31 Songs (re-titled Songbook in the United States) is ‘a little book of essays about songs I loved’ written in 2002 by Nick Hornby, author of the 1996 hit novel High Fidelity and latterly pop critic of the New Yorker. Hornby's assumption of the role of music critic echoed the wish of the protagonist of High Fidelity whose No. 1 in a list of ‘my five dream jobs’ was ‘NME (New Musical Express) journalist 1976–1979’.