ABOUT THIS BOOK

Blackstar Rising and the Purple Reign is the first critical anthology dedicated to exploring the legacies of the pop music icons David Bowie and Prince. Daphne A. Brooks brings together an extraordinary array of writers, artists, and scholars, including Greg Tate, Jack Halberstam, Kara Keeling, Eric Lott, and Ann Powers, to offer fresh insight into how Bowie and Prince each fundamentally changed pop culture as musicians who emerged at the intersections of modern movements surrounding race, gender, sexuality, and art. Featured alongside these pieces are interviews with trusted collaborators of Bowie and Prince such as D. A. Pennebaker, Sheila E., and Marie France, giving vital insider context to the impact both artists had on pop culture and the complexities of their repertoires, politics, and private lives. This work is essential reading for any fan of two of the most formidable and eminent figures in pop culture history.

Contributors: Christine Bacareza Balance, Emma Balázs, Victoria Broackes, Daphne A. Brooks, Daphne Carr, Andreana Clay, Ashon Crawley, Jonathan Flatley, Nicole R. Fleetwood, Lynell George, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Michelle Habell-Pallán, Jack Halberstam, Matthew Frye Jacobson, Kara Keeling, Jason King, Josh Kun, Kathryn Lofton, Emily J. Lordi, Eric Lott, Maureen Mahon, Greil Marcus, Geoffrey Marsh, Michaelangelo Matos, Tiffany Naiman, Tavia Nyong'o, Ann Powers, Sonnet Retman, Morgan Rhodes, Francesca T. Royster, Gustavus Stadler, Jacqueline Stewart, Greg Tate, Karen Tongson, Van My Truong, Alexandra T. Vazquez, Michael E. Veal, Shane Vogel, Gayle Wald, Oliver Wang, Alexander G. Weheliye, Richard Yarborough, Kristen Zschomler

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Daphne A. Brooks is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Black Studies, American Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Music at Yale University. She is the author of Liner Notes for the Revolution and Jeff Buckley’s Grace, as well as Bodies in Dissent, published by Duke University Press.

REVIEWS

“Daphne Brooks remains one of our most thoughtful and incisive thinkers when it comes to music and its impacts on corners of culture that might otherwise go overlooked. This book is rich with research, but even richer with language, and delivery of information that is warm, inviting, and feels like you are bearing witness to someone, eager and excited to share a world with you.”
-- Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance

“Blackstar Rising and the Purple Reign offers an interdisciplinary deep dive into two iconic musicians who died within months of each other. Mixing a rich variety of formats, including critical essays, interviews, and ‘critical karaoke,’ a who’s who of pop writers and scholars tackle the lives and loss of these two figures. There are no books to my knowledge that offer this depth and breadth of thinking about David Bowie and Prince, or indeed about popular music in general.”
-- Evelyn McDonnell, editor of Women Who Rock: Bessie to Beyoncé. Girl Groups to Riot Grrrl

"Rife with rigorous analysis, careful scholarship, and a few delightfully quirky sections. . . ."
-- Publishers Weekly

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Lazarus

Purple Rain

Young Americans: A Heat Rocks

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