Uncut’s Top 10 books of 2025

10 OUR SECRETS ARE THE SAME
JIM KERR & CHARLIE BURCHILL WITH GRAEME THOMSON
CONSTABLE
Friends since their early childhood in Glasgow’s Southside, Kerr and Burchill are the core of Simple Minds, perhaps because their personalities are complementary. Jim is a loner, while Charlie is more sociable. Graeme Thomson, whose Themes For Great Cities did much to rehabilitate the Minds’ critical reputation, offers a sympathetic frame for the duo’s tale in this engaging oral history.

9 RUMOURS OF MY DEMISE
EVAN DANDO
FABER
The Lemonhead’s memoir is an unapologetic ramble through a career characterised by luck and carelessness. Dando has an ambivalent attitude to fame, while also enjoying more than a few breaths of the rarefied air. “It’s kind of egotistical to say that you don’t have a big ego,” he suggests of a life spent asking “why not?” when more cautious minds might have wondered “why?”

8 PAUL WELLER: DANCING THROUGH THE FIRE
DAN JENNINGS
CONSTABLE
Dan Jennings hosts a podcast about Paul Weller and his granular oral history is culled from over 200 hours of interviews. It’s brisk and intimate, with contributions from all of The Jam, Weller’s family and friends. The early family memories are priceless: the Beatles-obsessed Weller knocking out tunes on an old upright piano with his cat sitting on the lid and his mum saying, “It’s fucking Beethoven.”

7 BLESS ME FATHER: A LIFE STORY
KEVIN ROWLAND
EBURY SPOTLIGHT
Regrets? Kevin Rowland has a few. Ditching Dexys’ dandyish attire (jodhpurs, baseball uniforms, bolero jackets) to fit in on the 2 Tone tour stopped the Midnight Runners being the most culturally significant, coolest group of the 1980s, he suggests. The singer’s personal inventory is even harsher, as nagging alienation continually trumps contentment. “People don’t change unless they have to,” says Rowland. “I had to.”

6 THE HARDER I FIGHT THE MORE I LOVE YOU
NEKO CASE
HEADLINE
Case takes no prisoners in this tough, tender memoir, in which music is a welcome refuge from a childhood of “bottomless loneliness”. The details of Case’s “feral” upbringing are gothic in their intensity, the central fact being abandonment by her mother, who fakes her own death and then reappears. Life on the road in a van is a welcome escape, though not without its challenges.

5 LIVING IN THE PRESENT WITH JOHN PRINE
TOM PIAZZA
OMNIBUS PRESS
Treme writer Piazza met with Prine to start work on a collaborative memoir, but the poet laureate of Illinois died six weeks later. The author’s biography is true to the spirit of his diverting conversations with Prine, stitching a life from a number of refracted memories and anecdotes in the manner of Bob Dylan’s Chronicles. A warm and engaging tribute to a great artist.

4 BREAD OF ANGELS
PATTI SMITH
BLOOMSBURY
Following the success of her artistic memoir Just Kids , here Smith delves into family lore, detailing “a Proustian childhood … of intermittent quarantine and convalescence”. An early encounter with Rimbaud’s Illuminations at Philadelphia bus station sets her artistic course, leading to her poetic career (via the Chelsea Hotel). Smith’s impressionistic memoir touches on her musical breakthrough and ends with a dramatic revelation when she explores her DNA.

3 THE TREMOLO DIARIES
JUSTIN CURRIE
NEW MODERN
The Del Amitri frontman’s diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease haunts the pages of this moving road diary, following the band on tours of the US and Europe. The dull rituals of the musician’s life dominate, but the gloom is dispelled by Currie’s mordant wit. Freed from the need to be diplomatic, Currie is bracingly acerbic about the reality of life on and off the tourbus.

2 JOHN & PAUL: A LOVE STORY IN SONGS
IAN LESLIE
FABER
To understand the genius of The Beatles, Leslie reduces them to a duo, focusing on the intense relationship between Lennon and McCartney, which he calls a romance. He is more persuasive when dissecting the songs, noting the influence of girl groups and how, with their unaffected playfulness, The Beatles invented a new way of being.

1 THE COLONEL AND THE KING
PETER GURALNICK
WHITE RABBIT
With his authoritative two-volume biography of Elvis, and another on Sam Phillips, Guralnick has established himself as the official chronicler of The King. Granted access to the archive of Presley’s manager Colonel Tom Parker, he illuminates their relationship, showing how a Dutch runaway who learned his craft promoting carnivals made Presley the most popular entertainer in the world. Both men were loyal to each other, and in what Guralnick terms “a shared tragedy”, both were undone by money. Presley couldn’t stop spending it, Parker was addicted to gambling. An introvert pretending to be an extrovert, the Colonel rewrote the rules of the game.