As one reader posted on Goodreads:
“Thank you, Matthew Restall, for researching and writing this book about Post Pop. Three artists that I have enjoyed over the years and listened to while finding the sounds remarkable and unique and never knowing why. Thanks for informing me why.”
Three music-obsessed, suburban London teenagers set out to make their own kind of pop music: after years of struggle, success came to David Sylvian (and Japan) and to Mark Hollis (and Talk Talk); Kate Bush became an overnight star. But when their unique talents brought them international acclaim, they turned their backs on stardom. ‘Just when I think I’m winning’, sang Sylvian on ‘Ghosts’, a 1982 Japan hit, ‘when my chance came to be king, the ghosts of my life grew wilder than the wind’. Haunted by doubt, spooked by fame and shocked by the industry’s sexism and rapacity, Sylvian, Hollis and Bush were driven to brave new destinations. Inspired by artists from every genre, and by their own creative originality and inner psychological struggles, they forged something new, changing how we hear pop music and the role of its creators in modern society.
According to this review (see the interview with Restall at https://trackingangle.com/features/worlds-of-possibility-matthew-restall-on-the-post-pop-journey), the subtitle to Restall’s book—How David Sylvian, Mark Hollis and Kate Bush Reinvented Pop Music—is “a bold claim, but one that the Penn State professor maintains has been made before. And even if he isn’t the first scholar to connect those particular dots, you still might find yourself wondering while you stare at the cover if there’s something to his hypothesis . . . If the book at times tumbles a touch too far towards the academic, once you pry apart the seams you’ll find Restall approaches his material in the kind of thoughtful way that ultimately sends you back to the music.”