![]() ![]() In music, every generation of artists gets more free because they’ve learned from their previous generation. I feel like every generation gets more free. Do you feel like there has been progress on this front? One theme of the book is the way musical innovation that centers Black women is dismissed-the pretension around disco as inferior to rock, or how R&B was considered lesser on ‘90s radio. Aretha Franklin was the first woman in the Rock Hall, and I thought, OK, well let’s take a look at that. Like at the Grammys, when Little Richard was about to present Jody Watley with her award for Best New Artist, and he told everybody, “I’m an architect of all this.” I love those moments, because everyone makes them such a big deal. ![]() I feel like these moments are so emotional that you can see the truth in them. I am obsessed by acceptance speeches of any kind, and also speeches that walk people into halls of fame. In their speeches, they use the word “we” where there should have been a “she.” Through the book, you show that this is a stark pattern in music history. In the Aretha chapter, there’s a snippet from the Rock Hall induction ceremony, where she’s not in attendance, and there’s a swarm of men speaking on her behalf to accept the award. This is how little respect people had for a woman who was creating her first single. This is how little respect people had for Black mothers on the maternity ward. And Dionne Warwick’s name is Dionne Warrick. There's so many cases in Shine Bright where names are changed by accident. It was just interchangeable, and not worthy of people even knowing our actual given names. It clicked for me: what it means for a Black woman to demand that she be called what she wants to be called, when during slave times and even through the Civil Rights era, white people would refer to a Black woman over the age of 30 as just “auntie.” They could see me and say, “Auntie, bring me a glass of lemonade.” Or, “Auntie, is that the way to the bathroom?” And then another Black woman who was older than me and had a different color hair than me and a different body shape than me, they would say to that person, “Auntie, can you direct me to the nearest department store?” or whatever. Ross was a precursor to Dana Owens telling people to call her Queen Latifah. There's so much renaming in rap that I began to see Diana Ross as a precursor. And I think my perspective shifted with hip-hop. Jackson, how are you this morning? This is what we do. Why is this a problem for everyone?” Neighbor next door? Hi, Ms. Even as a kid I was like, “We call people things like that all the time. And I also didn't understand why it was a bad thing to ask people to call you Ms. Read an excerpt from her chapter on Diana Ross after the interview.Īs a kid, I didn't understand why people were so mad at her for breaking up the Supremes. We talked to Smith around the release of Shine Bright in April. Shine Bright is by turns warmly conversational and brilliantly analytical, achieving the feat of illuminating new contours of some of the greatest artists of all time. In writing about Aretha and Whitney, she lays out the long tradition of sleazy men in the music industry swarming around female artists, waiting to see what they can take from them. In a chapter on Gladys Knight, she unpacks her own childhood traumas while exploring the expectations of teenage girls to trust in the decisions of their elders. Each chapter treats an icon of mononymous fame-Aretha, Donna, Whitney, Mariah, Janet, Gladys, and so on-as a lens for Smith's own story, kaleidoscoping cultural criticism and meticulous reporting on their lives with reflections on Smith's own. In Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop, Smith articulates just how profoundly music can inform our understanding of self. ![]()
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