She Bop is the definitive study of women in popular music. This third edition is a major revision of a work praised as a contemporary classic and a must for any serious music lover’s bookshelf. It has changed the way women are written about in music and is a key text on university and college courses.
Drawing on more than 250 first-hand interviews, author Lucy O’Brien runs the rule over nine decades of musical history, covering everything from ragtime and vaudeville to punk and hip-hop. “Popular music creates most impact in the telling of stories,” she writes, as she weaves together the lives of Ella Fitzgerald and Madonna, Billie Holiday and Whitney Houston, Dusty Springfield and Beyoncé, and many, many more.
This fully revised and expanded third edition brings She Bop into the 21st century, with extensive additions throughout and a new chapter covering the recent explosion of female artists on the global pop scene – including Adele, Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna – and the ways in which the internet and digital culture have reconfigured the music industry for women.
Lucy O’Brien has been writing about music, feminism, and popular culture since the early 80s. She grew up in Southampton, England, played in an all-girl punk band, The Catholic Girls, and graduated from Leeds University in 1983. Since starting out on the NME, she has written for a range of titles including the Sunday Times, Marie Claire, the Guardian, Q, and Mojo. Alongside She Bop, she has written acclaimed biographies of Madonna, Dusty Springfield, and Annie Lennox. A regular pundit on TV and radio, she also co-produced the Channel 4 film Righteous Babes on rock and new feminism. She is Senior Lecturer in Music Journalism at Epsom UCA and is currently working on a memoir that combines music, mysticism, and magic.
Drawing on more than 250 first-hand interviews, author Lucy O’Brien runs the rule over nine decades of musical history, covering everything from ragtime and vaudeville to punk and hip-hop. “Popular music creates most impact in the telling of stories,” she writes, as she weaves together the lives of Ella Fitzgerald and Madonna, Billie Holiday and Whitney Houston, Dusty Springfield and Beyoncé, and many, many more.
This fully revised and expanded third edition brings She Bop into the 21st century, with extensive additions throughout and a new chapter covering the recent explosion of female artists on the global pop scene – including Adele, Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna – and the ways in which the internet and digital culture have reconfigured the music industry for women.
Lucy O’Brien has been writing about music, feminism, and popular culture since the early 80s. She grew up in Southampton, England, played in an all-girl punk band, The Catholic Girls, and graduated from Leeds University in 1983. Since starting out on the NME, she has written for a range of titles including the Sunday Times, Marie Claire, the Guardian, Q, and Mojo. Alongside She Bop, she has written acclaimed biographies of Madonna, Dusty Springfield, and Annie Lennox. A regular pundit on TV and radio, she also co-produced the Channel 4 film Righteous Babes on rock and new feminism. She is Senior Lecturer in Music Journalism at Epsom UCA and is currently working on a memoir that combines music, mysticism, and magic.
