Trained as a Soprano for music theatre in the 1990s, at a stage school in New York, she learnt to control her voice into mimetic anonymity to fit the female characters of Walt Disney films and Broadway musicals. Mastering the problem of her vocal break the passaggio  the yodel-ish sound  that happens to everyone when their voice moves register, from chest to head was critical for stamping out individuality in her voice.

In Vocal Break, Lauren Elkin seamlessly blends memoir, feminist manifesto and cultural history to explore a plurality of female singing voice- and how women have used them to defy convention, genre, capitalism, racism and sexism. Drawing on her own experiences Elkin reflects on the way power and identity shape our voices, focusing on the women who most excited her when she was learning to sing.

Elkin is skilled and intensely curious writer whose books include a novel tackling women and sexuality and a volume of notes on her bus commute. She is also an award-winning translator. Art Monsters her 2023 book, took fashionable subjects -women artists and artists as violent aggressors – and offered a sophisticated, genre-busting cocktail of cultural history, memoir and free-form analysis. As a child, Elkin was captivated by Cyndi Lauper’s exuberance. She admired Dolores O’Riordan of the Cranberries singing in the Gaelic “Keening” folk tradition of vocal lament. Elkin is just as interested in Céline Dion as she is in punk’s sonic outsiders such as Poly Styrene.

A Voice break refers to the place where the voice shifts from lower to higher registers and this is a book about what kind of meanings, and sounds, can be made there. Immersing readers in an eclectic soundscape, from musicals and pop music to art punk, what follows is a full-throated tour of women’s voices, including  Édith Piaf, Maria Callas, Cyndi Lauper, Kathleen Hanna, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Beyoncé, FKA Twigs and Billie Eilish.

Reflecting on what makes women’s singing so powerful – to the point where others feel the need to control or manipulate it- Vocal Break is a joyous call to arms, a siren call.

Vocal Break: On Women, Music & Power by Lauren Elkin, Chatto & Windus £22, 386 pages.