Vocal Break: On Women, Music, and Power by Lauren Elkin
Pastiche Grotesque, designed by Benjamin Tuttle, is used on the cover of Lauren Elkin’s Vocal Break: On Women, Music, and Power. Design by Na Kim. The book is available for purchase on November 10th, 2026.
For millennia, women’s raised voices have been called unruly, uncivilized, dangerous. Singing women were cast as sirens: mythical creatures who lured sailors to their death.
A vocal break is where the voice shifts from lower to higher registers―from one thing to another. What can be made in this space of transition? Lauren Elkin draws on her own experiences as a young soprano in the 1990s as well as showcasing a full-throated, full range of other singers, including Édith Piaf, Maria Callas, Cyndi Lauper, Kathleen Hanna, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Beyoncé, FKA twigs, and Billie Eilish. Looking closely at the way power and identity shape our voices, she immerses readers in an eclectic soundscape, from musicals and pop music to folk, punk, and opera.
As she seamlessly blends cultural history, criticism, memoir, and feminist manifesto, Elkin lays out how women have used their voices to defy convention, genre, capitalism, racism, sexism, and the forces that attempt to keep them quiet. What makes women’s singing so powerful―to the point at which others feel the need to control or manipulate it? Vocal Break is Elkin’s insistent, joyous call: Girls to the front, NOW!
