She's So Fine: Reflections on Whiteness Femininity Adolescence and Class in 1960s Music

She's So Fine explores the music, reception and cultural significance of 1960s girl singers and girl groups in the US and the UK. Using approaches from the fields of musicology, women's studies, film and media studies, and cultural studies, this volume is the first interdisciplinary work to link close musical readings with rigorous cultural analysis in the treatment of artists such as Martha and the Vandellas, The Crystals, The Blossoms, Brenda Lee, Dusty Springfield, Lulu, Tina Turner, and Marianne Faithfull. Currently available studies of 1960s girl groups/girl singers fall into one of three categories: industry-generated accounts of the music's production and sales, sociological commentaries, or omnibus chronologies/discographies. She's So Fine, by contrast, focuses on clearly defined themes via case studies of selected artists. Within this analytical rather than historically comprehensive framework, this book presents new research and original observations on the 60s girl group/girl singer phenomenon. Contents: Introduction: she's so fine, or why girl singers (still) matter, Laurie Stras; Part I 'Now that I'm Not a Kid Anymore': American Girls' Voices in the 50s and 60s: Voice of the beehive: vocal technique at the turn of the 1960s, Laurie Stras; Vocal decorum: voice, body, and knowledge in the prodigious singer, Brenda Lee, Robynn J. Stilwell; 'He hit me and I was glad': violence, masochism, and anger in girl group music, Jacqueline Warwick. Part II 'Everything's Coming Up Roses': British Girls in the Mid-60s: Dusty's hair, Annie J. Randall; Brit girls: Sandie Shaw and the women of the British invasion, Patricia Juliana Smith; Mary Hopkin and the deep throat of culture, Sarah Hill. Part III Girls on Top: Rock Chicks and Resistance at the End of the 60s: Whose tears go by? Marianne Faithfull at the dawn and twilight of rock culture, Norma Coates; Bold soul trickster: the 60s Tina signifies, Susan Fast; Response, Martha Mockus; Select bibliography; Indexes.