‘Elvis is alive and she is beautiful.' When Madonna first saw the Canadian artist k.d. lang perform live on stage, she uttered this joyful comment in admiration. The words had a broader meaning. Whereas Madonna herself had been the superstar of the eighties, new ‘female Elvises' such as PJ Harvey, Melissa Etheridge and Tori Amos, were announced to be the next generation of the ‘coming young women in rock'.
The image and perception of women in popular music radically changed during the nineties of the twentieth- century. Female musicians were no damsels in distress, nor wallflowers in vocal backing groups, but independent women who openly and rebelliously sang about the most intimate aspects of their love lifes. In Desire machine, Stine Jensen, investigates the explosion of female musicians in the nineties, and more particular, their fascination for sexuality. She shows the unmistakable influence of these female artists on the emergence of new lifestyles and new consumer ideologies. Desire machine not only is about popular music, but also about mass culture, fashion, dandyism, romance and sexual identity.
‘We are made to fight and fuck', the American singer-songwriter Any DiFranco frankly sings. Desire machine convincingly show how the music of DiFranco and her colleagues can be a useful springboard for cultural philosophy.

Publishing details
De verlangenmachine (2001) 142 pp. with notes and references

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