Arts & Literature
![Danyel Smith - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B08S6ZX5D6.jpg)
Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop
American pop music is arguably this country's greatest cultural contribution to the world, and its singular voice and virtuosity were created by a shining thread of Black women geniuses stretching back to the country's founding. This is their surprising, heartbreaking, soaring story-from "one of the generation's greatest, most insightful, most nuanced writers in pop culture" (Shea Serrano)
"This book is revelatory about the specific experiences of Black women in music."-Dawnie Walton, author of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022-Oprah Daily, Essence, Electric Lit
A weave of biography, criticism, and memoir, Shine Bright is Danyel Smith's intimate history of Black women's music as the foundational story of American pop. Smith has been writing this history for more than five years. But as a music fan, and then as an essayist, editor (Vibe, Billboard), and podcast host (Black Girl Songbook), she has been living this history since she was a latchkey kid listening to "Midnight Train to Georgia" on the family stereo.
Smith's detailed narrative begins with Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved woman who sang her poems, and continues through the stories of Mahalia Jackson, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, and Mariah Carey, as well as the under-considered careers of Marilyn McCoo, Deniece Williams, and Jody Watley.
Shine Bright is an overdue paean to musical masters whose true stories and genius have been hidden in plain sight-and the book Danyel Smith was born to write.
"This book is revelatory about the specific experiences of Black women in music."-Dawnie Walton, author of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022-Oprah Daily, Essence, Electric Lit
A weave of biography, criticism, and memoir, Shine Bright is Danyel Smith's intimate history of Black women's music as the foundational story of American pop. Smith has been writing this history for more than five years. But as a music fan, and then as an essayist, editor (Vibe, Billboard), and podcast host (Black Girl Songbook), she has been living this history since she was a latchkey kid listening to "Midnight Train to Georgia" on the family stereo.
Smith's detailed narrative begins with Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved woman who sang her poems, and continues through the stories of Mahalia Jackson, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, and Mariah Carey, as well as the under-considered careers of Marilyn McCoo, Deniece Williams, and Jody Watley.
Shine Bright is an overdue paean to musical masters whose true stories and genius have been hidden in plain sight-and the book Danyel Smith was born to write.
Editorial Reviews
"Danyel Smith, an icon of arts journalism, turns her literary powers to the under-recognized pillars of American music, the Black women whose trials, triumphs, and heartbreaks have given soul-deep voice to our own. Rarely has a narrator been so perfectly matched to her subject. A lyrical, long-overdue feat of personal memory, cultural history, synthesis, and love."-Isabel Wilkerson, author ofCaste and The Warmth of Other Suns
"Danyel Smith's ‘voice' is as vibrant, knowing, and evocatively joyous as that of the singers she writes about."-Paula J. Giddings, author ofWhen and Where I Enter
"Dazzling . . . Smith, in celebrating the legacies of seminal Black women in pop music, has cemented her own legacy as one of the generation's greatest, most insightful, most nuanced writers in pop culture. Shine Bright is wonderful."-Shea Serrano, author ofHip-Hop (And Other Things)
"This book is revelatory about the specific experiences of Black women in music-my highlighter got a good workout, as did my praise hands-but it also keys in to the way that a song or artist can unlock complex memories and emotions, visions of where we came from and who we dream we might be. These are chapters full of heart and wonder."-Dawnie Walton, author ofTheFinal Revival of Opal & Nev
"Riveting and rapturous, searingly candid and unstoppably audacious . . . both a stunning memoir of Gen X Black girl-into-womanhood and an elegant and rigorous exploration of the indispensable role that Black women artists have played in the making of popular music culture. I did not want this book to end. . . . An instant classic."-Daphne A. Brooks, author ofLiner Notes for the Revolution
"Danyel Smith paints the big picture of Black women's central role in American music by making sure every detail is perfectly rendered. Like the deep listener she is, Danyel hears her own story in the music and words of these women, but also connects them to each other and to the social realities behind the songs we treasure most. A landmark work as personal as it is profound."-Ann Powers, ...
