History is continually making itself and thanks to this title, the fierce women in music will have their place. This is a love story to the black women who have honed their craft and whose influence in music is undeniable. Everyone has a personal story to music, particularly with the way it is crafted and disseminated as time moves ever forward. This book is filled with style, humor, passion, and history. With Black female musicians continuing to evolve the craft, I am excited to see how society embraces the next waves of exceptional skill.

While I mostly enjoyed Smith's book and how she highlighted the erasure of Black female artists throughout history, I often felt like I was reading the Wikipedia entry for different artists rather than a personal exploration of them. I wish I got to delve deeper into Smith's relationship with these different artists and deeper into the emotional aspects of the artists' work. All in all, an enjoyable and insightful, albeit somewhat disjointed, read!

It’s taken me a while to get through Shine Bright - not because its a difficult read, but more because I want to pause and reflect on all the different connections and people that Danyel Smith includes in her work. Smith’s book is dense, as it connects the threads of multiple black pop artists and their impacts on one another, and in that context how it shaped her life. Shine Bright is well researched and tells the story of both popular black artists, but also the lesser known, who have nonetheless with their music left a legacy in the history of pop and rock music. Smith’s work is an in-depth investigation in the genre, but also within herself and how the music that served as the soundtrack to her life, shaped her and her career.

It takes time to read, but it’s well worth it.

The research that went into this book is phenomenal. I’m so glad Danyel Smith wrote this book. Highlighting the contributions of Black people is essential, and I just loved reading and learning more about Black excellence!

Thank you to NetGalley and Roc Lit for the eARC!

Smith is an icon and in this text, she shares her iconography while playing tribute to other icons. Smith gives the reader bts stories that one can only read about in a throwback magazine, like the ones Smith wrote for during her ascend.

For musicians, music lovers, and historians, this title will bring much joy.

This book is really great. It has so much heart and the author brings a great deal of research to these women's stories. If you like pop music and/or Black women, you should 100% read this book.

This book is now on our CBC Books spring reading list: https://www.cbc.ca/books/the-cbc-books-spring-reading-list-50-great-books-to-read-this-season-1.6446021

Best,
Ryan B. Patrick
CBC Books

This book is everything: ⁣
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✨ A Celebration of Black women ⁣
✨ A History Lesson (with receipts)⁣
✨ A Musical Journey ⁣
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Danyel guides you on a path that educates and reminds the reader. She comes with facts on how Black women have laid the foundation and paved the way in the music industry. How Black women were not given their just due. It's a magical read. Danyel would mention a song or artist, I’d pause reading and play the song. Memories flooded over me, I was transported back in time and it just felt good (& sometimes not good)! ⁣
⁣
I’m a music lover to my core. From a very early age, music was infused into my soul by my father. Our house was full of music all the time. When he passed away several years ago, I found comfort in going through his extensive (and I mean extensive) vinyl collection. It was healing. To me that’s what music does, it heals, soothes, brings joy, and carries you through. I can’t imagine being a music lover and not reading Shine Bright.

Shine Bright is a beautiful, deep-dive exploration of Black female musical artists from the last sixty years. Author Danyel Smith effortlessly weaves in stories of her own childhood allowing the reader to connect with the author as she tells the stories of Gladys Knight, the women of the Sweet Inspirations, Diana Ross, Mariah Carey and so many others. There is so much to be learned from this book that I was almost overwhelmed with all the various connections, songs, and facts about some of the world's most famous and talented singers.

As much as I loved this book, it was hard for me to follow at some points. Being a mere 24 years old, there were so many songs that I have never heard of or mentions of historical events that Smith wrote about that I have either never heard about or didn't know enough to understand the cultural importance it had on the musical industry and musical artists to come. I believe this book is incredibly well-written but it would have more of an impact on older music lovers who grew up with so much of the music mentioned.

Overall, this was a fantastic read and I will be recommending this to so many fellow music-lovers.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and author Danyel Smith for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This was a really cool read. Part music criticism, part memoir, Shine Bright shares the stories of the foundational work Black women in pop music, and American culture more broadly. Amongst the insightful connections between different artists, influences, and eras, the author weaves in personal vignettes in her deep relationship with music. In the earlier chapters, she shares the memories she associates with these artists. In the music of her adolescence and young adulthood, she recounts life experiences which these songs soundtracked. Most interestingly, in her coverage of more contemporary Black female pop icons, she gives distinct insight into legendary performers through her work as a music journalist and critic. I learned a lot, both about artists I love and those I'm less familiar with. The chapter on Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston is especially fantastic.

In Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop, Danyel Smith sings praises to the greatest Black female artists of our time.

Danyel Smith is an award winning journalist, producer and author. She is the former music editor of vibe magazine and former R&B editor at Billboard. She is the creator and host of the Spotify exclusive Black Girl Songbook. She is, in truth, the only person who could write this book. If you didn’t know, now you know🎤

The story starts with Phillis Wheatley, a name anyone who takes literature seriously should know. Smith hails Wheatley, the first African American to have her work published, as the first star to shine bright among Black girls.

The history of Black women in music is truly an ode to all of our inner Black girls adultified too soon who found the explanations for life’s ebbs and flows in the voice of an artist singing “grown folk music.” Smith guides us through her own coming of age experiences while highlighting the soundtrack to her life. She tells us she was fortified by songs like Erykah Badu’s “Next Lifetime” 🙌🏾

Who can relate? I know I can. I have vivid memories of listening to Mary J. singing “Not Gon Cry” as if I understood the depth of her heartache as a 14 year old.

This book is a reminder that as Black women we have shifted the cultural American landscape. It’s a book I will look forward to discussing with my daughter as she grows up where I will make jokes about her “not knowing nothing about that.”

