That’s the first line of a recent article by Jude Rogers in The Quietus. She has her own new book to promote and everyone says it’s good. I am trying to get my local library to stock it. They have a suggestion form. I also asked them to get the new anthology This Woman’s Work. “More music writing by women, please,” I said in the comments box.
It's good that there’s more music writing coming out now by women, but it’s scuppered my plans for the Women’s history of pop section in my blog. I’ve got a backlog of books that I’ve read but not yet reviewed, and I’m not going to keep up.
A while ago American music writer Jessica Hopper put together a spreadsheet of books about music by women. (Actually it’s titled “non-men” but I’ll overlook that.) I was planning to work my way through it, but that’s now feeling a bit ambitious. If the list keeps getting longer, though, that can only be a good thing.
Because writing about music has been a boys’ club for too long, and women have things to say too.