THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (November 5, 2023): This week’s issue features music memoirs and biographies crammed into a single season including Madonna, Tupac Shakur, Sly Stone, Britney Spears, Thurston Moore, Jeff Tweedy and — soon — Barbra Streisand…

The Muchness of Madonna

Mary Gabriel’s biography is as thorough as its subject is disciplined. But in relentlessly defending the superstar, where’s the party?

By Alexandra Jacobs

MADONNA: A Rebel Life, by Mary Gabriel

“I want to be alone,” Greta Garbo’s dancer character famously said in “Grand Hotel,” a quote permanently and only semi-accurately attached to the actress after she retreated from public life. Garbo was first on the list of Golden Agers in one of Madonna’s biggest hits, “Vogue,” but the pop star has long seemed to embody this maxim’s very opposite. She wants to be surrounded, as if with Dolby sound.

Rock ’n’ Soul: The Amazing Story of Sly & the Family Stone

This black-and-white photograph shows a young man singing into a microphone. He has an Afro and is wearing oversize glasses and a large necklace.

At the age of 80, Sly Stone has finally produced his memoir, and it gives a strong sense of this giant’s voice and sensibility.

‘By Alan Light

THANK YOU (FALETTINME BE MICE ELF AGIN): A Memoir, by Sly Stone with Ben Greenman

It is difficult to convey just how astoundingly unlikely it is that this book exists. Sly Stone is one of pop music’s truest geniuses and greatest mysteries, who essentially disappeared four decades ago in a cloud of drugs and legal problems after recording several albums’ worth of incomparable, visionary songs. Fleeting, baffling, blink-and-you-miss-him appearances at his 1993 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction and a 2006 Grammy tribute only served as reminders that he was still alive and still not well.