Different for Girls: My True-life Adventures in Pop (Ebury Press)

Different for Girls: My True-life Adventures in Pop (Ebury Press)by Louise Wener

Different for Girls is a book in two parts; first we get the accounts of the awkward teenager growing up in a typically suburban setting that would be chronicled later in her songwriting. There are moments of poignancy through the early chapters, as she discusses the death of her father.

The second part will be recognisable to all who followed music in the 1990s and her days of relative success with Sleeper, which she likens to a ‘one night stand, albeit a great one’.

The reminiscences about music throughout her teenage years seem the more heartfelt, than her days in the public eye. The tales of taping of Top of the Pops on primitive recording devices and putting together tapes of favourite hits are things that most obsessive music fans can identify with.

Throughout the book Wener comes across as likeable figure and not the sassy loudmouthed front women caricature that the music press portrayed her as throughout the 1990s. The book recalls a time pre-Spice Girls and the laughable claims of Girl Power and the title alludes to her brushes with the music press, Wener was pilloried by the music press for acting up to a caricature, the passages though show her to be a likeable character and not one that press portrayed her as. She pours scorn that bands like the Manic Street Preachers that could wish AIDS on Michael Stipe and would not get the same vitriol that she faced from the press.

The book is lightweight in tone and is easily readable. Possibly the one criticism that could be levelled at the book is that it skirts over a number of points like dodgy deals and record company machinations. She also does not dwell too long on the relationships that she had with the guitarist and drummer of the band, who both had to cope wit there own issues of being dismissed as being ‘Sleeperblokes’ by the press.

Though it is worth reading for an insight from one of the leading players about the other leading bands at the time. The glamour of being serenaded by Michael Stipe in front 70,000 people, tucking into Blur’s cheese rider, having Elvis Costello covering one of their songs through to the not so glamorous days of touring Europe with the Boo Radleys.

There is not a sense of bitterness about her pop years and the general feeling that you get from reading the book is an acceptance of the band’s limitations and it was good while it lasted. There are no rock star clichés of going of the rails at the end either, instead you see the seamless switch that she has made with her literary career, where her eye for the 3 minute kitchen drama can now be fully explored.
Overall it is an interesting account from someone at the heart of the action and would be of interest to anyone who had a passing interest in bands from that era.