Unsilenced - by Rosemary Lucy Hill & Bianca Fileborn & Catherine Strong (Hardcover)

About the Book

"This book explores how women who have experienced gender-based violence within the music industry represent and construct this violence through their creative and public-facing outputs. Analysis of three key case studies - Kesha, Lingua Ignota, and Alice Glass - demonstrates that gender-based violence influences creative productions. The representation of this abuse is identified in the artists' music, lyrics, and visual accompaniments and the incorporation of their experiences and responses to abuse in their public personas. The authors uncover what it is about the music industry itself that might facilitate or enable such experiences and perpetuate abuse"--

Book Synopsis

This book explores gender-based violence within the music industry, and how women who have experienced violence represent it in their music.

Using the key case studies of music by Kesha, Lingua Ignota, and Alice Glass, as well as many other examples from across the musical landscape, the book examines how the artists represent their experiences of gender-based violence in their music, lyrics, and music videos; how they narrate and describe their experiences; how they incorporate these experiences into their public personas; and how the music industry itself might be facilitating or perpetuating the violence.

The analysis sheds light on how survivors construct their experiences, and how the songs and videos inscribe new understandings of gender-based violence. The book argues that men's control of women's creativity can be considered a form of musical abuse, and that through its structures and systems the music industry itself can be classed as inherently abusive. And yet, women musicians can sing back to the violence they've experienced and create powerful new representations that have the potential to change the way we listen to music, if we are prepared to develop our feminist ears.

Review Quotes

"Unsilenced combines critical feminist work on sexual violence, structural analysis of the music industry, close listening to individual tracks and personal, and academic reflections on music fandom in a post #MeToo era. The book is essential for anyone thinking about the ethics of popular culture and sexual violence, and its call for a feminist politics of listening will be inspiring for anyone thinking about cultural range around sexual and gender-based violence." --Tanya Serisier, Professor of Feminist Theory, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

"This valuable book offers an unflinching consideration of how gender-based violence works in the music industry. With three illuminating case studies, the authors are able to dig deep into the systems of power that shape our understandings of "survivors" and abusers. Thoughtful attention to work by Kesha, Alice Glass, and Lingua Ignota shows how these artists express their experiences of GBV through their music. The result is an urgent and insightful exploration of a painful, pervasive reality." --Jacqueline Warwick, Professor of Music and Gender & Women's Studies, Dalhousie University, Canada

"This is the first book to explore the effects of gender-based violence on artists and music in the popular music industry today. It is a timely and important contribution that I hope will inspire future focus on power, sexuality, and violence in contemporary music." --Ann Werner, Associate Professor, Musicology, Uppsala University, Sweden

"Framed by rising exposure and critique of music industry misogyny and sexual violence, this book provides a timely and compelling feminist analysis of the artistic responses of three prominent women musicians to their experiences." --David Hesmondhalgh, Professor of Media, Music and Culture, University of Leeds, UK

About the Author

Rosemary Lucy Hill is an independent scholar, formerly of the University of Huddersfield, UK. She is the author of Gender, Metal and the Media: Women Fans and the Gendered Experience of Music (2016) and many articles about feminism, music and big data. She is the co-series editor of Advances in Metal Music and Culture. She is the lead vocalist in a feminist folk metal band and currently writing her first novel.

Bianca Fileborn is an Associate Professor in Criminology, School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Their work is broadly concerned with interrogating the intersections of identity, space, place, culture and experiences of violence and justice. They are the author of Reclaiming the Night-Time Economy: Unwanted Sexual Attention in Pubs and Clubs (2016) and co-editor of #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change (2019).

Catherine Strong is an Associate Professor in the Music Industry program at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia. Among her publications are Grunge: Music and Memory (2011), Music City Melbourne (2022), and Towards Gender Equality in the Music Industry (2021, edited with Sarah Raine). Her research deals with various aspects of memory, nostalgia and gender in rock music, popular culture and the media. She is co-editor of Popular Music History journal and an associate editor for DIY, Alternative Cultures and Society journal.