What Makes a Musical Genius? Books about everything from Tupac Shakur to Latin music and memoirs by Sinead O’Connor and Rickie Lee Jones offer an answer. Credit...Ryan Gillett May 27, 2021 “There is nothing I could write in this book or tell you that would help you get to know me,” writes Sinead O’Connor in her new memoir, REMEMBERINGS (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 304 pp., $28). “It is all in the songs.” Whether she really believes this or not, it’s not a bad point — but audiences clearly don’t feel the same. As a batch of new books demonstrates, efforts to get closer to the mysteries of musical expression continue to come in many forms — history, criticism, autobiography and various combinations thereof. In the absence of live music during our pandemic year, there’s been a flood of music-related stories, especially onscreen, with both documentaries (the Bee Gees, Tina Turner) and dramatic narratives (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Sound of Metal”).