Andrea Warner is a talented and well-respected music writer based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her new book is called We Oughta Know: How Four Women Ruled the ’90s and Changed Canadian Music, which explores the unprecedented rise of Celine Dion, Shania Twain, Alanis Morrissette, and Sarah McLachlan, as some of the best-selling artists of all time. To celebrate the release, Eternal Cavalier Press is launching We Oughta Know with two special events: a Toronto launch on April 22 at the Supermarket (268 Augusta Ave.) hosted by Lana Gay and featuring a musical performance by Hannah Georgas; and a Vancouver launch on April 25 at The Lido (518 E. Broadway) hosted by Lisa Christiansen and featuring musical performances by Louise Burns and Kathryn Calder. Here, Andrea and I discuss being in Toronto, a mugging, how Celine Dion, Alanis Morissette, Shania Twain, and Sarah McLachlan have sold more albums in Canada than the Beatles, perceiving these women as a teenaged girl, confronting some myths about these artists and their work, Celine Dion and sexless romance, Celine has always seemed like a 50 year-old woman in English, Celine is a manipulator of emotions, reconsidering Shania Twain and the slut-shaming she endured, Robert “Mutt” Lange’s actual contributions to Shania’s work, ageism and sexism, revisiting and eviscerating critical assessments of these women at the time, Alanis Morissette and labelling someone an “angry woman,” people are complex, defending the song “Ironic” from its nit-picking critics, word crimes, Sarah McLachlan’s impact on Andrea’s life when her father passed away, the book takes a personal turn, revisiting the 1990s and our teenaged selves, talking and not talking about our differences, Carl Wilson’s book about Celine Dion, Let’s Talk About Love, “poptimism” and the decline of instinctual criticism, this book is not a whole-hearted endorsement of these four women, the end of orthodoxy, thinking about our traditional modes of categorization, whether or not these four women have fallen off the radar, patriotism, personal taste and societal prejudice, experiencing sexism in the workplace, some people need to die, the state of CBC Music, “the” Andrea Warner, the Kathryn Calder song “Take a Little Time,” and then we were out of time.
Related links: theandreawarner.com eternalcavalierpress.com vishkhanna.com
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