I’ve Been a Bad, Bad Girl

In this part biography, part cultural and music criticism, and part feminist manifesto, award-winning music journalist Marissa R. Moss rewrites the narrative of the women artists who rocked the ’90s.

Women artists rocked the 90s, a seminal constellation of talent—Alanis, Sheryl, Liz Phair, Fiona Apple, Courtney Love, Jewel and more—dominating that decade by capturing teenage womanhood and feminism just before the arrival of the internet, that behemoth that told everyone how to think. But they faced huge backlash from critics and the establishment and a big fat double-standard when they sang about anger or rage or sex or politics, because those things were still the province men. What was okay for Nirvana and Pearl Jam was not okay for these women who were deemed “bitchy” or “nasty” or worse. Yet they banded together and soldiered on, staying true to their craft and themselves, and paving the way for a new generation of artists like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo.

In I’ve Been a Bad, Bad Girl, journalist Marissa R. Moss weaves biography and music criticism together with her own story of coming of age as a woman and a music fan during the ’90s—these songs were her anthems—as the only daughter of a single mother living in New York City, and re-examines this dynamic group of women trailblazers to show what we can learn from how they faced obstacles and disappointments but never gave up.