Why Tammy Wynette Matters, Steacy Easton
Why Tammy Wynette Matters, Steacy Easton
List: $12.99 | Sale: $9.10
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Why Tammy Wynette Matters

Author: Steacy Easton

Narrator: April Doty

Unabridged: 5 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/23/2023


Synopsis

With hits such as “Stand By Your Man” and “Golden Ring,” Tammy Wynette was an icon of American domesticity and femininity. But there were other sides to the first lady of country. Steacy Easton places the complications of Wynette’s music and her biography in sharp-edged relief, exploring how she made her sometimes-tumultuous life into her work, a transformation that was itself art.
Wynette created a persona of high femininity to match the themes she sang about—fawning devotion, redemption in heterosexual romance, the heartbreak of loneliness. Behind the scenes, her life was marked by persistent class anxieties; despite wealth and fame, she kept her beautician’s license. Easton argues that the struggle to meet expectations of southernness, womanhood, and southern womanhood, finds subtle expression in Wynette’s performance of “Apartment No. 9”—and it’s because of these vocal subtleties that it came to be called the saddest song ever written. Wynette similarly took on elements of camp and political critique in her artistry, demonstrating an underappreciated genius. Why Tammy Wynette Matters reveals a musician who doubled back on herself, her façade of earnestness cracked by a melodrama that weaponized femininity and upended feminist expectations, while scoring twenty number-one hits.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bailey on September 18, 2023

4.25 rounded down to 4. I stumbled across this book in an independent bookstore and the cover really drew me in. As a country music lover, I had to have it. I knew very basic facts about Wynette, but I loved learning more while also hearing Easton's take on so many different aspects of Wynette's life......more

Goodreads review by J Earl on May 09, 2023

Why Tammy Wynette Matters by Steacy Easton is an interesting assessment of Wynette that largely avoids the pitfalls of other biographies of the singer. I think the framing allowed by the Music Matters series is part of the reason, it keeps the focus on exactly what the title says. Disclaimer: While I......more

Goodreads review by Rich on January 11, 2024

I had no idea Tammy Wynette was this complex as a person, or as an artist. The men in her life victimized her in so many ways and, despite writing what is perhaps the most iconic country song of all time, she couldn't really escape that victimization. She may or may not have staged her own kidnappin......more

Goodreads review by Reader on October 15, 2024

I truly appreciated this book, which helped me learned so much about Wynette and forced me to think about her, and her music, and self-presentation (and self-presentation and performance more broadly, in country music) in all sorts of new ways, and also to discover (and rediscover) much of her music......more

Goodreads review by Jonathan on May 15, 2023

Important and very interesting critical reassessment of the life and work of Tammy Wynette. The author clearly immersed themself in the country music genre and has some impressive if restrained insights on what Wynette's personal life was probably like. Well worth a read.......more