A love letter to the daredevil women of pop. A joy to read. Intelligent and funny. Writing about the actual music not sycophantic hero worship that is the mode of so many books about music. Loved it. Is there a playlist to go with tjis book? If not, why not?

You’re History takes a unique perspective to music criticism. Finally, the lyrics alone are not the point.

“The most captivating music is slippery, telegraphing a secret meaning while asserting its intentions at face value. Music is not always about depth and timber: sometimes the song is best served by a slick, offhand treatment.“

The varied examples prove this theory has merit.

“Sade gets hooked on luxe mouth movement, to the point where the primary aim of the songs appears to be getting variations on texture, rather than lyrical or melodic originality.”

“[Taylor Swift’s] Blank Space forced a re-examination, introducing a new character to the world of pop. It’s narrator is a baby-faced girl who longs to be unmasked as a horror: Estella and Miss Havisham in one, with full sexual power and malevolence intact.”

Unfortunately, many of the artists described here are not as famous as they should be.

“Choosing lyrics for their mellifluous potential is unlikely to start trends or find acclaim, no matter how gorgeous or wine-dark the results.“

Even though this book is advertised as critique of twelve unique female performers, it includes many more. Even Prince, Michael Jackson and David Byrne make an appearance.

The book’s somewhat rambling and sometimes repetitive style feel like a late-night conversation with your most musically astute friend. I’ve always been a hater of music criticism. I just don’t agree with most of it. In my opinion, the almost universally critically acclaimed Bob Dylan cannot sing a note and should have been a poet. However, talking about how a song makes the listener feel is a valid part of criticism.

I truly enjoyed You’re History. I found some new favorites and remembered some forgotten gems. It is much more fun to ask Alexa to play each song as you are reading about them. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5 stars!

Thanks to Repeater Books and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

This was an interesting and well-researched book, and I enjoyed reading some of the lyrics of the diverse range of female artists. However I wasn't really sure what point the book was trying to make, and I didn't feel any the wiser what the point was when I got to the end! I also felt that some of the over-analysis of the odd word and sound was a bit much at times.

I enjoyed this, but I think I was missing some of the information/background on some of the songs to get the most out of it. Really I think it needs to come with a playlist so you can listen to the songs that are being talked about as you read the book, because unless you're really, really into music (and I used to work at radio stations as well as watching a fair few music documentaries both general and artist specific, so I consider myself fairly well across music) you may get lost here unless you've done some prep work or have a playlist handy.

You're History follows women in music - this book pleasantly surprised me with its facts and insights. I learnt a lot about pop culture and also about the deeper meanings behind lyrics. Great & Informative read - will definitely recommend to all music lovers.

Okay this was extremely interesting. Truthfully, it's not something I had ever given thought to until this book became available on NetGalley. I really appreciate this perspective and insight into these "strange women". What an enjoyable read. I would be interested to know about other strange behind the scenes of the music industry.

If you love female musicians this is a great one for you. The stories of strong women in music are well written and the stories are strong.

This was an interesting topic. Nice range of genres discussed. Was a fun read. Great for music lovers in your life.

This book provides an in-depth look at several mainstream female artists dominating the pop music landscape. I love that Chow focused on female artists, and she makes incredibly intelligent points about the artists and their songs. This read more like a research paper to me than a novel, and I would have liked to have more insight into why Chow the artists pursued each choice that they did - whether that was the artist herself and/or a music agency calling the shots.

I don't tend to think too deeply about the pop songs I hear on the radio, and I appreciated this deeper look as I wouldn't have considered many of these aspects on my own. Thanks to Chow for bringing these points to light. The novel was the right length - anytime I started to feel like I was getting too much detail as the reader, the next chapter would pick up with a new artist.

This was an interesting read detailing how pop music, particularly pop music by female artists, has often been considered the lesser music genre, despite being the opposite. The book is split into several chapters exploring female artists who have defined pop over the last two centuries, including Rihanna, Taylor Swift and Kate Bush, to name but a few.

I like how Chow dissects individual pop songs detailing how simplicity is often mistaken for lack of depth. Chow details the complexity of pop songs beyond there initial simplicity, often acting as a defendant for the pop genre. I did feel at times that there was alot of musical techniques that would be better understood with a knowledge of music theory. Consequently for the casual music lover some aspects may be lost. Despite this, this was a fun read and one which I'll refer to in the future.

This is a strange little book. I really enjoyed bits of it and others not so much. The idea of the book is brilliant. The author takes women musicians that she considers to be seminal yet overlooked by 'serious' music critics and attempts to explain why their oeuvre are so important and how radical they are. This is right up my street. She picks interesting artists from across a wide range of musical genres and ages. She opens with a chapter to explain her methodology and then we're straight in with the iconic, Neneh Cherry, which gets a huge thumbs up from me. We move from here to TLC, Chaka Khan, Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj amongst others. I would argue that her inclusion of Kate Bush as someone who tends to be 'overlooked' by music critics is weak here, because she is, rightly celebrated as an iconic musical figure already, although the author's American nationality may account for her reading of Bush.

