The premise of this book alone ought to sell you on it: the top four best-selling Canadian artists within Canada are all female solo artists who came to prominence from 1993-97. And yet, artists like Neil Young and Bryan Adams loom larger in our national consciousness. Taking that into consideration, the massive commercial success of Céline Dion, Alanis Morissette, Shania Twain and Sarah McLachlan stops being merely impressive and enters "holy s*** territory, to paraphrase the author. This is a statistic that deserves to be explored.
Warner engages deeply with the music of her four subjects, and with the male-dominated critical culture that has served them so poorly. Her book celebrates the fact that these artists have defied the odds of a sexist industry and chastises the critics who tried to keep them on the margins regardless. Warner's own mid-nineties adolescence serves as a backdrop for these four uncanny success stories. She reflects on how Morissette and McLachlan informed her burgeoning feminism, and on how her initial attitudes towards Dion and Twain played into the hands of their most wrongheaded detractors.
But ultimately, the book is a picture of a broader cultural moment. "For five years, Dion, Twain, Morissette, and McLachlan were everything," Warner writes. We Oughta Know is about the hows and whys and specifics and abiding outcomes of those five years. It reframes the 90s in Canada so that Jagged Little Pill and Lilith Fair appear as central and as revolutionary as they deserve to. It is also frequently hilarious. Well worth a read.
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Top reviews from other countries
Marco A
Favorite nonfiction I read in 2018
Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2018Verified Purchase
Denise K.
Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2017Verified Purchase
