Introduction: An Alternate Ribbon of Time
1. Screaming the Beatles: The First Boy Band Breaks the Gender
Mold
2. Oh! You Pretty Things: The Glitter Revolution
3. Whining Is Gender Neutral: Punk’s Adolescent Escapism
4. Wreckers of Civilization: Post-punk, Goth, and Industrial
5. Soft Machines: Women, Cyborgs, and Electronic Music
6. Not a Woman, Not a Man: Prince’s Sapphic Androgyny
7. The Fake Makes It Real: Synthpop and MTV
8. Infinite Utopia: Queer Time in Disco and House
9. Funky Cyborgs: Time, Technology, and Gender in Hip-Hop
10. Butch Throats: Women’s Music and Riot Grrrl
11. God Is Gay: The Grunge Eruption
12. No Shape: The Formless Internet
Coda: Whole New World
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Sasha Geffen is a writer based in Colorado. Their work focuses on the intersections between pop culture and gender and has appeared in Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Artforum, theNation, and theNew Inquiry, among others.
Geffen’s 2020 book is a gem...Their arguments about the music of
the last 60 years—from the Beatles to Prince and David Bowie to
Frank Ocean and Perfume Genius—are revelatory. The gender binary,
they argue, is not simply worth breaking; it has always been
broken...Geffen creates one of the most helpful and useful things a
writer can give: hope for a more inclusive future. Anyone
interested in gender would benefit from reading Glitter Up the
Dark, and music obsessives can find a plethora of new
interpretations of music history as well. Ultimately, that is what
the best music books can do.
*PopMatters, "12 Contemporary Books That Will Have You Rethinking
Music History"*
A must-read for all those interested in the politics of sound.
*The Guardian*
This is how Glitter Up the Dark, and all of Geffen’s writing,
works: Once you start reading it, you’ll hear the world through new
ears. You’ll devour Glitter Up the Dark with eyes wide
and mind racing, drawing connections to whatever music you listen
to. It’s exciting. And if you’re a queer or trans listener, it’s
validating reading about how generations of us have found a haven
in music.
*Vulture*
An ecstatic celebration of freedom through sound and
movement, Glitter Up the Dark makes pop history feel
thrillingly new.
*Kirkus/Rolling Stone, "Best Music Books of 2020"*
[Glitter Up the Dark] speaks to pop music’s effect on future
generations of norm-breaking artists, but also on public
perceptions of gender and its engagement with race and class
politics. It’s an essential contribution to the modern music-book
canon, made all the more intimate in Geffen’s hands.
*Pitchfork, "Our 15 Favorite Music Books of 2020"*
[Glitter Up the Dark] is a unique examination of gender fluidity
and queerness across genres of popular music; a must-read for music
lovers.
*Ms. Magazine*
[Glitter Up the Dark] doesn't just discuss various subversions of
typical masculine and feminine gender roles—it discusses how we
came to accept the full gender spectrum with non-binary and third
gender identities. Geffen chronicles gender fluidity in music from
the 20th century to the present, discussing everyone from early
blues artists and David Bowie to Missy Elliot and riot grrrl
bands.
*Paste Magazine*
From Little Richard and Elvis to David Bowie and
Prince, Glitter Up The Dark shows how artists have used
music and its accompanying fashion and technology to subvert
traditionally accepted forms of sexual identity—including what
Geffen calls “audio drag,” wherein musicians inhabit shifting
personas through vocal manipulation. While Geffen is more than
comfortable digging into headier gender theory, the book remains
accessible and well-crafted.
*The A.V. Club*
Through deft yet largely accessible analysis, Glitter Up the Dark
feels like a revelatory unearthing, as Geffen carefully exposes
threads of queerness that typical histories may choose to ignore or
erase.
*them*
Glitter Up the Dark is not just a chronicle of the
transgressive possibilities of pop music but also a history of
Geffen’s listening and a demand that we regard pop culture in
explicitly political terms.
*The Nation*
Without attempting a comprehensive overview of queerness in
music, Glitter Up the Dark nevertheless traces a clear
path from the Beatles onwards...Whether it's the time-shifting
energy of '70s New York clubs like the Loft, the 'sapphic
androgyny' of Prince, or the gay masculine identification channeled
through Grace Jones's 'I Need A Man,' Geffen makes clear that
performers and their listeners have always been engaged in a
lively, flirtatious exchange, constructing vibrant, expressive, and
more fluid worlds in the space between each reverberating sound
wave.
*Nylon*
An essential contribution to the modern music-book canon, made all
the more intimate in Sasha Geffen’s hands.
