Lesley Chow likes to keep things interesting. An Australian critic, she started her career in film, focusing on soundtracks. Since then she has moved from film to music and back, uprooting herself before she gets too comfortable in either mode. This spring, she published You’re History: the 12 Strangest Women in Music, a kaleidoscopic essay collection six years in the making that highlights some of the most uncanny women in pop music from Chaka Khan to Azealia Banks. Throughout the collection, Chow’s passion for strangeness, for “the feminine sleaze” as she puts it, blazes through. Just as the women she heralds refuse to prune or polish themselves, she dismisses self-serious titans of lyricism in favor of the ecstatic “ooh” of disco or a single tic of Neneh Cherry’s voice with an infectious, wry glee.
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