Alex Coles
We represent Alex for Literary, Film and TV, brand, acting, stage, live events, and podcasting rights. To speak to us about these please email [email protected]
Alex Coles is an author drawn to the borders between themes and genres of popular music. His most recent book, Tainted Love: From Nina Simone to Kendrick Lamar (Sternberg Press, 2023), is an account of twisted romantic ballads with chapters devoted to Roxy Music, Little Simz, Soft Cell and Frank Sinatra. Alex launched the book with a roundtable debate at the Whitechapel Gallery and appeared on BBC6 Music to promote it.
His next book, Fusion! From Alice Coltrane to Moor Mother (Sternberg Press, 2024), discusses the role of jazz as a catalyst in popular music. The book explores a range of collaborations between jazz and popular musicians, including Herbie Hancock and Kimiko Kasai in 1979 and Kamasi Washington and Kendrick Lamar in 2015. Overlooked partnerships between Lou Reed and Don Cherry, and Alice Coltrane and Carlos Santana, and the role of marginalized figures such as Lora Logic are brought into crisp focus.
Alex is currently writing Boys Don’t Cry, a penetrating examination of the way pop music functions as a vehicle for emotive expression of masculinity. Besides the Cure song the book is affectionately named after, songs by Fun Boy Three and Anohni are also included.
BOOKS
Tainted Love: From Nina Simone to Kendrick Lamar
The first book-length inquiry into the subject of the twisted romantic ballad, giving a sense of both its history and contemporary currency. Sometimes extreme, this twist to the conventional romantic ballad spans across gender and generational boundaries to subvert our understanding of both the genre’s function and its behavior. Each chapter of Tainted Love takes a deep dive into a single twisted ballad, examining both its inner workings–lyrics, melody, and vocal approach–and its broader cultural resonance.