"Danyel Smith's ‘voice' is as vibrant, knowing, and evocatively joyous as that of the singers she writes about."-Paula J. Giddings, author ofWhen and Where I Enter
"Dazzling . . . Smith, in celebrating the legacies of seminal Black women in pop music, has cemented her own legacy as one of the generation's greatest, most insightful, most nuanced writers in pop culture. Shine Bright is wonderful."-Shea Serrano, author ofHip-Hop (And Other Things)
"This book is revelatory about the specific experiences of Black women in music-my highlighter got a good workout, as did my praise hands-but it also keys in to the way that a song or artist can unlock complex memories and emotions, visions of where we came from and who we dream we might be. These are chapters full of heart and wonder."-Dawnie Walton, author ofTheFinal Revival of Opal & Nev
"Riveting and rapturous, searingly candid and unstoppably audacious . . . both a stunning memoir of Gen X Black girl-into-womanhood and an elegant and rigorous exploration of the indispensable role that Black women artists have played in the making of popular music culture. I did not want this book to end. . . . An instant classic."-Daphne A. Brooks, author ofLiner Notes for the Revolution
"Danyel Smith paints the big picture of Black women's central role in American music by making sure every detail is perfectly rendered. Like the deep listener she is, Danyel hears her own story in the music and words of these women, but also connects them to each other and to the social realities behind the songs we treasure most. A landmark work as personal as it is profound."-Ann Powers, ...
Short Excerpt Teaser
The Dixie Cups
If you as a female-I don't care how many hit records you've had-if you're out there, still working, if you accept anything that [a] promoter throws at you, and you never say anything to lift yourself up, first as a female, second as an artist-then what's going to happen? His next clients that are females, he expects them to take it because you took it.
-Rosa Lee Hawkins of the Dixie Cups, 2015
Until we moved to Mid-City, Los Angeles, with my mother's lawyer boyfriend, who was not practicing law, I was not sure that girls-outside of my sister and me-were teaming up in the world and making mischief.
Quel and I got up to ours with our new friends at Carthay Center, then an experimental magnet school. I was in a "gifted" program run by my teacher, Roberta Blatt. My mother and her well-connected semi-lawyer boyfriend moved us to the Miracle Mile–adjacent neighborhood specifically so we could attend Carthay.
I loved that school. It was about kids having freedom. My mother's freedom came in the form of a used cream-yellow Monte Carlo. She looked cool in it, played her music in it, and on hazy Los Angeles mornings, seemed on her way to some kind of peace.
My sister's Carthay class had rabbits. In my classroom, beneath tendrils of Mrs. Blatt's ivy, there was a carpet square designated for silent reading. I gulped essays printed on card stock, and answered the attached questions. With every correct answer, one moved up a color to the next comprehension level. Simple. I wanted to live on that carpet square. Because the duplex on Hi Point Street, with the bold tile in the long kitchen, was not a home.
At Carthay, where there was softball, and chorus, my sister's teachers noticed that she wasn't speaking. Not even to say "Here" at roll call. They called my mother in. Who knows what was said. But my sister, who talked to me about the rabbits during recess and lunch, was soon sent to counseling. I was amazed by this turn of events and had a feeling that my li'l tide was about to turn.
I don't know when I first heard the Dixie Cups, but it was likely on the radio in my mother's car. By the late 1970s, 1964's "Chapel of Love" was a new oldie, and popular on "gold" and "easy listening" stations like Los Angeles's K-Earth 101. My mother, who hadn't learned to drive until her midtwenties, drove to work and ferried groceries while leaning in to the jams of her youth. When she was driving we were allowed to adjust the volume, but we rarely changed the station.
By the time I got to high school, my mother was into the jazz-esque pinings of Angela Bofill, Marlena Shaw, and Michael Franks. But when I was a tween in the Monte Carlo, there was a lot of Motown and Elvis, and groups like the Shirelles, who, with 1960's "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," became the first girl group-of any race-to hit number one on the pop charts. I liked the song, but it was an inch too whiny.
The Marvelettes hit number one with "Please Mr. Postman" in December of 1961. A deeply danceable blues co-written by original member Georgia Dobbins, "Postman" is Motown's first number-one hit. At the 1:42 mark, when Gladys Horton doubles down on You better wait a minute / wait a minute / Oh, you better wait a minute, it's a demand of her man, not a request of the postman. I used to scream those lines with her, and I see Dobbins in the shine of Chrissie Hynde's vocals on The Pretenders' 1979 "Brass in Pocket."
I tolerated the Chiffons' 1963 number-one hit, "He's So Fine," as I did the Supremes' first number-one, "Where Did Our Love Go" from 1964. But the Dixies' "Going to the Chapel," recorded in February 1964 and released that April, was America's number-one pop song for three pealing weeks. It ruled in the Monte Carlo as an oldie, and gleams still with a kind of confidence in romantic commitment that-were it not for songs like this-I could doubt exists at all.
Rosa Lee Hawkins and Barbara Ann Hawkins are sisters, born and raised in New Orleans. They are two-thirds of the Dixie Cups. Barbara Ann is the older by three years. They share a modest home. In 2013, they're in their seventies and have survived Hurricane Katrina together. With their cousin Joan Marie Johnson, the trio recorded "Chapel of Love."
