When Stars Collide explores celebrity, art, music, politics, film and popular culture through twelve famous meetings; significant encounters that had an impact far beyond the charts, becoming part of the grand narrative of music history as it unfolded over the past 70 years. Each meeting is covered in a chapter exploring the nature of the meeting itself - Sinatra and Elvis, Kanye and Taylor Swift, Madonna and Tupac, Kurt and Axl - and the consequences within the culture.
Music books tend to be focused on individual artists or 'scenes'. When Stars Collide will be unusual in its breadth and conception, using the 'collision' concept to explore how different generations of musicians have interacted and brought about changes in aesthetics, class, race and gender politics. It is a book which acknowledges that the story of music is bigger, more complex and more richly textured than any single artist, thought-provoking, funny and inspiring with a critical depth and a lightness of touch.
