Rock and pop music has been obsessed with its own past almost from the start: by 1959, a New York record store called Times Square was doing a roaring trade in what it called “oldies”, selling mid-50s doo-wop singles to teenagers already convinced the golden age of rock’n’roll was over. That said, a kind of industrialised nostalgia took root in the early 90s, the era of the heritage rock magazine and the lavish retrospective CD box set. Thirty years on, there’s a nagging sense that all the great stories about pop’s history might have already been explored – an idea to which Danyel Smith’s Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop (Random House) is a necessary corrective. A smart blend of memoir and penetrating analysis, it frequently deals in righting wrongs or highlighting oversights. These are usually born out of a lethal cocktail of racism and sexism, not least in the story of the Sweet Inspirations. Best known as Elvis Presley’s backing singers, they are recast by Smith as pivotal figures in the development of US pop, the thread that links Van Morrison to Whitney Houston and Paul Simon to Aretha Franklin.
