This expanded and updated edition of the 1998 Collected Lyrics marks the 40th anniversary of Smith’s seminal debut album, Horses (which is number forty-four on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 100 Greatest Albums). Smith’s reputation as a poet and artist preceded the iconic music, and all these forms coalesce to produce the definitive, three-hundred-page volume Patti Smith: Collected Lyrics, 1970-2015 (Ecco, $29.99). This book contains all the singer’s lyrics, including those from thirty-five new and recently-recorded songs, back to Smith’s very first song, written for Janis Joplin in 1970. Other special features include an introduction by the artist, Smith’s original drawings and photographs, and facsimiles of Smith’s handwritten commentary on some of the more controversial and iconoclastic pieces. This is a perfect companion piece for M Train—and an essential volume in the rock-and-roll canon.
- Rhonda S.