What are female fans of popular music seeking and hearing when they listen to music and attend concerts? In an innovative and fascinating study entitled
Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos (The Scarecrow Press, 2013)
Adrienne Trier-Bieniek goes inside the fan culture that surrounds Tori Amos and examines why her music appeals to her fans and how they make meaning of her music. Drawing on feminist standpoint theory and symbolic interaction theory, Trier-Bieniek helps us understand the diverse ways that fans interpret music and how music can have a very personal meaning.
The podcast discusses the book and so much more. Trier-Bieniek describes the concerts of Tori Amos, Amos's interactions with fans, including WWE wrestler Mick Foley, and the growth of her fan sites and message boards. The podcast also looks at the relationship between Tori Amos's music and other female artists from Madonna and Lady Gaga to Joni Mitchell and Regina Spektor.
Adrienne Trier-Bieniek is a professor of sociology at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. She is co-editor of
Gender and Pop Culture - A Text Reader (Sense)
and the author of the forthcoming books,
Feminist Theory and Pop Culture (Sense) and
Fan Girls and Media: Consuming Culture (Rowman and Littlefield). More information about Adrienne Trier-Bieniek can be found at her
website.