This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days

John Darnielle

Hardcover

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Collected and annotated lyrics from one of music's most visionary bards, John Darnielle.

A work of rapturous beauty, This Year: 365 Songs Annotated celebrates the creative life and the musical genius of John Darnielle through his most meaningful songs.

From his early days recording on a boom box, through the evolution of the Mountain Goats from a solo project to a full band, to his continued influence on indie music, This Year pairs the definitive texts of 365 John Darnielle songs with first-person commentaries on his life and music. These commentaries reveal how the songs came to be and the people who inspired them: his family and friends; his wife, Lalitree Darnielle; his longtime collaborator, Peter Hughes; and even his literary heroes, among many others. Here are the origins of "This Year," "No Children," "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton," and "Up the Wolves," as well as Darnielle's literary influences, including Flannery O'Connor, Jorge Luis Borges, and Stephen King.

This Year, spanning decades, becomes the definitive literary record of one of the greatest songwriters and musical creative forces of all time.

Book Details

Publisher: MCD
Publish Date: Dec 2nd, 2025
Pages: 560
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 9.25in - 6.35in - 1.80in - 1.71lb
EAN: 9780374606497
Categories: • Lyrics• Genres & Styles - Rock• American - General

About the Author

Darnielle, John: - John Darnielle is the author of the novels Devil House, Universal Harvester, and Wolf in White Van, all three New York Times bestsellers. Wolf in White Van was a National Book Award nominee and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction. Universal Harvester was a finalist for the Locus Award. Darnielle lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his wife and sons when he's not on the road touring with his band the Mountain Goats.

Praise for this book

"This lovely book is both a beautiful collection of songs and a fascinating guide to the strange work of making art in the world. A beautiful gift from one of our greatest songwriters."
―John Green, author of Everything is Tuberculosis

"An illuminated manuscript. These songs, released from their recordings, stand even more vividly as stories: self-contained, richly colored, extending their private inks into the wider world."
―Patricia Lockwood, author of Will There Ever Be Another You

"John Darnielle is the best lyricist of his generation. And he is one of only two writers--the other being Scott Walker--whose song lyrics I would want to read in a book. These lyrics are as linguistically concentrated, rhythmically astute, and surprising as any contemporary poem, and Darnielle's commentary, itself beautifully written, is a fan's dream come true. I have hoped for such a book, but this book is more than I hoped for."
―Shane McCrae, author of New and Collected Hell

"[These] lyrics are brilliant . . . Darnielle is one of the best songwriters of his generation, and his words are achingly beautiful . . . [This Year] offers a look into Darnielle's inspiration and songwriting process, and the result is even more impressive than one might expect. An inspired project."
―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)