Book review: Her Country by Marissa R. Moss

Nashville-based music journalist Marissa R Moss examines the sexist culture of the American country music industry and profiles the women who successfully challenged the “good ol’ boys club”.

This is a history of 21st-century country music through the history of women singers. There is a large cast, which can sometimes be confusing for readers who aren’t so closely engaged with the Nashville scene, but Moss focuses primarily on the stories of three major-label country stars: Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris and Micky Guyton. 

Musgraves’ inclusivity anthem Follow Your Arrow may sound innocuous to British ears but was controversial in Nashville at the time. Morris had to release her breakthrough song My Church on Spotify before she could get a major-label record deal. Guyton struggled for longer to make it as a singer because black musicians were not accepted as “country”. She found her voice when she put her identity front of stage with Black Like Me.

As these three, and many others, began building careers in Nashville, they found the system was rigged against them. 

Book review: Rebel Grrrls

Molly Tie’s feminist history, subtitled The Real Story Of Women And Punk, brings an important perspective to the current “50th anniversary of punk” commemorations.

The book argues that the “punk purists” are wrong to believe that punk died at the end of the 1970s and that it has remained important, especially to women. I confess that, as someone who came of age in the first punk movement of 76–77, I have been one of those purists. Partly that was because the second wave of punk in the UK seemed so conformist and, it has to be said, so male: elements that seemed counter to the original spirit of rebellion and liberation. 

But you are never too old to learn from younger people, as I’ve found from reading this book. Tie presents punk as a continuum, with a series of waves that have continued to the present day. And she argues – backed up by quotes from fans – that it has always been relevant to women.

On the road with a book: Part 2 (Wallingford to Wallasey)

 

Since my original book launch events in March, I’ve had a steady flow of other events around the country, met new people and reconnected with old friends. I’m still having fun. Well, most of the time. When not travelling by Cross Country trains.

On the road with a book: part 1 (the launch)

This year, I completed my bucket list. 

There was only one thing on it. Publish a book.

My memoir Atypical Girl came out in March, traditionally published (by Polygon) which made me feel like a Proper Author.

It’s felt like an adventure. I’ve done a lot of things I’ve never done before and that I would never have thought of doing.

One of them was interviewing another author for his own book launch. I met Tony Fletcher on Substack, and recently did the “in conversation” for the Liverpool leg of his book tour. Tony’s documented his journeys on Substack, so I thought I should do the same for mine.

Some of it’s a bit hazy now - I wish I could remember all the questions that people have asked - but I’ll try and remember what I can.

How to clear your parents’ house

I kept the hankies. They were useful.

I keep seeing things about people clearing out their parents’ houses. Well, of course I do. It’s what happens to people my age. I did it seven years ago.

Here are just three of the articles that I've noticed recently. (Yes, they’re all from the Guardian, cos that’s what turns up on my Facebook. Other newspapers are available.)

• My mum has died - and every decision I make about her belongings feels wrong 
• ‘I feel like I’m cancelling out her life’: the wrenching work of clearing out a parent’s home
• ‘Under the stuff I can’t throw out is the stuff my parents couldn’t throw out’: novelist Anne Enright on the agony of clearing her family home

I’m not going to go into that much detail, or write about the emotional aspects of it. At the time it didn't feel like an existential crisis: it felt like a practical one.

Anyway, I’ve already written a blog post, the year my Mum died, called Things I’ve inherited from my mother. 

But I lied (to myself?)  when I said I’d cleared the house. I’d only started. 

It’s a few years now since I had to do it, and I still think about it sometimes. And I wish I’d done it differently. But it’s one of those things that you only do once in your life: no second chances, no chance to learn from your mistakes. I made a lot of them, and they gave me daytime nightmares for a long time. 

I’m not going to write about the emotional stuff.  I’m going to write what I wish someone had told me.