Smarsh challenged a typically male vision of the rural working class with her first book, Heartland, starring the bold, hard-luck women who raised her. Now, in She Come by It Natural, originally published in a four-part series for The Journal of Roots Music, No Depression, Smarsh explores the overlooked contributions to social progress by such women -- including those averse to the term "feminism" -- as exemplified by Dolly Parton's life and art....

Describes the "girlfriends, wives, rivals, exes, groupies, celebrities, and even complete strangers who inspired 50 of rock's greatest songs ... There are minibiographies of each muse--some short and sad, others longer and inspirational. Music buffs will appreciate information on the performers as well as trivia from recording history." -- Cover, p. [4].

Discussions and analyses of music--whether on TV, in books or in the music press--have always been full of the stories of men. When female fans appear in these stories it is often through the eyes and from the perspectives of men--as muses, groupies or fangirls--meaning that women's own experiences, ideas and arguments about the music they love are marginalised or glossed over. Women in music are frequently fetishised and objectified both in song...

Raucous, sensual and sublime: how twelve pioneering female artists rewrote the rules of pop. From Kate Bush to Nicki Minaj, from Janet Jackson to TLC and Taylor Swift, pop's greatest female pioneers are simply strange: smashing notions of taste and decorum, and replacing them with new ideals of pleasure. Instead of rehashing biographies, Lesley Chow dives deep into the music of these groundbreaking performers, identifying the ecstatic moments in their...

"In 1957, Duke Ellington released the influential album A Drum Is a Woman. This musical allegory revealed the implicit truth about the role of women in jazz discourse-jilted by the musician and replaced by the drum. Further, the album's cover displays an image of a woman sitting atop a drum, depicting the way in which the drum literally obscures the female body, turning the subject into an object. This objectification of women leads to a critical...