plays such a deep-rooted role in our lives from before we are born to our last days. At its heart is Jude's own story: how songs helped her wrestle with the grief of losing her father; concoct her own sense of self; sky-rocket her relationships, both real and imagined, propel her own journey into working life, adulthood and parenthood, and look to the future.

Shaped around twelve songs, ranging from ABBA's 'Super Trouper' to Neneh Cherry's 'Buffalo Stance', Kraftwerk's 'Radioactivity' to Martha Reeves and the Vandellas' 'Heat Wave', the book combines memoir and historical, scientific and cultural enquiry to show how music can shape different versions of ourselves; how we rely upon music for comfort, for epiphanies, and for sexual and physical connection; how we grow with songs, and songs grow inside us. It is about music's power to help us tell our own stories, whatever they are, and make them sing.