This book was hard, punch direct in some of my fav artist and songs, but I know that what they say, is completely true, and I love that.

I started this book with fist-pumping anticipation. "Yes! How come I haven't read a book on this topic before? I've been waiting my whole life for this!" After all, as a basic, white female music-lover, I, too, have felt betrayed, alienated and defeated at times by male-dominated (and often misogynistic) music culture.

Unfortunately, the reading ended up somewhat of a chore. I agree with other reviewers that some essays were better than others and the weaker ones should have been cut. I can only imagine that the idea was to give a voice to as many women as possible. As laudable as that seems, it undermines the power of the book.

Disclosure: I received a digital ARC of this book in exchange for honest feedback.

Your fave is problematic.

Your favorite movie. Your favorite TV show. Your favorite author. Your favorite musician. Your fave is problematic. You should definitely stop liking them.

This is a common refrain on the internet. This 'problematic fave' meme has gotten to the point where it's more a joke than anything, something someone rolls their eyes at and keeps moving. Because our faves are our faves, problematic or not. And we're not interested in someone who isn't a die hard fan telling us why our beloved show, our beloved book, the song we listened to on repeat during our misspent youth, makes us bad people with no sense of the realities of this world.

And this is a problem. Because these things need to be talked about. We, the fans of Joss Whedon, the fans of Johnny Depp, the fans of Eminem, the fans of The Rolling Stones and Kanye West and yes, Taylor Swift. We need to be aware that our faves need to be held accountable for their actions, for their words, for their inaction.

This book is not about how your faves are problematic and you should hate them. This collection of essays, written by a diverse and talented group of women, is about how your faves are problematic and it is okay that you still love them.

That is the most important take away from this wonderful collection of essays on the intense problem in this variety of musical genres with the degrading and devaluing of women. It would have been very easy to have this book focus on the obvious genres. Hip hop, classic rock. But we also have classic country, emo, heavy metal, goth industrial*. These essays are in chronological order based on when the music was released, meaning the first chapter references Dion and the Belmonts (didn't see that coming, did you?).

This is exactly what is needed in any discussion of problematic faves. This isn't a bunch of old people screaming about the "kids today and their music." These are Guns n Roses fans talking about 'You're Crazy'. These are Tupac fans talking about "Wonda Why They Call U Bitch". These are the voices needed in any talks of misogyny and the problems with normalizing it in any form of art. The problem with letting the harsh words go in one ear and out the other, the problem with being okay with this treatment because "those women" being talked about are bitches, are sluts, you're not like them, it's okay because it's not about you.

These authors aren't telling you to hate these artists. They're telling you they love them, too, but that these problems need to be addressed. Love the artist, but expect better from them, and future artists in the genres we love.


* Didn't even know this was a thing. Learned so much from this book.

Life is too short to finish books I just can't get into. I really wanted to love this book. I love the concept but unfortunately this book just fell flat. I was hoping for more analysis and less essay opinion. I truly wish that there was more to this book than short opinion pieces.

I feel terrible dnf'ing this, but the essays just aren't driving me to feel like this is a very important issue.
(I do not give DNFs star ratings, but NetGalley requires one. My star rating here on NG means nothing.)

Every essay seemed to come down to the basic point (which is one I very much agree with): Recognize and learn about the issues with a song or a band and then decide if you can bypass those and still enjoy the music, or will boycott the band or song because of the issues. There are songs that I love for the extremely catchy music proper, but always feel awkward around the lyrics... but the instrumentals themselves speak to me too much for me to completely boycott the song due to the words. A song can captivate you from the opening notes, and sometimes you're already too much in love with the song by the time the lyrics start manifesting themselves.

While there are certainly an abundance of issues with misogynistic and women-hating songs and bands, and it IS something that warrants a closer look, perhaps it would be provide a more cohesive argument as a regular non-fiction book than a collection of essays.

Pop Apologists

Under My Thumb is surprising. I expected an intense feminist screed attacking the whole music industry. But instead it is a thoughtful, personal and extraordinarily well written collection of 29 essays (mostly from the UK and the USA) showing the awesome power of the pop music industry over women. Because all the women who submitted contributions fell under the sway of their favorite singers and bands, and end up defending them, despite the admitted sexism, the overtly offensive lyrics, the misogyny and the violence they preach and perform.

It is very personal and often very deep. There are family situations, teenage angst, class warfare and unattainable aspirations all over these essays. There are extenuating circumstances and rationalizations galore. The authors know full well how obnoxious the singers are, how horrific the lyrics are, and how damaging they can be. One woman wants to protect her ten year old daughter from seeing her favorite band that she herself can never get enough of.

They almost all become apologists for the likes of Kanye, Guns N Roses, Eminem, Tupac, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger. They admit they are actually drawn to murder ballads. “Even when he’s tackling the most reprehensible of topics, I am still desperately, guiltily enthralled” is a very typical admission in Under My Thumb. Many don’t mind memorizing the words of abuse heaped on women. The essays are sharp and well written, analytical, fair, but above all, cathartic.

They are not naïve, either. The authors are mostly academics, 30ish, and freelance writers. At some point in their adolescence, they all came to some variant of the same conclusion: “Men who claim to be down for the cause will merrily sit upon the pedestal you give them, and not knowing or asking how not to, they will continue to hold in place every facet of the system that oppresses you.” A lot of the authors like to say their relationship to the artist/band is “complicated”.

The authors take their favored genre very seriously, assigning all kinds of importance, significance and virtuosity to it, be it death metal, hip-hop or rock’n’roll. To them, the genres showcase enormous talents, are microcosms of society, and demonstrate great depth of feeling and insight. Also astonishing subtlety and nuance. But they’re sexist: blatantly, revoltingly, and humiliatingly. (In the case of death metal, the author has a solution: more women in the bands.)

