From the effects of fame on family and vice versa to motherhood and drugs, sex, and romance, Lisa Robinson has discussed every taboo topic with nearly every significant living female artist to pass through the pages of Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. Here, interview highlights with these women of pop are compiled.
Manhattan-born and bred, [Robsinson] remains a relatable, wised-up observer, never more so than when she reports on the women who have made it in pop, making her new book an indispensable document about the feminine journey through a man’s world ... Robinson’s rich archives have brimmed with celebrity pulp since the late 1960s, but her interactions with female artists are where she mines gold ... Clearly, Robinson can be more than just a reporter in those moments when her subjects reflect on their lives ... her ability to ride along and humanize her subjects without prying for gory details is less a technique than a measure of sisterhood and good faith. That’s a rarity in pop rock journalism, and Robinson is a rare resource.
... part music history, part social history and no part minced words ... Robinson is attuned to the different expectations placed on women ... Robinson supplements her interview snippets and blunt opinions with choice autobiographical asides ... She's measured about whether, back in the day, she was remiss in not writing about the exploitation of groupies by rock stars, but she's unequivocal when the music business disappoints her, as it did when it produced what she clearly sees as the twin evils of Madonna and MTV ... there are many more female rock journalists out there now, although it's hard to imagine one as winningly blunt, unpretentious and on-target as Robinson.
... a well-intentioned but slapdash attempt to give equal time to women in popular music. Even the title is defensive — maybe no one asked her, but the girls were certainly there ... Robinson says she’s done over 1,000 interviews with women, and this slim volume can’t possibly do justice to the voices she taped over the years. Instead of the long, funny, carefully observed profiles in There Goes Gravity, we get brief sound bites from women she has interviewed ... Only three chapters, including one on business, suggest these women might be serious artists. Throughout, there’s an unappealing emphasis on physical appearance ... Instead of insights, we get banal observations ... Too bad Lisa Robinson didn’t focus more on how women are shaping music’s future, rather than sifting through the ashes of the past.
