How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History

 

Book review: How Women Made Music by NPR Music 

This book from the US-based public service broadcaster is a spin-off from a longstanding project aimed at putting women musicians centre stage. It proves its point with a rich, readable and revolutionary overview of numerous women musicians who have earnt their place in history.  

NPR is a public service radio network, and they are doing a public service with this book, appropriately subtitled A Revolutionary History. But the book is only a small part of what they are doing. In 2017 they launched a multi-platform series called Turning the Tables; this book is a selection of material from its various strands, supplemented with fifty years’ worth of coverage of women musicians.

The coolest woman in pop: review of Neneh Cherry's memoir

Book review: A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry

This memoir by the Buffalo Stance star is a story about identity and roots as much as a story about music. And threaded through all these strands is a lifelong relationship with creativity.

David Bowie’s 1972 appearance on Top of the Pops singing Starman has gone down in history, making him a role model for many fans. But Neneh Cherry’s appearance on the same programme in 1988, singing Buffalo Stance, must go down in history as equally groundbreaking. Full of boldness and style – and unignorably, unapologetically pregnant – she was a new kind of role model for women.  

Rock’n’roll purists with a punk attitude: a review of the Liverbirds book

The Liverbirds: Our story of life in Britain’s first female rock’n’roll band by Mary McGlory and Sylvia Saunders

The only all-girl group to come out of the Merseybeat boom, the Liverbirds forged a successful career in Germany as a hard-playing crowd-pleasing rock’n’roll band during the 1960s. The two surviving members tell their story in this new biography. 

Five years ago, a musical about the Liverbirds called Girls Don't Play Guitars opened  at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre and was so popular that it’s coming back again later this year.  The title was taken from a notorious throwaway remark by John Lennon on meeting the Liverbirds at the Cavern, but this isn’t about him. This is about four women who proved him wrong.

Should I leave Twitter? (again)

When the new owner took over Twitter, a lot of people left. I wasn’t one of them. I thought about it, and then I just opened lots of other social media accounts. You can find me on Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Facebook and LinkedIn most days. It’s nearly a full time job. 

For a long time, people on those other platforms have been making judgemental noises about those of us who are still on Twitter. 

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.