The irony, if that’s what it is, is that when asked, the musicians all seem to claim the women took it too literally. Like this from AC/DC: “We take the music far more seriously than the lyrics, which are just throwaway lines.” But the pen is mightier than the sword, and the harm done is simply beyond the comprehension of these musical geniuses. The essay authors are torn.

The essays seem to be blind contributions; there are no references to each other. Had they seen each other’s work, perhaps they wouldn’t be so repetitive. But the near unanimity of it all is striking by itself. It comes from many angles, and ends in doubt, which is far too charitable an outcome.

David Wineberg

This was a pretty interesting collection of essays on how music of different genres portray women. Some were far and away better than others. I requested this because I know of the controversy relating to the titular song: the Rolling Stones' "Under My Thumb." Also, I like a lot of classic rock and 80s hair bands, and I figured the book would talk about some of that music.

I'm familiar with most of the bands and artists discussed here. A few dealt with those I know by name and reputation but don't listen to the music of: Bob Dylan, Tupac, Eminem. Then there were the essays that just didn't appeal to me because I'm not at all knowledgable about the music or artists: the essay on extreme metal, for example, or the one on the band the Divine Comedy, which I've never heard of. Oh, and I didn't read the Kanye essay.

The Guns n' Roses essay mentioned a few things that I would REALLY rather not know about them, since I love the band so much. A lot of these artists seem to outright dismiss their role in misogyny when confronted about it in interviews. They say it's what was happening around them, or that it's not really all that deep, or, in the words of Mick Jagger: "I had so many girlfriends at that point. None of them seemed to care they weren't pleasing me very much. I was obviously in with the wrong group."

Excuse me while I cry a little tear for poor Mick Jagger.

I think it's incredibly dumb to basically ignore the misogynistic scenarios they present. Like, they wrote this and put it out in the world and are now having an interview about it. But they have no desire to discuss their work further and dissect it's meaning and impact? Um... okay. That's pretty lame.

This book places song lyrics in interesting contexts, dissecting their subtext and often revealing how chilling the misogyny in seemingly innocent songs can be. I enjoyed reading about artists I know and others that were little-known to me (the essay that opened with a confused child experiencing Rod Stewart music is pretty funny). As far as feminism itself goes, however, I didn't really learn anything new.

John Lennon, by his own admission, was a jealous guy. Hence the song of that name on the ‘Imagine’ album. That same sentiment had been expressed by him in more extreme form on The Beatles’ ‘Rubber Soul’ album, in the song ‘Run For Your Life’, which includes the lyrics “Well, I’d rather see you dead little girl/Than to be with another man” – a line borrowed from the Elvis number ‘Baby Let’s Play House’, written by Arthur Gunter. Indeed, you don’t have to go far to find that women are treated very badly in popular music. Nor is this, sadly, something only to be found in the past.

Even today much music making and music criticism is male-dominated and tends either to ignore women or to treat them purely as male appendages, and what is true of the mainstream is equally true of most branches of the music scene.

Inspired by the response, on social media and elsewhere, to Eli Davies’s ‘Retrospective Sexism: How Women Are Written Out of British Indie Music History’, which in turn was partly inspired by Emma Jackson’s 2005 ‘Huffington Post’ piece ‘Indie Music’s Women Problem and Retrospective Sexism’, Davies and her co-editor, Rhian E. Jones, have put together ‘Under My Thumb’ to examine the subordination, exploitation or exclusion of women in song and the paradox that many of these songs are still beloved by many women.

In addition to the introduction there are twenty-nine essays by women, including separate pieces by the two co-editors, on everything from doo-wop to hip-hop, taking in the likes of Phil Spector, Dylan, Jagger, Rod Stewart, Van Halen, Elvis Costello, Tupac, Eminem, Jarvis Cocker, Kanye West and Taylor Swift, amongst others, along the way.

Of course it’s in the nature of a book like this that one will quite readily think of many other artists or songs which merit inclusion, such as Neil Young (‘A Man Needs a Maid’); The Police (‘Every Breath You Take’); The Bloodhound Gang (‘The Bad Touch’); Pitbull (‘Timber’); David Guetta (‘Sexy B***h) and so on almost ad infinitum, which rather proves the point about the ubiquity of misogyny in music.

In short, this book performs an important function in drawing attention to what we all, women and men alike, can all too unthinkingly absorb and thereby, to a degree, legitimise. It is thought provoking and informative without appearing in the least didactic.

This is interesting and challenging to this reader and i think to many others.

The idea is clever women take songs or artists that they as feminists or just intelligent women (if you dont wish to be identified as a feminist) should like but do and they explain why they do .

The challenging part is the artists selected are not totally obvious for every Rod Stewart there is a Pulp and as a pulp fan i never thought about how say I spy could be considered by a woman . The essays will engage and whilst you may not always agree you will enjoy the argument and may reconsider at a later date.

Very Highly recomended

I heard "Blurred Lines" over the sound system at the grocery store, which effectively muffled everything but the catchy music. Some time later, when I heard the lyrics on the radio, after having the tune in my head for a week, it was gross. Jones here edits a set of essays which wrestle with similar problems--how do/can you enjoy works whose creators are despicable people? what happens when you finally understand lyrics you heard as a kid and they turn out to be demeaning and nasty? what about songs that describe things mainstream at their time, but totally unacceptable now? how does their playing shape public space, like my grocery store? There are no easy answers, but it is satisfying to read other people, especially women, thinking it through.