Danyel Smith
Author of
Shine Bright: A Personal History of Black Women in Pop (One World, 2021)
Danyel Smith is an award-winning journalist and the host of Black Girl Songbook, a music talk show that centers the sounds and stories of black women (The Ringer/Spotify). Danyel’s career has been laser-focused on black creatives making brilliant things. She has interviewed everyone from Whitney Houston to Janet Jackson to Simone Biles to Beyoncé. Danyel’s CV includes being a producer and writer at ESPN, a Knight fellow at Stanford University and an arts fellow at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. She was editor of Billboard, and the first woman and first black person to serve as editor-in-chief of VIBE. She has written two novels — More Like Wrestling (Crown, 2003) and Bliss (Crown, 2005), and Danyel’s recent work appears in the New York Times Magazine, and at NPR. Her beloved second hometown is Brooklyn, but Danyel is a proud Oakland native now living in Southern California with her husband.
Books by Danyel
Shine Bright: A Personal History of Black Women in Pop (One World, 2021)
One of the Best Books of the Year: San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, The Root, Variety, Esquire, The Guardian, Pitchfork, She Reads, Publishers Weekly
Shortlisted for the Porchlight Business Book Award
The Soulful and Sequined Story of how Black Women Took over American Pop and Changed Culture Forever.
Stacked with original interviews, photos and found imagery, and in-depth reporting, Shine Bright is the interconnected story of Aretha Franklin, Marian Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Gladys Knight, Mahalia Jackson, Tina Turner, Diana Ross & the Supremes, Natalie Cole, Marilyn McCoo, TLC, The Dixie Cups, Anita Baker, Salt-N-Pepa, Sade, Lauryn Hill, Destiny’s Child, as well as the transcendent triumvirate that is Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. And more.
These are the women who set the stage for white female pop stars from Janis Joplin to Carly Simon to Madonna to Adele. The women of Shine Bright are not only the foundation of American pop, they remain the model. And they have been appropriated from and mimicked with great success since the explosion of recorded music in the 1940s. With all this vibrant history and reporting, plus Danyel’s piercing insights and lyrical prose, SHINE BRIGHT promises to be an essential contribution to the literature of music history.
Written by Danyel Smith, one of the foremost culture writers in the country, Shine Bright is a deeply-reported book in the tradition of Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us, Paula J. Giddings’ When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America, and Peter Guralnick’s Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love.
PRAISE
Memoir, criticism, and cultural history meet in this masterful study of the brilliant Black women who shaped American pop music . . . In this soulful, enriching portrait of these extraordinary artists’ struggles and triumphs, Smith widens the canon to usher in new luminaries.”—Esquire, “The Best Books of Spring 2022”
“From Phyllis Wheatley to Mahalia Jackson to Dionne Warwick, this captivating examination of Black women in music doesn’t miss a beat. Endlessly readable, Shine Bright calls overdue attention to the groundbreaking women who made American music.”—Ms. Magazine, “April 2022 Reads for the Rest of Us”
“An enriching and entertaining book about the Black women geniuses who shaped pop music.”—Business Insider“In this fascinating tribute, Smith ensures that the achievements of these Black women musicians will not be forgotten.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“[A] masterful examination of the Black women artists who’ve indelibly shaped American popular music . . . This lyrical and whip-smart work is a cause for celebration.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)