What I found difficult in the book was the fact that there is little here about the musicians as people within the wider context of pop culture and how that informs how we read and understand their music. In places, the detailed analysis of song lines and the author's assertion that every 'woah' or 'uh' or 'eh' sound can be read as a deep, symbolic gesture of anarchy or subversion was, for me, stretching it a little. Her reading of the entirety of Sade's oeuvre as more about the radically mellifluous sounds she makes within a deeply traditional genre just didn't work for me. I was also interested in the artists she didn't choose within this context. There were also times when the already short chapters were completely sidelined by her notes on Prince, for example, which I thought was a real waste of the clearly limited space she had to discuss women.

Erratic but interesting.

Did not finish, quit at 64%. Don’t let me deter you from reading this book though, it’s expertly written and will most likely be enjoyed by a large amount of people. Why did I DNF it then? Because as someone that has spent quite a bit of time reading and learning about (pop) music, I found this book had nothing new to offer for me personally. I found the chapters to be quite surface level and abstract, while I was hoping the author would go more into detail about each singers image, why they choose certain collaborators, how their style is influenced by their surroundings etc. This book stays very close to ‘the music’ and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it wasn’t what I was looking for.

Lesley Chow's fascinating book is steeped in music, exploring the work of twelve women artists whose output is diverse and wide-ranging. What they have in common, apart from being women, is - she states - that "they are all anomalies: pioneers in the making, whose output has been too strange for the culture to fully digest".

I'm not sure that they're actually the twelve strangest women in music - I can think of a few others who could also lay claim (Laurie Anderson?) - but Chow makes out a good case for them and the attention they deserve, arguing persuasively that there is a shortage of serious writing when it comes to female pop, R&B and hip hop performers in comparison to the massive (and let's face it, overwhelmingly male) body of work about rock.

She wants to discuss the feel and tone of songs above the interpretation of the lyrics or their socio-political importance - she is occupied as much by the sound of the words in the singer's mouth as by their meaning. (Sade, for instance, "seems indifferent to subject, putting all her focus into the delectation of each syllable". Chow does much the same herself, with phrases like that.)

Chow is all about the sound, the lyrics in combination with the melody, the emphasis and phrasing which can strengthen or undercut the words used - she has little time for lyrics which can stand alone as poetry independent of tone and melody (I don't necessarily agree with her on this - but I do see her point.)

Most of the women featured, from Kate Bush to Chaka Khan to Neneh Cherry to Taylor Swift to Nicki Minaj, are well known; Michelle Gurevich is certainly the most obscure and I'd never heard of her before, but I sought out and absolutely loved the two marvellous songs discussed here, Party Girl and Russian Ballerina.

It also sent me back to Neneh Cherry's brilliant debut album, Raw Like Sushi, which I listened to obsessively when it first came out but haven't heard in a while. I really enjoyed rediscovering it and reading the author's comments on the album.

This book immersed me in its music to the extent that I came out feeling slightly dazed. It's a fascinating, insightful read which had me looking at music in different ways. And... ultimately... a rallying cry for the importance of "oooh"!

I received a copy of this book to read from NetGalley.

You’re History is an in-depth look at a handful of pop-artists spanning the 80’s, 90’s, and 2000’s and 10’s. If you are interested in analyzing pop lyrics, analyzing how a musician’s style is interwoven with their music, then this collections of essays is for you. I appreciated the variety of musicians selected to be analyzed in this collection. That being said, these women’s songs were chosen because they all fall into the category of “pop” and there is not a lot else that connects them. Perhaps if the book had been divided into subgroups, like pop singer-singer writers, pop rappers (is that even the right category to classify TLC, Nicki Minaji and Rhianna into?), the choices would have made more sense. Because there was such a wide variety of music, I had a hard time imagining the songs that were being described (and frankly hasn’t heard most of them) and had listen to them before I could move on. It felt like the book would have been more accessible if it had narrowed its focus to a smaller subset of female pop singers.

Very good book on female singers,, and their music style. The book also includes an analyses of some of their songs which was very interesting. Most of the singers I am familiar with, some I was not. But that did not take away from the book. I even found myself going to Youtube to watch the video of the song the author was writing about. Let me say this: !! I will never listen to Rihanna's "Umbrella “ the same again. Great read and informative. I do recommend.this book. I also agree with the author, Chaka Khan had not received her due!!! Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the arc of this book in return for my honest review. Receiving the book in this manner had no bearing on this review.

Amazing book on women’s roles in history.
Insightful and full of smell bounding information. I highly recommend this read it’s going to be on the bestseller’s list.