Good Girls, Bad Girls: The Rise & Fall of Women in Music

Description

Women have been important players in the recording industry from the very beginning, but not until 1996 did they out-sell their male competitors on the pop album charts and pull ahead in the race for hits. However, their dominance was short-lived and today they are back in the basement of the music business. Good Girls, Bad Girls provides a 100-year history of women in music, beginning with Lil Hardin Armstrong and Billie Holliday, and continuing up to present-day artists such as Shakira, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and Miley Cyrus. The author presents an analysis of the rise of women in music-and their subsequent fall-based on author interviews with a diverse assortment of women stars, ranging from Shania Twain, Pat Benatar, Brenda Lee, Bonnie Raitt, Tiffany, Ann and Nancy Wilson, Melissa Etheridge, Tammy Wynette, June Carter Cash, and Tanya Tucker. Influential women pioneers such as the late Frances Preston of BMI and Stax Records co-founder Estelle Axton were also interviewed by the author. Among the causes explored by the book of the hard times being experienced by female recording artists are the reluctance of female music executives to sign women to recording contracts, the prevalence of music piracy, downloading and streaming on the Internet, and the changing demographics of individuals who purchase albums and download individual songs. The author has written about women in music for over two decades. His now defunct 1980s magazine, Nine-O-One Network, at one time the third largest circulation music magazine in the country, was the first music publication to publish stories about sexual harassment in the entertainment industry.