Synopses & Reviews
From the bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape and Turn Around Bright Eyes, "a funny, insightful look at the sublime torture of adolescence".Entertainment Weekly
The 1980s meant MTV and John Hughes movies, big dreams and bigger shoulder pads, and millions of teen girls who nursed crushes on the members of Duran Duran. As a solitary teenager stranded in the suburbs, Rob Sheffield had a lot to learn about women, love, music, and himself. And he was sure his radio had all the answers.
As evidenced by the bestselling sales of Sheffield's first book, Love Is a Mix Tape, the connection between music and memory strikes a chord with readers. Talking to Girls About Duran Duran strikes that chord all over again, and is a pitch-perfect trip through '80s music-from Bowie to Bobby Brown, from hair metal to hip-hop. But this book is not just about music. It's about growing up and how every song is a snapshot of a moment that you'll remember the rest of your life.
Review
"A handful of rock writers can explain what they think about music, and lots of rock writers can explain what they feel about music. What makes Rob Sheffield different is that he understands how those feelings are generated. He can turn those abstract emotions into concrete thoughts. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes the smartest guy in the room is also the funniest guy in the room...and the nicest guy...and the tallest guy...and the most vocal Chaka Khan fan. Read Talking to Girls About Duran Duran and enter that room." Chuck Klosterman
Review
"Music journalist Sheffield is best known for Love Is a Mix Tape (2007), which dealt with the sudden death of his young wife. Here he revisits the decade everyone loves to hate, the 1980s. Sheffield makes a convincing argument that the eighties were ruled by inauthenticity in everything except pop culture, which accounts for why its music and films (especially those of John Hughes) continue to exert such influence. Here Sheffield takes the decade year by year, naming each chapter for the seminal pop song that defined his experiences during that time. The Go-Go's “Our Lips Are Sealed” leads off the chapter about his older, more knowledgeable sisters, who taught him how to dance and what to wear, while Madonna's “Crazy for You” introduces the summer he visited Lourdes, which leads into a discussion of the way his Catholic faith was the perfect preparation for being a pop fan—“lots of ritual, lots of ceremony, lots of private obations as we genuflect before our sacred spaces.” Heartfelt and funny, this collection is most likely to appeal to fellow Gen Xers." Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist
About the Author
Rob Sheffield has been a music journalist for more than twenty years. He is a contributing editor at
Rolling Stone, where he writes about music, TV, and pop culture, and regularly appears on MTV and VH1. He is the author of the
New York Times bestseller
Love Is a Mix Tape, which has been translated into French, German, Swedish, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and other languages he cannot read. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.