A canny blend of punkish attitude and discographical smarts that blasts boys-club assumptions about pop music.
A wide-ranging assortment of essays and reportage on rock, pop, country, and hip-hop, conscientiously putting women front and center.
The title of Hopper’s book (which revises and expands a 2015 edition) isn’t a brag but rather an air horn announcing a problem: Just as female musicians have been dismissed, marginalized, and abused by a patriarchal industry, Hopper is just one of many women music journalists who was told “it was perverse to tangle up music criticism with feminism or my personal experience.” So being “first” is as much a lament as an assertion, but the best pieces show how thoughtfully the author has used her position. Essays on Liz Phair, Kim Gordon, Miley Cyrus, and Lana Del Rey underscore how the negative “personas” applied to them are often used to obscure and undermine their talent. In one emotionally intense interview, Björk reveals how, more than four decades into her career, she’s had to prove she writes her songs. Hopper elevates underappreciated women-led acts like D.C. punks Chalk Circle and calls out misogyny in the system: Her landmark 2003 essay, “Emo: Where the Girls Aren’t,” chastised the scene for confusing sad-boy sensitivity with proactive feminism, and she reports on women country artists’ oft-futile efforts to gain airplay. The author convincingly argues that staying silent on such inequities has consequences, a point underscored by an interview with journalist Jim DeRogatis on R. Kelly’s track record of sexual assault and music journalists’ turning a blind eye to it. Hopper is stronger as a reporter and cultural observer than a track-by-track reviewer; the collection is padded with reviews that reflect her wide range of tastes but are stylistically flat. However, as she points out in the fiery conclusion, the book exists in part to expose other female writers to what’s possible with diligence and a refusal to compromise. In that regard, it’s essential reading. Samantha Irby provides the foreword.
A canny blend of punkish attitude and discographical smarts that blasts boys-club assumptions about pop music.Pub Date: July 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-53899-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Bloom’s comedic talent doesn’t translate to the page—at least not yet. Check back as her career continues to mature.
The co-creator and star of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend talks about her life.
“By the time I turned thirty,” writes Bloom, “I should have understood that there was no such thing as ‘normal.’ ” In this offbeat compendium of personal moments from childhood to the present, the author shares her journey in search of that moment when she felt “normal” around other people. Among other topics, Bloom discusses her mental health issues as an adolescent and how she endured bullying during middle school: “Were you bullied in middle school? Yeah? You were? Bullshit. You weren’t bullied. I was bullied. I am the ultimate judge of bullying and I conclude that I was bullied and you were not bullied. So says me, court adjourned, gavel goes bang bang.” The author’s humor is more pointed in her assessment of the pros and cons of attending award shows (her personal review system “is based on the things that TRULY count: Food, Parking, Temperature in the Room, and How Much Shapewear Is Expected”), a chapter in which she writes in the voice of her dog, and a section about how she and her colleagues bypassed FCC regulations to make certain parts of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend acceptable for a broadcast network rather than “edgy cable” (developed for Showtime, the series landed with the CW). Bloom includes childhood diary entries, poetry, and drawings as well as a snarky sample resume for aspiring actors, and she maintains a certain diffident note as she rambles along. The book was written before the pandemic, when the idea of “normal” was still possible. Thankfully, the author shares a relevant afterword that helps balance the silliness and eccentricities of the scattered narrative. Fans of the TV show will enjoy learning the backstory about the creator and star, but general readers won’t find much to appeal here.
Bloom’s comedic talent doesn’t translate to the page—at least not yet. Check back as her career continues to mature.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-4535-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
A melancholy but gemlike memoir, elegantly written and rich in hard experience.
The acclaimed Irish actor recalls his path to success and the well-cloaked turmoil he faced along the way.
It’d go too far to say that Byrne (b. 1950), star of The Usual Suspects and In Treatment, is as fine a writer as his countrymen James Joyce and Seamus Heaney. However, he writes with much more depth than the typical celebrity memoirist, accessing some of Heaney’s earthiness and Joyce’s grasp of how Catholic guilt can shape an artist. Growing up in Dublin, he aspired at first to be a priest, seduced by images of “young lads with dodgy haircuts, beatific smiles gazing heavenward to answer the call to the priesthood.” But a priest’s sexual assault soured him on the church, and he stumbled through a variety of menial jobs, including a stint as “a toilet attendant at a major Dublin hotel.” There’s no cheerful tone of dues-paying here: Pride isn’t in Byrne’s nature (he saw it drown a childhood friend who died bragging he could hold his breath). The author grew up with a schizophrenic sister who died young, developed a slow-growing alcoholism, and feared abject failure. The sudden success of The Usual Suspects left him with “such tumult in my mind I was afraid I would fall down and be found weeping in the street.” Despite the darkness, Byrne also possesses a winning dry humor that reads as authentically humble: his mother finding ways to cut him down to size in public by sharing embarrassing childhood stories, the time he had to audition for Hamlet using a motorcycle helmet for Yorick’s skull. There’s little in the way of celebrity dishing, but the author shares a boozy conversation with Sir Richard Burton, who cautioned him that fame is “a sweet poison you drink of first in eager gulps. Then you come to loathe it.” Byrne is an impressive chronicler of both his eager gulping and his loathing.
A melancholy but gemlike memoir, elegantly written and rich in hard experience.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8021-5712-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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