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Vocal Break
  • Published: 14 May 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529975048
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $65.00
Categories:

Vocal Break

Formats & editions
Hardback
19 May 2026
EBook
14 May 2026
Audiobook
14 May 2026
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A joyous feminist call-to-arms and cultural history exploring female singing voices by the critically acclaimed author of Art Monsters and Scaffolding; for fans of Viv Albertine, Jia Tolentino, Olivia Laing

A dazzlingly original reassessment of the power and plurality of women's singing voices by the critically acclaimed author of Art Monsters and Scaffolding

For millennia, women’s raised voices have been heard as unruly, uncivilized, dangerous. Women singing were cast as sirens: mythical creatures who lured sailors to their death.

In Vocal Break, Lauren Elkin seamlessly blends memoir, feminist manifesto and cultural history to explore a plurality of female singing voices – and how women have used them to defy convention, genre, capitalism, racism and sexism.

Drawing on her own experiences training as a young soprano in the 1990s, Elkin reflects on the way power and identity shape our voices, focusing on the women who most excited her when she was learning to sing. A vocal break refers to the place where the voice shifts from lower to higher registers, so from one thing to another, and this is a book about what kind of meanings, and sounds, can be made there. Immersing readers in an eclectic soundscape, from musicals and pop music to art punk, what follows is a full-throated tour of women’s voices, including Édith Piaf, Maria Callas, Cyndi Lauper, Kathleen Hanna, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Beyoncé, FKA Twigs and Billie Eilish.

Reflecting on what makes women’s singing so powerful – to the point where others feel the need to control or manipulate it – Vocal Break is a joyous call to arms, a siren call:

Girls to the front: NOW.
  • Published: 14 May 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529975048
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $65.00
Categories:

About the author

Lauren Elkin

Lauren Elkin is the author of several critically-acclaimed books, including Scaffolding, Art Monsters, and Flâneuse. Her essays on art, literature, and culture have appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Times, Granta, Harper's, Le Monde, Les Inrockuptibles, and Frieze, among others. An award-winning translator, she lives between Paris and London.
portrait photo of Lauren Elkin

Also by Lauren Elkin

Scaffolding
Art Monsters
Flaneuse
See all

Praise for Vocal Break

‘Reading Vocal Break felt like being round at a friend's house playing through a stack of records and talking about them until sunrise. Warm, clever, funny and deeply thoughtful, this is a rich work of feminist criticism with a beautifully light touch…I loved it.’

Octavia Bright 

‘Reading Vocal Break felt like being round at a friend's house playing through a stack of records and talking about them until sunrise. Warm, clever, funny and deeply thoughtful, this is a rich work of feminist criticism with a beautifully light touch…I loved it.’

Octavia Bright 

‘An essential, eclectic, authentic exploration of the politics of women's voices. I loved it! It took me ten years to go from shy young girl to punk rocker, if I'd had this book I'd have got there much quicker’

Viv Albertine

‘An essential, eclectic, authentic exploration of the politics of women's voices. I loved it! It took me ten years to go from shy young girl to punk rocker, if I'd had this book I'd have got there much quicker’

Viv Albertine

'Compelling, scholarly, rousing… Elkin writes with the intimate knowledge and the passion of one who sings, and the scholar’s measured and listening ear. A pitch-perfect book'

Harriet Baker

'Compelling, scholarly, rousing… Elkin writes with the intimate knowledge and the passion of one who sings, and the scholar’s measured and listening ear. A pitch-perfect book'

Harriet Baker

‘A lively and entertaining hymn to the female voice – its use, its artistry, its flaws, its triumphs, its sorrow and its rage. Elkin leaps from subject to subject with the smooth grace of a great vocalist moving between notes on a scale.’

Philippa Snow

‘A lively and entertaining hymn to the female voice – its use, its artistry, its flaws, its triumphs, its sorrow and its rage. Elkin leaps from subject to subject with the smooth grace of a great vocalist moving between notes on a scale.’

Philippa Snow

‘A whirlwind if a book and a testament to sonic sisterhood. A compelling eclectic exploration of music from one of the finest voices of our times.’

Darran Anderson

‘A whirlwind if a book and a testament to sonic sisterhood. A compelling eclectic exploration of music from one of the finest voices of our times.’

Darran Anderson

‘A thrilling, erudite exploration of the power of women’s voices, as artful as it is informed. The best kind of cultural criticism’

Sophie Gilbert

‘A thrilling, erudite exploration of the power of women’s voices, as artful as it is informed. The best kind of cultural criticism’

Sophie Gilbert