Millennial exceptionalism: how to rewrite history

One of the things I don’t understand about the modern world is the tendency for young(er) people to adopt labels. To me, that’s like letting other people describe you, and limiting aspects of your individuality.

And when people use a label that’s based only on the year they were born, that’s just weird. Generation theory is pretty rubbish when it’s used by marketing types; when it’s embraced by the people it describes that’s pointless.

International Women’s Day, autism and wondering who is right

It was International Women’s Day yesterday, and I was cross about it. Again.

Even on normal days, I’m cross at the world (by which I mean, I suppose, society) a lot. Because it is often noisy and unfair, and is nearly always illogical.

I am particularly cross on International Women’s Day because it is particularly illogical. It makes no sense that a day which originated with grassroots activism is no longer anything to do with feminism.

Mary Weiss, voice of the Shangri-Las (remember)

Mary Weiss from the Shangri-Las died on Friday, and I spent the weekend on YouTube remembering how good she was. 

I first heard the Shangri-las in 1972, when Leader of the Pack was re-released and became a hit again. I was 14.

I knew it was a “classic” because the Radio 1 DJs told me so. I knew I liked it.  I knew enough about pop music by then to know that the death-disc angle was corny, but I loved the girl-gang opening “By the way, where d’you meet him?” (As if that’s the first thing you’d say to someone with a dead boyfriend.) And I loved Mary Weiss’s hard, hurt vocal on the answer. 

Women In Revolt: the thrill of women's rage

Suzanne Moore wrote ten years about that women’s rage is “totally thrilling”. And she was right.

I saw the Women In Revolt exhibition at Tate Britain last week and I was totally thrilled.

Writing about pop as though it really mattered: music journalism and women

Gatekeepers. All women know about them, whatever their job or chosen leisure activity. And the music business has always been one of the top villains. 

Within that crowded field, Jann Wenner, co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, recently emerged as an arch villain. In case you missed it, he put out a book of archive interviews which was full of old white blokes. When challenged about the lack of women said: “none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level”. And made a similar point about Black musicians. Prat.

The ensuing controversy even lost him his gig with the ever-irrelevant Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which isn’t exactly squeaky clean when it comes to ignoring minorities. 

So why am I writing about this now?