There are four quotes in this book that makes it one of my absolute favorites.

Arthur could almost imagine Paul McCartney sitting with his feet up by the fire one evening, humming it to Linda and wondering what to buy with the proceeds, and thinking, probably, Essex.

It came lilting back to them through the soft night air, and was a sweet romantic ballad that would have netted McCartney Kent and Sussex and enabled him to put in a fair offer for Hampshire

The middle eight bridge, which would have had McCartney firmly consolidated in Winchester and gazing intently over the Test Valley to the rich pickings of the New Forest beyond, had some curious lyrics.

Her laughter seemed to discharge something in the atmosphere. From somewhere at the back of the crowd a single voice started to sing a tune that would have enabled Paul McCartney, had he written it, to buy the world.

I read those four sentences and I get the entire musical history of an entire alien world. I may even have a faint pianissimo glimmer of what those songs sound like. And it used just two adjectives to describe the music. There are poets who have spent their entire careers chasing that kind of artistic achievement, the economy of language conveying a universe of feeling.