Can’t Stop the Grrrls: Confronting Sexist Labels in Music from Ariana Grande to Yoko Ono

In this impassioned study, musicologist Hirsch (Weird Al: Seriously) calls out the music industry’s long history of sexism, racism, and toxic double standards. The author laments the media’s mistreatment of female artists, as when journalists Dan Carlinsky and Edwin Goodgold wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 1972 that Yoko Ono used her “hypnotic power apparently acquired in the Orient” to break up the Beatles, and, more recently, Janet Jackson was the subject of misogynistic coverage after her wardrobe malfunction during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. Britney Spears, Hirsch writes, was called “crazy,” an appraisal that was later used in a 2008 court case that would lead to her conservatorship, which ended in November 2021. But the book ends on a hopeful note: Hirsch proposes that a “real revolution” can occur with the amplification of women’s collective testimonies, because “there is strength in numbers—the stories of so many women—when they repeat in basic contour and language.” Hirsch’s arguments are revelatory, and she approaches her subjects with respect: “What is the right way to confront and challenge abuse when it involves someone else’s trauma?” This is a convincing call to action. (Mar.)