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Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You

A Memoir

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Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You

Written by: Lucinda Williams
Narrated by: Lucinda Williams
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About this listen

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The iconic singer-songwriter and three-time Grammy winner opens up about her traumatic childhood in the Deep South, her years of being overlooked in the music industry, and the stories that inspired her enduring songs in this “bracingly candid chronicle” (The Wall Street Journal).

“[Williams’s] memoir transmutes the wisdom, pain, and hard-won joy of her life into stories that stick with you.”—Vogue

A WASHINGTON POST AND ROLLING STONE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Lucinda Williams’s rise to fame was anything but easy. Raised in a working-class family in the Deep South, she moved from town to town each time her father—a poet, a textbook salesman, a professor, a lover of parties—got a new job, totaling twelve different places by the time she was eighteen. Her mother suffered from severe mental illness and was in and out of hospitals. And when Williams was about a year old, she had to have an emergency tracheotomy—an inauspicious start for a singing career. But she was also born a fighter, and she would develop a voice that has captivated millions.

In Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You, Williams takes readers through the events that shaped her music—from performing for family friends in her living room to singing at local high schools and colleges in Mexico City, to recording her first album with Folkway Records and headlining a sold-out show at Radio City Music Hall. She reveals the inspirations for her unforgettable lyrics, including the doomed love affairs with “poets on motorcycles” and the gothic southern landscapes of the many different towns of her youth, including Macon, Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. Williams spent years working at health food stores and record stores during the day so she could play her music at night, and faced record companies who told her that her music was not “finished,” that it was “too country for rock and too rock for country.” But her fighting spirit persevered, leading to a hard-won success that spans seventeen Grammy nominations and a legacy as one of the greatest and most influential songwriters of our time.

Raw, intimate, and honest, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You is an evocative reflection on an extraordinary woman’s life journey.

©2023 Lucinda Williams (P)2023 Random House Audio
Entertainment & Celebrities Music Celebrity Mental Health
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What the critics say

“[Lucinda] Williams’s memoir is as flinty, earthy and plain-spoken as her songs. . . . [It] shows how deep [her] grit runs.”The New York Times

“The often hilarious, occasionally harrowing Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You is a bracingly candid chronicle of a sui generis character plotting a ramshackle but ultimately triumphant trajectory. . . . Williams leaves few stones unturned.”The Wall Street Journal

“Remarkable . . . Reading like it was written on a series of cocktail napkins in the absolutely best way, this ever-quotable memoir of a born songsmith has something to offer nearly any grownup who has listened to music for the last half-century.”Booklist

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Just what I expect from Lucinda.

Open and honest!! Like sitting across the table from Lucinda in a corner booth at some smoky bar (is there such a thing anymore?? I’m from Canada) and saying “Lucinda, tell me all your secrets.” Delivered in Lucinda’s open and honest drawl,, here they are, for all of us to hear. Her secrets, her stories, told only to me. I won’t tell anyone, Well, you know, they’re her secrets!!

Thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with Lucinda. Time well spent.

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