You're History: The Twelve Strangest Women in Music

by Lesley Chow

Overview

Raucous, sensual and sublime: how twelve pioneering female artists rewrote the rules of pop.

From Kate Bush to Nicki Minaj, from Janet Jackson to TLC and Taylor Swift, pop's greatest female pioneers are simply strange: smashing notions of taste and decorum, and replacing them with new ideals of pleasure.

Instead of rehashing biographies, Lesley Chow dives deep into the music of these groundbreaking performers, identifying the ecstatic moments in their songs and finding out what makes them unique.

You're History is a love letter to pop's most singular achievements, celebrating the innovations of women who are still critically underrated. It's a ride that includes tributes to Chaka Khan, Rihanna, Neneh Cherry, Sade, Shakespears Sister, Azealia Banks, and many more...

“The slim, sharp book considers a range of female artists from Janet Jackson and Taylor Swift to TLC and Nicki Minaj, a group that the Australian cultural critic Chow views as ‘outliers, marking moments where the culture might have swerved to incorporate their influence, but somehow contrived not to.’” — New York Times summer reads

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781913462314
Publisher:	Watkins Media
Publication date:	03/09/2021
Pages:	162
Sales rank:	615,321
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Lesley Chow is an Australian writer on music and film. She is associate editor of the journal Bright Lights and has published widely over the past eighteen years, in Salon, Times Literary Supplement, The Quietus, The Age, Pop Matters, and CNN. She has appeared on numerous film juries including Venice and Berlin, and was President of the Critics' Jury at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018.

Table of Contents

Why All Women 1

Devil You Know: The Secrets of Pop 6

Malicious Pop: The Cutting Sounds of Neneh Cherry 23

Janet Jackson's School of Rock 30

Kate Bush: The Rupture 43

My Pretty Poison: Shakespears Sister's Sacred Heart and Hormonally Yours 50

New Shoes and Black Moods: Michelle Gurevich aka Chinawoman 62

Interlude: Love is the Drug 67

Starts with TLC: Obscenity and Nuance in Hip-Hop 81

Too Sincere for School: Taylor Swift 89

Sade is the Perfect Peach 97

It's For Your Body: Chaka Khan's Internal Rhythms 102

All Those Anomalies: Azealia Banks feat. Nicki Minaj and Rihanna 112

(Love is) The Power of Ooh 136

Appendix The Devil in Love: The Greatest Oohs Modern Music 139

Index 144

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Lesley Chow is the best and rarest kind of critic—one who loves to be surprised, and can always surprise you in turn… The emphasis is firmly on aesthetic pleasure, and the book itself is a unique pleasure to read: joyful, witty, knowledgeable, intensely observant, and indifferent to received ideas." - Jake Wilson, arts critic for The Age and author of Mad Dog Morgan

"By embracing pop's sonic artifice, its vocal textures and its wordless moments of rapture – too often ignored by other critics – Lesley Chow constructs a new version of pop history. Her assemblage of pop's 'hybrid girls' and wayward women is a sly, original analysis." - Anwen Crawford, music writer for The Monthly and author of Hole: Live Through This

“Lesley Chow's sparklingly written book is full of whip-smart wit and electric prose. You're History isn't just a work of great criticism: it will make you rethink your understanding of pop music and the strange, sublime sounds of its creators.” - Luke Buckmaster, The Guardian

“Lesley Chow explores the alchemy of pop that comes from breath, sound and lyrics. Her deep dive into these extraordinary women made me feel their music all over again.” - Julia Zemiro, actor and presenter of RocKwiz

“A constantly surprising and thought-provoking book tracing... non-verbal bliss, irruptive sensuality, and mouth-music magic — a counter-canon of oozy oohs and sweet nothings that takes in Chaka Khan, Janet Jackson, TLC.” - Simon Reynolds, author of Rip It Up and Start Again

“The slim, sharp book considers a range of female artists from Janet Jackson and Taylor Swift to TLC and Nicki Minaj, a group that the Australian cultural critic Chow views as ‘outliers, marking moments where the culture might have swerved to incorporate their influence, but somehow contrived not to.’” - New York Times

“You’re History is the ideal book for anyone who thinks a great song is like a puzzle, with every individual component its own unique mystery worth investigating.” - Pitchfork

Editorial Reviews

"Lesley Chow is the best and rarest kind of critic—one who loves to be surprised, and can always surprise you in turn… The emphasis is firmly on aesthetic pleasure, and the book itself is a unique pleasure to read: joyful, witty, knowledgeable, intensely observant, and indifferent to received ideas." - Jake Wilson, arts critic for The Age and author of Mad Dog Morgan

"By embracing pop's sonic artifice, its vocal textures and its wordless moments of rapture – too often ignored by other critics – Lesley Chow constructs a new version of pop history. Her assemblage of pop's 'hybrid girls' and wayward women is a sly, original analysis." - Anwen Crawford, music writer for The Monthly and author of Hole: Live Through This

“Lesley Chow's sparklingly written book is full of whip-smart wit and electric prose. You're History isn't just a work of great criticism: it will make you rethink your understanding of pop music and the strange, sublime sounds of its creators.” - Luke Buckmaster, The Guardian

“Lesley Chow explores the alchemy of pop that comes from breath, sound and lyrics. Her deep dive into these extraordinary women made me feel their music all over again.” - Julia Zemiro, actor and presenter of RocKwiz

“A pure hit of prose pleasure. The writing embodies the polemic, which is refreshing at a time when music criticism has never been so virtuous and so inattentive to the bliss that is pop’s greatest gift.” – Simon Reynolds, 4Columns

“In You’re History, Chow recommends an alternative criticism, driven by curiosity, puzzlement and enjoyment of music without the need to fully explain it.” – Rhian E. Jones, Red Pepper

From the Publisher

04/09/2021

Though Cardi B and Billie Eilish rule the airwaves, it is still rare for many music critics to take women pop, hip-hop, and R&B artists seriously. Chow (associate editor, Bright Lights) aims to correct that bias. Highlighting 12 women (among them Chaka Khan, Sade, Taylor Swift, and Janet Jackson), many of whom have been written off as vapid and unimportant due to their catchy music or seemingly lightweight lyrics, Chow argues that her subjects' music has an overlooked profundity. Delving equally deeply into TLC's Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes and critical darling Kate Bush, Chow is most concerned with the feeling of strangeness, or elements that bristle against the conventional ideals of pop music but nonetheless create sublime soundscapes. The author's definition of strangeness is inevitably subjective, and it's a shame that artists such as Björk and Annie Lennox are left out of the mix. Yet Chow possesses a rare ability to describe in words how sound feels, resulting in dazzling observations about sound, breath, and the human voice. VERDICT Those interested in music criticism will enjoy this in-depth study of unique women voices in pop music.—Amanda Westfall, Emmet O'Neal P.L., Mountain Brook, AL

Library Journal