Fangirls
Scenes from Modern Music Culture
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- 14,99 €
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- 14,99 €
Descrizione dell’editore
“To be a fan is to scream alone together.” This is the discovery Hannah Ewens makes in Fangirls: how music fandom is at once a journey of self-definition and a conduit for connection and camaraderie; how it is both complicated and empowering; and how now, more than ever, fandoms composed of girls and young queer people create cultures that shape and change an entire industry.
This book is about what it means to be a fangirl.
Speaking to hundreds of fans from the UK, US, Europe, and Japan, Ewens tells the story of music fandom using its own voices, recounting previously untold or glossed-over scenes from modern pop and rock music history. In doing so, she uncovers the importance of fan devotion: how Ariana Grande represents both tragedy and resilience to her followers, or what it means to meet an artist like Lady Gaga in person. From One Directioners, to members of the Beyhive, to the author’s own fandom experiences, this book reclaims the “fangirl” label for its young members, celebrating their purpose, their power, and, most of all, their passion for the music they love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Vice UK editor Ewens elevates female music superfans to superstardom in this passionate, smart take. At age 10, a friend "as much of a weirdo as me" introduced Ewens to music fandom, which "paradoxically gave me both the invisibility cloak I desperately wanted and... the only identity that felt like it fitted comfortably." In defining female fans as a "community... on a collective journey of self-definition," Ewens notes that "being a fan is serious business." She decries the way female admirers have been belittled by the misogynistic "hysterical fan" label that's been applied to fans of everyone from the 19th-century heartthrob-composer Franz Liszt, who inspired "classic stereotypical fangirling behaviours," to Frank Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles, and One Direction. Ewens immersed herself in fangirldom by befriending London teens sleeping outside in line for concert tickets; Japanese girls flooding Tokyo's Haneda airport to glimpse a teen star; a young couple living in the late Amy Winehouse's former apartment, which has become a tourist destination; and members of the Beyhive, Beyonc 's fiercely protective global fan club. A madcap climax finds Ewens and two middle-aged fans a spin-class instructor and a high-powered lawyer stalking Courtney Love at a rehearsal in an upstate New York performance space with nervous teenage glee. Fangirls and pop music fans in general will jump on this adrenaline-fueled tour.