*Pitchfork*
This slim yet sprawling volume...overturns traditional approaches
to pop-music history by revisiting popular stars, songs and genres
through a gender-expansive, queer lens
*Westword*
[Glitter Up the Dark] tells the story of queer artists and fans
carving out space for their self-expression in an industry that
capitalizes on pieces of the queer aesthetic, while simultaneously
writing off those artists who are deemed too subversive or
political.
*Jezebel*
[An] ambitious first book...with Geffen’s boundless love for music,
deep listening skills, and expansive knowledge, they have queered
the map of pop in language as accessible as a yellow brick
road.
*Lambda Literary*
Geffen’s clear love and deep knowledge of the subject, along with
insightful historical and critical arguments about the intertwining
of gender and music, make this a deliciously necessary read for
anyone interested in either pop culture or gender studies.
*Library Journal, Starred Review*
Glitter Up the Dark is Geffen's definitive love letter to the power
of music to inspire acceptance and transformation—both within
ourselves, and in the world around us.
*Foreword Reviews*
In an expansive and exuberant history Sasha Geffen celebrates
music's liberatory potential to break down binary gender roles.
*The Wire*
Geffen drags a shimmering thread that connects transgressive music
histories that have defined not just queer culture but all of pop
culture for decades...Geffen’s book feels like the most fabulous
tasting menu that will inspire readers to fall down the rabbit
holes of so many of these stories.
*Autostraddle*
Geffen provides detailed insight into the ways queer and gender
non-conforming artists shaped pop music—including punk and its
antecedent, glam rock.
*Chicago Reader*
[Glitter Up the Dark] details, era by era, just how much popular
music has done to break down the gender binary...one of the things
I loved about the book is how Geffen celebrates the way that
challenging the binary is inherent to the appeal of pop music for
all people who approach it with open ears and hearts: it clears a
space for all of us to more truly understand the human
experience.
*The Current*
Geffen invokes canonical artists with wan mischief…and keeps
finding curious historical details…Glitter Up the Dark lovingly
describes the affinities drawn together by the act of
listening.
*Hazlitt*
[An] incisive first book…[Geffen's] lucid prose is frequently
enlivened by small, passing insights into music I’ve encountered a
million times but will now forever hear refracted through their
imagery and words…What I found most valuable about Glitter Up the
Dark was the lens through which it looks back and invites us to
notice how such seeming 'subversions' have always been present
beneath the surface of even the most popular music...Reading this
book often gave me the sensation that I was looking at a familiar
scene through a kaleidoscope, suddenly seeing smeared borders and
tiny, winking rainbows everywhere.
*Bookforum*
Glitter Up the Dark is less a straightforward narrative of pop
music gender play and nonconformity than a spiraling, exhilarating
dance through its more and less famous manifestations...This prism
of a book reflects a rainbow on all it touches.
*Boston Globe*
Glitter Up the Dark helps readers understand and contextualize
gender performance in popular music. It might change the way you
listen to and engage with your favorite records.
*The Arts Fuse*
From disco to techno, punk rock to hip-hop, Geffen digs deep to
explore the way popular music can facilitate exchange between
listeners and performers, loosening the grip of gender roles and
providing fertile ground for asking questions, seeking liberation
and creating change.
*NPR, "NPR's Best Books of 2020"*
A brilliant, highly accessible, and timely testament to the power
of music to shatter the status quo.
*Library Journal, "Best Arts Books of 2020"*
This exploration of queerness and pop is ridiculously
comprehensive...Geffen’s examination of gender ambiguity’s
relationship to artistic reinvention is a fascinating read. You’ll
never listen to classic genre-staples in the same way again.
*NME, "The 20 best music books of 2020"*
Geffen's genuine enthusiasm for transgressive pop music is clear
and infectious, and the chapters on punk and glam rock...are true
standouts. [Glitter Up the Dark] is full of insightful
observations, such as the pivotal role that Wendy Carlos and
Pauline Oliveros played in the development of electronic music...A
helpful guided tour that shows how music is the perfect art form in
which to 'dance between genders.'
*Kirkus*
Glitter Up the Dark...asks a fascinating question, one the author
turns over and over for 264 fascinating pages. What is it about
popular music that makes it such a uniquely freeing space for
artists to explore the gender spectrum? Geffen takes a fascinating
walk through music history from the queer pioneers of rock and
blues; to the Beatles and their matching mop tops; to 21st century
artists like Perfume Genius and Fever Ray.
*The Current, "Best music books of 2020"*
From the castrati of mid-sixteenth century Italy to 'Ma' Rainey’s
lesbian blues to SoundCloud’s shape-shifting stars, Geffen takes
readers on an illuminating journey in lyrical, punkish prose.
*Elle, "The 63 Best Books of 2020"*
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