Quick Take
- Narration: Alison Fensterstock, also a contributor to the book, narrates with genuine authority and warmth; the embedded archival interview excerpts with Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, Taylor Swift, and others transform this into something genuinely unlike a standard audiobook.
- Themes: Female artistic labor and erasure, genre-crossing as survival strategy, the politics of canonical lists
- Mood: Vital and celebratory with an undercurrent of necessary urgency
- Verdict: The audiobook format is not an afterthought here but a distinct artistic object, and the 50-year NPR archive material makes it an essential listen for anyone serious about music history.
I put this one on during a long train journey, not entirely sure what to expect from what I thought might be a companion piece to a print book. By the time the train pulled into the station I had covered maybe three hours of the ten and was already rearranging my mental map of the last fifty years of popular music. What Ann Powers and Alison Fensterstock have assembled here is not a standard music history audiobook. It is something considerably more interesting than that.
The 2025 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Certificate of Merit and the AudioFile Magazine Earphones Award are not decorative. They signal that the audiobook format was considered seriously in the production of this work, and the embedded archival excerpts justify both distinctions. Hearing Nina Simone in 2001 reflect on how she developed the edge in her voice as a tool against racism is a different experience from reading a description of her saying it. Hearing Joan Baez discuss nonviolence as a musical principle in 1971 gives that observation a texture and specificity that no prose summary can replicate.
What Turning the Tables Started and This Book Extends
NPR’s Turning the Tables series launched in 2017 with a specific agenda: to correct the endemic underrepresentation of women on “Best of” lists and in critical canons. The effect was measurable. More women appeared on year-end lists and more nominations for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame followed. Powers co-founded the series and brings that decade of reckoning with canon formation to this book with full awareness of what the project accomplished and what remains unfinished.
The breadth is genuinely impressive. This is not a pop history with a feminist reframe applied afterward. The book covers folk, rock, rap, hip-hop, salsa, bubblegum pop, and the categories refuse to stay separate. Odetta explaining in 2005 how shifting from classical to folk music allowed her to express her fury over Jim Crow is not a digression from the main argument: it is the argument, made through a specific life, in a specific voice, at a specific historical moment.
Patti Smith, Taylor Swift, and the Problem of Periodization
One of the structural choices that distinguishes this history from others is its refusal to organize neatly by decade or genre. Patti Smith describing art as her “jealous mistress” in 1976 sits in productive tension with Taylor Swift in 2012 discussing early uncertainty in her career. The fifty-year span of the NPR archive makes this kind of temporal juxtaposition possible in ways that a single author writing from research alone could not achieve.
Reviewers note the book as “very informative” and call it perfect for musicians, music lovers, and anyone interested in the intersection of feminism and popular culture. The range of artists covered, from the explicitly canonical to the overlooked, from the politically outspoken to those whose politics were embedded entirely in their sound, is what makes the book feel genuinely comprehensive rather than selective in the way that most pop histories are.
The Supplemental PDF and the Question of Format
The book includes a supplemental enhancement PDF, which matters for listeners who want to follow up on specific artists or archival material mentioned in the text. It is worth noting because the audiobook format, here, is genuinely doing something the print version cannot: the actual voices, the actual recordings of interviews that date back to 1971, are part of the work in a way that transforms the listening experience. The PDF supplement acknowledges that the print and audio versions are not simply equivalent formats but different objects with different strengths.
At nearly eleven hours, this is a substantial commitment, but it is one that rewards the time. Fensterstock’s narration is warm and knowledgeable, and her dual role as contributor and narrator means the book’s argument is being delivered by someone who shaped it, which gives the reading a sense of lived investment rather than professional distance. For listeners who care about the history of popular music and the systematic undervaluation of women’s contributions to it, this audiobook delivers that history in a form that feels both scholarly and genuinely alive.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the audiobook actually include audio clips of Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, and Taylor Swift, or are their words just quoted in the text?
Yes, the audiobook version includes actual archival interview excerpts, not just written quotations. This is explicitly cited as one of its distinct advantages over the print edition, and is part of why it received the AudioFile Magazine Earphones Award.
Is the book primarily about mainstream pop stars, or does it cover less commercially prominent artists?
Both. The book draws from NPR’s Turning the Tables series, which specifically aimed to correct canonical underrepresentation. It covers Britney Spears and Taylor Swift alongside Odetta, Patti Smith, Lucinda Williams, and Sinead O’Connor, with the full range treated as equally worthy of serious attention.
What is the supplemental enhancement PDF, and do I need it to get full value from the audiobook?
The PDF provides additional material to accompany the listening experience. The audiobook stands fully on its own, but the PDF is useful for listeners who want reference material or follow-up reading on specific artists mentioned.
How does the book handle artists across different genres, given that it claims to cover folk, rock, rap, hip-hop, and salsa?
Genre-crossing is one of the book’s explicit themes, not just a descriptive feature. The argument is partly that women in music have always had to navigate and transcend genre boundaries as a matter of professional survival, so the breadth is structural rather than merely encyclopedic.
