Wow! eBook
'Rock On': Women, Ageing and Popular Music
Author(s): Abigail Gardner (Author), Ros Jennings
- Publisher: Routledge
- Publication Date: 4 Oct. 2012
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 186 pages
- ISBN-10: 1409428419
- ISBN-13: 9781409428411
Book Description
For female pop stars, whose star bodies and star performances are undisputedly the objects of a sexualized external gaze, the process of ageing in public poses particular challenges. Taking a broadly feminist perspective, ‘Rock On’: women, ageing and popular music shifts popular music studies in a new direction. Focussing on British, American and Latina women performers and ageing, the collection investigates the cultural work performed by artists such as Shirley Bassey, Petula Clark, Madonna, Celia Cruz, Grace Jones and Courtney Love. The study crosses generations of performers and audiences enabling an examination of changing socio-historical contexts and an exploration of the relationships at play between performance strategies, star persona and the popular music press. For instance, the strategies employed by Madonna and Grace Jones to engage with the processes and issues related to public ageing are not the same as those employed by Courtney Love or Celia Cruz. The essays in this insightful collection reflect on the ways that artists and fans destabilise both the linear trajectories and the compelling weight of expectations regarding ageing by employing different modalities of resistance through persona re-invention, nostalgia, postmodern intertextuality and even early death as the ultimate denial of age.
Editorial Reviews
Review
‘… female performers are often marginalised in music literature and this is especially so of older female performers. Academic work which highlights their lives and experiences is vital.’ The F-Word ‘Timely and pertinent, the collection successfully opens up a space where the ageing female body traverses musical discourses of identity and subjectivity, always and already marked by gender, sexuality and ethnicity’. Popular Music
About the Author
Abigail Gardner, Ros Jennings
