Vocal Break: On Women, Music & Power

by Lauren Elkin

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Music, Feminism

363 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 21, 2026

About the author

Lauren 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 She is also an award-winning translator, most recently of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel The Inseparables, and forthcoming fiction and non-fiction by Constance Debré, Lola Lafon, and Colombe Schneck.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.

Reviews

[Juliano · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Music still contains the purest thrill: its intensity and intentionality, its rhythm and disruptions, its ability to surprise, to shock. I am more attuned to music than to language, and sometimes worry that I am a fraud as a writer, because I am not essentially a writer; I am a musician who got into writing.” The best parts of Lauren Elkin’s Vocal Break: On Women, Music and Power, for me, are the reflections on writing, and how music bears on Elkin’s journey as a writer. I often think, myself, that if I could sing or play an instrument or dance I would’ve pursued any of those avenues over writing; if I had to choose between forgoing music or books, I’d be unable to live without music. Elkin’s love of music is palpable, and I enjoyed the personal and theoretical considerations of voice and music in the book. “The voice lives in a body: its tonalities, contours, and textures will be those the body alone can produce.” “The voice, with its unpredictable nooks and crannies, wrong-footing our assumptions about gender, race, and class, sickness and health, fragility and strength — the voice is multiple and always in flux, and always, even if we aren't listening, telling us something that can't quite be captured in language, something we ourselves would be hard put to explain.” Where, for me, the book fell unusually short for Elkin (whose other books I’ve always raved about!) is in its engagement with music history: I found it to be a little unfocused, its examples inconsistent and cherry-picked. The parameters Elkin sets out at the beginning of the book feel both a bit arbitrary and ultimately inaccurate, and certain arguments that get made (for example about the quiet breathy singing of artists like Lana Del Rey and Billie Eilish) feel grounded in personal conceptions not fully explained, which also don’t hold up to scrutiny. I think perhaps this is a case of expectation-gap, where the book I read was just not the book I was hoping to read (aka Elkin’s Art Monsters but for voice and music), but it’s one I want to return to in a few years with fresher eyes unclouded by misconception.

[Ellie Breen · Rating 3 out of 5]

love Elkins other work but this didn’t hit as hard as usual. maybe it’s because singing isn’t a big interest of mine. very well written and researched

[Jen Hambling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting insight and application of singing to feminism