Why Solange Matters

Stephanie Phillips is a London-based music journalist and musician who writes for The Quietus, She Shreds, Noisey, Bandcamp, and The Wire. She started the Black feminist punk band Big Joanie and played backup for Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney. She is also part of the collective behind Decolonise Fest, a festival celebrating punks of color.

Singer and author share a story as Black women moving through spaces that weren't built with them in mind. Why Solange Matters asks not only who Solange is, or who Stephanie Phillips is, but who Black people are and what they can be...This is a book about what freedom could look like for Black women, in which Phillips provides a framework, a vision of a new world, one she hopes Solange would be proud to be a part of. (The Guardian) Phillips makes a convincing case for the singer-songwriter Solange as one of our most important and ambitious chroniclers of Black womanhood. (The Atlantic) Phillips analyzes Solange's musical evolution and connects the dots between the music and her experiences as a Black British woman...In less than 250 pages, Phillips celebrates and humanizes a woman whose artistic and personal milestones allowed the author's 'Black girl weirdo self a space to exhale.' (National Catholic Reporter) [A] rousing argument for 'Why Solange Matters'...Why Solange Matters helped me to re-hear A Seat at the Table through new ears. (The Current) [Phillips] does a great job at zooming out and considering all aspects of Solange’s artistic journey to stardom, including her childhood...[Phillips'] vibrant writing reminds us how Solange lit 'the flame of creativity' within many Black women, reminding us that society’s expectations continue to be limiting. Long live 'kooky' Black artistry. (gal—dem) Why Solange Matters is a love letter to outsider music nerds, but especially to Black women, who continually have their tastes, talents, hearts, bodies, and minds suppressed by 'the limited imagination of the white mainstream.' The book is a call to action — embrace yourself, embrace those who are hurting alongside you, and be brave. (Sightlines) Phillips...finds common ground in the struggles of the Houston icon, insightfully recounting the rise of BeyoncÉ's little sister. (Austin Chronicle) This University of Texas Press series has a strong premise, and among its titles released to date none has done a better job of fulfilling its mandate than Stephanie Phillips’s tribute to this dynamic artist. (The Current, "Best Music Books of 2021") Why Solange Matters is equal parts memoir, biography and music criticism...Some of the richest writing in Why Solange Matters is about Phillips’s own life, her family, her relationship to Britishness, and the feeling of being a ‘teenage Black girl weirdo’ growing up liking music she wasn’t supposed to and ‘rarely seeing depictions of beauty that looked like me’. At one point she says that the person Solange most reminds her of is Kate Bush, and it’s this kind of sparky detail that makes her book much more than a dry thesis and at times something nearer to personal reverie: an extended reflection on what she and Solange have in common, and what they don’t. (London Review of Books) Solange is a modern day icon, a cultural figure whose reach extends far beyond her slim but potent discography. Why Solange Matters is Stephanie Phillips’ examination of her work, but it quickly expands beyond this to tackle Blackness, womanhood, misogynoir, the essence of creativity and more...Why Solange Matters removes digital gloss to look at the person underneath, her motivations and aesthetic, all while offering a personal slant on the meaning of an icon. (Clash Music, "Best Music Books of 2021") We love Solange for being an inspirational and pivotal musician. And in Why Solange Matters we see her celebrated as a force for liberating Black female creatives. Author and Black feminist punk musician Stephanie Phillips looks at how Solange embraced activism and anger, breaking free from the limits placed on her as a performer of colour – and how she’s led the way for others to do the same. (London on the Inside) In Why Solange Matters, Phillips analyzes the singer’s progressive musical evolution from once being in the shadow of older sister and music icon BeyoncÉ to massive personal milestones, and intertwines Solange’s journey with her own experiences enduring generational trauma and institutionalized racism in the United Kingdom. (Teen Vogue)

• Preface1. Solange Takes Her Seat2. Little Sister3. The Making of a Solo Star4. Bite the Hand, It Never Fed You5. Rooting for Everybody Black6. Creating Community7. For Us, By Us8. When I Get HomeEpilogueAcknowledgmentsNotes