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Vocal Break: On Women, Music & Power
A dazzlingly original reassessment of the power and plurality of women's singing voices by the critically acclaimed author of Art Monsters and Scaffolding
'It took me ten years to go from shy young girl to punk rocker, if I'd had this book I'd have got there much quicker’ Viv Albertine
For millennia, women’s raised voices have been heard as unruly, uncivilized, dangerous. Women singing were cast as mythical creatures who lured sailors to their death.
In Vocal Break, Lauren Elkin seamlessly blends memoir, feminist manifesto and cultural history to explore a plurality of female singing voices – and how women have used them to defy convention, genre, capitalism, racism and sexism.
Drawing on her own experiences training as a young soprano in the 1990s, Elkin reflects on the way power and identity shape our voices, focusing on the women who most excited her when she was learning to sing. A vocal break refers to the place where the voice shifts from lower to higher registers and this is a book about what kind of meanings, and sounds, can be made there. Immersing readers in an eclectic soundscape, from musicals and pop music to art punk, what follows is a full-throated tour of women’s voices, including Édith Piaf, Maria Callas, Cyndi Lauper, Kathleen Hanna, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Beyoncé, FKA Twigs and Billie Eilish.
Reflecting on what makes women’s singing so powerful – to the point where others feel the need to control or manipulate it – Vocal Break is a joyous call to arms, a siren
Girls to the NOW.
'It took me ten years to go from shy young girl to punk rocker, if I'd had this book I'd have got there much quicker’ Viv Albertine
For millennia, women’s raised voices have been heard as unruly, uncivilized, dangerous. Women singing were cast as mythical creatures who lured sailors to their death.
In Vocal Break, Lauren Elkin seamlessly blends memoir, feminist manifesto and cultural history to explore a plurality of female singing voices – and how women have used them to defy convention, genre, capitalism, racism and sexism.
Drawing on her own experiences training as a young soprano in the 1990s, Elkin reflects on the way power and identity shape our voices, focusing on the women who most excited her when she was learning to sing. A vocal break refers to the place where the voice shifts from lower to higher registers and this is a book about what kind of meanings, and sounds, can be made there. Immersing readers in an eclectic soundscape, from musicals and pop music to art punk, what follows is a full-throated tour of women’s voices, including Édith Piaf, Maria Callas, Cyndi Lauper, Kathleen Hanna, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Beyoncé, FKA Twigs and Billie Eilish.
Reflecting on what makes women’s singing so powerful – to the point where others feel the need to control or manipulate it – Vocal Break is a joyous call to arms, a siren
Girls to the NOW.
- GenresNonfictionMusicFeminism
363 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 21, 2026
About the author
Lauren Elkin
31 books505 followersLauren Elkin is a widely acclaimed Franco-American writer, critic, and translator. Her books include Flâneuse: Women Walk the City, which was a Radio 4 Book of the Week, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel award for the art of the essay. Her essays on art, literature, and culture have appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Times, Granta, Harper's, Le Monde, Les Inrockuptibles, and Frieze, among others. She is also an award-winning translator, most recently of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel The Inseparables, and forthcoming fiction and non-fiction by Constance Debré, Lola Lafon, and Colombe Schneck. After twenty years in Paris, she now lives in London.
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