«There's no dog in the prose of Martha Bayles. She writes clearly and superbly of the darkness that has overtaken popular music, and understands well the defeatist techniques that would-be radical pop entertainers inherit from misbegotten fine art.» - Stanley Crouch, author of The All-American Skin Game, or, Decoy of Race
«By drawing out the theme of perverse modernism, dhe has revealed how intellectually derivative much of contemporary pop mythology is.» - Edward Rothstein, New York Times
«Hole in Our Soul is engaging, provocative, always suggestive, sometimes annoying, and often incisive in a language that is free of post-modern jargon and deconstructive cant... Whether you agree or disagree with all her thesis, one is struck with the grace and humanity animating it all.» - Gerald Early, author of Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture
«Essential reading... Instead of preading helplessness before the supposedly mighty monolith of the entertainment industry, [Bayles] traces the story to it's real roots in the clashing ideas, emotions, and musical sounds of the twentieth century.» - Dr. Billy Taylor
«An illuminating look at where American culture is today, and how it got there. Brilliant.» - Sonny Rollins

Martha Bayles's Hole in our Soul is cultural criticism at its best. In the past many writers condemned pop culture because it wasn't high art; today many academic critics, especially those associated with cultural studies, refuse to make any judgments at all--except political ones. Martha Bayles, on the other hand, makes convincing judgments according to standards appropriate to the music she is discussing. She conveys both her genuine delight in the best of pop and her rejection of the worst. Without jargon and without relying on an all-encompassing theory, she makes a persuasive case about "the loss of beauty and meaning in American popular music." Hole in our Soul should be on anybody's short list of the best books on American popular culture in the last fifty years.

Martha Bayles sees a decline in popular music because much of it has deviated from its vitalising Afro-American roots.She makes some very perceptive comments on various artists.For example: "the young Dylan was more interesting than a lot of 1960s rock stars because he was genuinely torn between the musical tradition he loved and the counterculture that loved him.""Heavy metal offers ritual death, but at the end of the ordeal, there is no rebirth."After commercial success, Nirvana "quickly retreated back into thrash, noise, and an emotional gamut running from A (for angst) to B (for blitzkrieg)." Van Morrison "at his best sounds like exactly what he is: a sorrowful amateur poet who's been dunked in the life-giving waters.""Prince's goatishness is preferable to the icy decadence purveyed by Madonna."And "Springsteen's best songs have a melodic force capable of defying gravity, in effect lifting the dinosaur off the ground and making it fly-albeit heavily, like an overfed pterodactyl."The author's forthright opinions will step on many toes, but it is refreshing to read someone who can write intelligently about popular music.She has a lot of challenging things to say, and she says them well.