Um.

"Um," what?

You mean like Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, La Roux, Robyn, Florence and the Machine, Beth Ditto, Janelle Monae...?

Fair point, especially Gaga who is dominating the center of the pop world right now.

Also, PJ and Tori are not dead and are still making music, AFAIK.

Bjork, too, but my point wasn't that they were gone. Just that the culture has changed. bon's rebuts my point, though I don't think most of the women she lists have the stature (in the sense of a sustained career of challenging and successful work) that my earlier triad have (and had at that time). Anyway, it's a subjective call and I may simply be nostalgic for the 90s.

It's easy to look at careers of women who were active fifteen years ago and say they're more long-lived than musicians who started recently. But gaga and Minaj especially aren't going anywhere.

Amanda Palmer IMHO engaged in some massive disability fail that put me off her completely. Mostly her refusal to hear people's cogent arguments and recognize her fail.

It's easy to look at careers of women who were active fifteen years ago and say they're more long-lived than musicians who started recently.

I did say they had achieved more at that point in their careers than the women you listed. But I haven't really gotten out my protractor and charted out their hits/best work relative to their age.

But gaga and Minaj especially aren't going anywhere.

Right, and both of them are still fairly young and in their prime. But while Minaj has had a lot of hit singles and been putting out music since about 2007, her debut album just came out last year. So she's still at the beginning of her career.

I don't know - it's hard to say in a musical world that's singles dominated. But hit singles have always been more ephemeral than albums. A lot of different singers have had short periods of chart dominance and then faded.

At one point it would've been smart money to bet on Lauryn Hill and Karen O.

Amanda Palmer IMHO engaged in some massive disability fail that put me off her completely. Mostly her refusal to hear people's cogent arguments and recognize her fail.

I'm sorry to hear that. I've recently become a fan of her music.

Amanda Palmer IMHO engaged in some massive disability fail that put me off her completely. Mostly her refusal to hear people's cogent arguments and recognize her fail.

I wasn't sure what your objection was. Was that the Evelyn Evelyn project?

I'm really not sure how to parse the disability issues in the long history of marginalized "freak show" culture and representation which has been dealt with in everything from Tod Browning's movie Freaks to Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus to Katherine Dunn's Geek Love.

Though ultimately it tends to come down to nobody wanting to be used as somebody else's metaphor.

I'm sorry to hear that. I've recently become a fan of her music.

sj, here's a precis of the controversy.

Thanks for the link, Hec. I just did some googling of my own, and I'm not sure how I feel about the whole thing. ETA: Actually I think it doesn't bother me that much but that maybe it should.

and I'm not sure how I feel about the whole thing.

I don't either exactly. I get the objection. But I'm not quite ready to toss out Richard II or The Heart is a Lonely Hunter out and they both use disability as metaphor. As does...King Lear (blindness, insanity), The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Moby Dick (Ahab's lost limb), and on and on.

It is a deeply ingrained part of Western culture to use disability as a metaphor for otherness or estrangement or emotional damage or whatever. An attempt to physicalize interior states.

I mostly get annoyed with classic literature's often use of disability to equal either evil or sainthood, with nothing in between those two options.