MySpace changed everything, and Top Eight gives major voices of the era the chance to tell us why it couldn't last.
“For long stretches, Top Eight is as much about the emo music of the era as it is about MySpace’s symbiotic relationship to it. This makes Tedder’s analysis more credible and more gripping than it would be if he were well versed in only the business side: he knows which crevices to dig into, which inflection points to map. The book is informative without ever feeling didactic, which is refreshing when discussions of the genre are so exhaustingly policed by gatekeepers dictating what is and isn’t emo. There’s a tacit understanding that emo has (at the time of this writing) five discrete waves, and Tedder does an excellent job distinguishing what each wave encompasses.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
"More than a cultural history—this is an epic. Michael Tedder tells one of the weirdest, funniest stories of our time: the rise and fall of MySpace culture. It's a tale full of freaks and geeks and loners and hustlers, discovering music and each other. But Tedder turns it into a brilliant and addictive chronicle of a pop explosion that helped shape our moment. An absolute delight to read." —Rob Sheffield, bestselling author of Love is a Mix Tape, Dreaming the Beatles, and other books
"With all of the rush of being placed into the Top 8 of your crush, Michael Tedder’s Top Eight: How The MySpace Era Changed Music Forever details the Internet’s greatest (and sometimes horniest) social media/music/networking platform with the precision of a Scene Queen clipping raccoon tail extensions into her perfectly flat-ironed fringe. Rigorously reported, researched, and—in the case of your favorite twenty-first century emo bands—remembered, this oral history celebrates ‘00s alternative culture, technology, and early online fandom with real expertise, proving, once and for all, that Mom, this isn’t a phase. (Okay, well, MySpace was. But the effects of it? Those are forever.) A real joy for nostalgic readers, and an eye-opening text for all others." —Maria Sherman, author of Larger than Life: A History of Boy Bands from NKOTB to BTS
“For anyone raised in the era between the record store and the playlist, MySpace was everything. And yet we knew nothing about its rise or fall. Michael Tedder breaks through distant nostalgia with a masterfully written, compelling and emotional history of my generation’s musical touchstone.” —Conor Murphy, Foxing
"I lived many parts of this book as an executive at an independent record label. To hear from inside sources about the struggles to keep it together and issues the business faced—as independent artists and a site not ready for prime time were thrust to the front—gives a new appreciation for the moment we’re in, and for doing things for the right reasons." —Tom Mullen, Music Industry Executive, Founder, Podcaster and Writer at WashedUpEmo.com
“The rise of virtual tribalism in the 21st century is a familiar story by now. But Tedder’s book, an oral history featuring Scene stars such as Dashboard’s Chris Carrabba and Say Anything’s Max Bemis, makes an important point about how we got here. Arriving after the false start of Friendster and before the global takeover of Facebook, MySpace, founded in 2003, was the first social network to capture the masses, becoming the most popular website in the U.S. for a short while. It taught a generation of kids how to package their identities and how to flirt—or fight—with strangers. But what’s equally important, Top Eight suggests, is how MySpace unleashed a hurricane of angst and innovation in music—in a manner that technology seems to do, one way or another, for every generation. —The Atlantic
“This oral history takes you from basement shows to boardrooms to learn, in fascinating, hilarious, and yes, *emo* detail, why a low-tech website with eyesore graphics felt like home to so many music lovers. I loved it!” —DC Pierson, author of The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To
“A thorough and fascinating history, Michael Tedder’s Top Eight traces the unique collision of technology and youth culture that came to define an era. An essential examination that reveals the behind the scenes machinations of this music biz boom to bust tale.” —Bob Mehr, author of the New York Times bestseller Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements
"Life moves pretty fast on the Internet—for instance, not that long ago, MySpace of all things was a big deal in the digital world. Without this book, an important piece of early twenty-first-century music history might have been relegated to the Wayback Machine. Fortunately, Michael Tedder has stepped in to tell the tale of how this early mainstay of social media changed the course of pop forever." —Steven Hyden, author of Twilight of the Gods, This Isn't Happening, and other books
“While the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol were cruising around the Lower East Side becoming NYC art stars, the scene kids were busy at home, organizing their Top 8 and deciding which Paramore song to pin to their profiles. In this comprehensive look at the Meet Me in the Chatroom generation, Michael Tedder gives us a tender, thoughtful look at the music of our MySpace moment and the impact it still has on all of us, today.” —Geoff Rickly, Thursday
“Much like Michael Tedder's best journalism, Top Eight contextualizes ever-evolving soundtracks for a world we're increasingly wishing could be a little bit better. There's dark humor and indignance for the optimism we've lost. And, as always, there's some serious fandom. Top Eight vividly recreates an era marked by the bands we loved and the corporate implications we were too young to understand at the time.” —Julie Seabaugh, Too Soon: Comedy After 9/11 and Are We Good? A Marc Maron Documentary