Shine Bright is, as Danyel tells us, the title of this book, a command, and a mission statement.

“We cannot sit quietly while everyone dresses like us and sings like us and writes like us and just kind of steals us from ourselves. That’s the part that makes us tired. But what’s even more heartbreaking than that is the thought that people may not truly know us, or the details of our lives. What if no one ever gets us right? What if our spirits and stories are never truly known?”

I would answer that in stating that with a pen like Smith’s, the erasure of the impact Black women have had in the music industry just straight up isn’t possible.

Shine Bright was a brilliant combination of memoir and general nonfiction about Black women in pop music. I really enjoyed the behind-the-scenes moments that went into making the music and artists that I have loved my whole life. I hate that there is still so much farther to go for equal rights and respect, especially for Black women. Very often they do not receive the credit, or the payment, for all of their hard work, and this is especially rampant in the music world where writing credit and royalties can make or break someone. Danyel Smith did a great job of weaving her own story into this history lesson, turning the music into the soundtrack of her life. And I agree that "Midnight Train to Georgia" is the greatest song!

Part cultural history, part memoir (definitely remember this is also a memoir). This book needs a playlist to follow along with! What a tour through underrecognized movers of pop music in America.

Before I delve into this book review, please take a look at this beautiful eye-catching cover! Such a vibrant orange with flowers surrounding a gold album. It shines bright as the title.

Shine Bright is a blend of biography and music history with Black women as the foundation. There is a short list of people qualified to write such a book; Danyel Smith is the best author for it. She has written pieces of this history for years through essays, as an editor for Vibe magazine and as a music critic. Now she dives all in with this intimate narrative along with her own memories.

The story of Black women in pop begins with an 8-year-old among a slave ship in July 1761. She grew into a woman who sang her poems by the name of Phillis Wheatley. The author feels a personal connection with this Black woman genius and dreams of her often. The stories continue featuring the Drinkard family, Gladys Knight, Peaches, Deniece Williams, Mariah Carey and more.

"To scream at a show, to get drunk on bass vibrations, to sing memorized lyrics loudly in unison with people you don't even know?" ~ 38%

Reading Shine Bright was an experience. It was like sitting down with Danyel Smith in front of a retro record player as she put on different albums and told stories. There's just some music that puts you in a certain headspace. There are songs that hold memories. But the history behind the music are the real gems in this book. Danyel Smith shares those moments with readers and gave damn good arguments on why her favorites are her favorites.

The appreciation for Black women in pop leaps off the pages. It goes without expressly saying that I recommend Shine Bright. Place your pre-order. Reserve at the library. Secure your copy! Share the fact that Black women created meaningful music.

Now excuse me while I go create a playlist on Tidal—if Elliot Wilson hasn't already—and continue the praise of Black women musical masters.

Happy Early Pub Day, Danyel Smith! Shine Bright will be available Tuesday, April 19.

~LiteraryMarie

An important read for fans of music history as well as those interested in how the intersections of gender and race and class have impacted the careers of both world-renown and barely known artists. A nuanced cultural study that also incorporates personal storytelling, Shine Bright is biography, memoir, musicology, sociology, and pop culture in one beautifully packaged volume.

Danyel Smith and I are a year apart in age, so I'm familiar with most of the music she mentions, even if not the backstory. Nevertheless I find it all fascinating. I love all the connections and factions and conspiracies Smith explains so adeptly: "caught up in the circular pattern of white artists being rewarded for mimicking Blackness and Black artists being maligned or short-sold for trying to sound like white artists,-who are trying to sound like them". I love the stories and the legends, but I especially love the way Smith shares her own personal history in a way that serves unequivocally to emphasize the case she makes about black women in America.

SHINE BRIGHT
by Danyel Smith
Random House Publishing Group - Random House, Roc Lit 101
Pub Date: Apr 19

Danyel Smith's history of the role of Black women in American pop is such a fascinating read.

The author has the definitive background for writing this most intriguing book, drawing upon her experience as editor of Vibe and of Billboard, and as host of the popular podcast, Black Girl Songbook. It's a wonderful mixture of history, biography, criticism, and memoir, with Danyel's own love of music woven throughout.

I learned so much about unknown and famous Black women singers who infused pop with such a distinctive American sound.

Smith starts with Phillis Wheatley, a slave who sang her own poems. She also shares rich stories of such greats as Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin, and Mariah Carey, as well as lesser-known Marilyn McCoo, Jody Watley and Deniece Williams. As I read, I "heard" their voices and songs that have long impacted my life and felt such joy!

This is a must-read for anyone who loves pop music, the Black women singers who made pop such a success, and beautifully written history-bios-memoirs. A triumph!

Thanks to the author, Random House Publishing Group - Random House, Roc Lit 101, and NetGalley for the digital ARC. Opinions are mine.

#ShineBright #DanyelSmith
#RandomHousePublishingGroup #NetGalley
#BlackWomenSingers #AmericanPopMusic #MusicMemoirs #MusicHistory #MusicBiographies #bookstagramcommunity

There's a type of history/biography book that incorporates the author's personal journey/experiences with the subject; I wish I knew a word for it! Sometimes it doesn't work, and you wish the author had focused more on the person/historical event than their own thoughts/feelings/experiences. Other authors--like Danyel Smith--effectively weave their personal storyline within the narrative, which enriches it further.

If you want a standard group of biography of influential Black American recording artists, this might not be for you. However, you would miss out on a deeply personal, moving, and enriching journey through the complex and powerful history of Black American women in popular music.

Librarians/booksellers: Readers who enjoy memoirs--even though this is not strictly a memoir--and entertainment history will love this. Would be a great book club pick!

Many thanks to PRH and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.