I've Been a Bad, Bad Girl

A timely reclamation of the 1990s through its female rock stars, told by acclaimed music journalist Marissa R. Moss. Award-winning journalist and author of Her Country: How Women Reclaimed Country Music, Marissa R. Moss offers a passionate, incisive and personal reclamation of the 1990s through the chart-topping, genre-defying women who redefined what it meant to be a girl with a guitar. From Fiona Apple and Courtney Love to Lauryn Hill and Alanis Morissette, these artists were loud, vulnerable, angry, and unafraid and were punished for it by the music industry. As Moss chronicles their rise, she confronts the cultural backlash that labelled them as difficult, unstable, or dangerous – labels that mirrored what many girls of the time were told about themselves. Blending original reporting with cultural critique and memoir, she shows how these artists laid the groundwork for the raw honesty and genre-bending confidence of today’s stars like Olivia Rodrigo, Maggie Rogers and Phoebe Bridgers.