"Chapel of Love" sold over a million copies, dominated radio, unseated the Beatles' "Love Me Do" from number one on Billboard's pop chart, and propelled the young women to a brief and hot stardom that could not compete with the more lasting impact of the Supremes. From the short a cappella rise to the finger snaps to the alternation between the soft g of Gee I really love you and the hard g's of gonna get married-the cadence of "Chapel of Love...
If you as a female-I don't care how many hit records you've had-if you're out there, still working, if you accept anything that [a] promoter throws at you, and you never say anything to lift yourself up, first as a female, second as an artist-then what's going to happen? His next clients that are females, he expects them to take it because you took it.
-Rosa Lee Hawkins of the Dixie Cups, 2015
Until we moved to Mid-City, Los Angeles, with my mother's lawyer boyfriend, who was not practicing law, I was not sure that girls-outside of my sister and me-were teaming up in the world and making mischief.
Quel and I got up to ours with our new friends at Carthay Center, then an experimental magnet school. I was in a "gifted" program run by my teacher, Roberta Blatt. My mother and her well-connected semi-lawyer boyfriend moved us to the Miracle Mile–adjacent neighborhood specifically so we could attend Carthay.
I loved that school. It was about kids having freedom. My mother's freedom came in the form of a used cream-yellow Monte Carlo. She looked cool in it, played her music in it, and on hazy Los Angeles mornings, seemed on her way to some kind of peace.
My sister's Carthay class had rabbits. In my classroom, beneath tendrils of Mrs. Blatt's ivy, there was a carpet square designated for silent reading. I gulped essays printed on card stock, and answered the attached questions. With every correct answer, one moved up a color to the next comprehension level. Simple. I wanted to live on that carpet square. Because the duplex on Hi Point Street, with the bold tile in the long kitchen, was not a home.
At Carthay, where there was softball, and chorus, my sister's teachers noticed that she wasn't speaking. Not even to say "Here" at roll call. They called my mother in. Who knows what was said. But my sister, who talked to me about the rabbits during recess and lunch, was soon sent to counseling. I was amazed by this turn of events and had a feeling that my li'l tide was about to turn.
I don't know when I first heard the Dixie Cups, but it was likely on the radio in my mother's car. By the late 1970s, 1964's "Chapel of Love" was a new oldie, and popular on "gold" and "easy listening" stations like Los Angeles's K-Earth 101. My mother, who hadn't learned to drive until her midtwenties, drove to work and ferried groceries while leaning in to the jams of her youth. When she was driving we were allowed to adjust the volume, but we rarely changed the station.
By the time I got to high school, my mother was into the jazz-esque pinings of Angela Bofill, Marlena Shaw, and Michael Franks. But when I was a tween in the Monte Carlo, there was a lot of Motown and Elvis, and groups like the Shirelles, who, with 1960's "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," became the first girl group-of any race-to hit number one on the pop charts. I liked the song, but it was an inch too whiny.
The Marvelettes hit number one with "Please Mr. Postman" in December of 1961. A deeply danceable blues co-written by original member Georgia Dobbins, "Postman" is Motown's first number-one hit. At the 1:42 mark, when Gladys Horton doubles down on You better wait a minute / wait a minute / Oh, you better wait a minute, it's a demand of her man, not a request of the postman. I used to scream those lines with her, and I see Dobbins in the shine of Chrissie Hynde's vocals on The Pretenders' 1979 "Brass in Pocket."
I tolerated the Chiffons' 1963 number-one hit, "He's So Fine," as I did the Supremes' first number-one, "Where Did Our Love Go" from 1964. But the Dixies' "Going to the Chapel," recorded in February 1964 and released that April, was America's number-one pop song for three pealing weeks. It ruled in the Monte Carlo as an oldie, and gleams still with a kind of confidence in romantic commitment that-were it not for songs like this-I could doubt exists at all.
Rosa Lee Hawkins and Barbara Ann Hawkins are sisters, born and raised in New Orleans. They are two-thirds of the Dixie Cups. Barbara Ann is the older by three years. They share a modest home. In 2013, they're in their seventies and have survived Hurricane Katrina together. With their cousin Joan Marie Johnson, the trio recorded "Chapel of Love."
"Chapel of Love" sold over a million copies, dominated radio, unseated the Beatles' "Love Me Do" from number one on Billboard's pop chart, and propelled the young women to a brief and hot stardom that could not compete with the more lasting impact of the Supremes. From the short a cappella rise to the finger snaps to the alternation between the soft g of Gee I really love you and the hard g's of gonna get married-the cadence of "Chapel of Love...
