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Different for Girls: A girl's own true-life adventures in pop [Paperback]

Louise Wener (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
RRP: £11.99
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Book Description

Publication Date: 10 Jun 2010

Note to customers: This book is also available under the title "Just For One Day: Adventures in Britpop".

This is a story of an ordinary girl’s transformation from awkward 80s suburban pop geek to 90s jet-set pop goddess. It’s about the embarrassments of growing up and experimenting with who you are and how pop music is both the comic and life-affirming soundtrack that runs through it all.

Different for Girls is for anyone who ever sang into a hairbrush and slow-danced to Spandau Ballet's True. It's about growing up with Look-In and Jackie magazine and daubing your hair with poster paint to look more like Toyah Wilcox. It's about bad perms, bad boyfriends and the nagging feeling that no man will quite measure up to Nick Heyward from Haircut One Hundred. It's also about the journey from bad band to great band, from gigs in toilets to gigs in stadiums with all the mistakes, joys, disappointments and successes in between. It’s a journey which starts with a 12-year-old perfecting her dance routine to Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights in front of TOTPs and ends, almost 20 years later, with the same girl having REM’s Michael Stipe sing happy birthday to her on a warm summer’s evening accompanied by 70,000 strangers.

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Different for Girls: A girl's own true-life adventures in pop + Just For One Day: Adventures in Britpop + Bad Vibes: Britpop and my part in its downfall
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Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Ebury Press (10 Jun 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0091936519
  • ISBN-13: 978-0091936518
  • Product Dimensions: 13.4 x 2.3 x 21.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 125,388 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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› Visit Amazon's Louise Wener Page
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Product Description

Review

"Teen love, bad haircuts, great music and laugh-out-loud memories" (Fearne Cotton )

"Wise, funny and loving - a brilliant memoir about Britpop and possibly the best rock biography since Nik Cohn's AwopBopAlooBop-AlopBamBoom." (Tony Parsons )

"This book is absolutely wonderful - I just read four passages out loud to the Word staff - to actual applause!" (Mark Ellen The Word )

"... funny, readable and filled with proper gossip. Most importantly, it's a perceptive and tenacious look at what it was really like to be a girl among the blokes in that era" (Alexandra Heminsley The New Review, Independent on Sunday 20100725)

"(This week Sam has been) laughing, crying and over-identifying with Louise Wener's hilarious memoir, Different For Girls." (Sam Baker - Editor of Red Magazine 20100701)

Book Description

Former Sleeper singer's comically shambolic growing up memoir
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars beautifully-written girl's-eye view of a life in pop music. Revelatory. 28 Oct 2010
By M. W. Hatfield VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
There are many books like this around- funny and true accounts of a celebrity life, written with a touch of cynicism, a touch of nostalgia, a few well-chosen bits of scandal or revelation. They are often entertaining if trivial. They are, without exception, the story of a predictable journey from non-entity to celeb, with entirely obvious pitfalls and tribulations.
So what makes this different?
The title gives a clue: it's a singularly feminine perspective, told through the eyes of an intelligent, self-critical and imaginative participant, who is not afraid to cast herself in a bad light.It's an engaging and a compelling read. Also: Louise Wener is a gifted writer, able to produce lucid and clear prose which is fluent and honest. No, it won't change the world. And yes, it does suffer from the flaws described above. But it transcends them because it's so well-written and truthful.

Worth a read-even if you don't know who Sleeper were. And most definitely worth looking at if you're a female singer, looking to work in the field of pop music. Could save you a lot of heartache...
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting insight into a Britpop star 5 July 2010
By Candi Says VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
Different for Girls is an autobiography of Louise Wener who was the singer with Britpop band Sleeper, and she is now a novelist. This book charts from when she was growing up, through forming the band, the highs and lows, insight into being in a band which was succesful at the time, and the fall from fame for the band, up to being a parent after it all ended.

I didn't mind Sleeper but wasn't a huge fan. The book did sound very appealing. From the start where she was taping the Top 40, I took to this book straight away as some of the earlier experiences were similar to my own. Who hasn't wanted to form a band of their own? The details of the band's ups and downs and subsequent downfall gave such an interesting insight (also into the Britpop era - this gave me a fair few surprises!) as we could never know what its like to experience this and now its made me glad I never formed a band!

I loved this book and even if you weren't a fan of Sleeper it still makes great reading.
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9 of 12 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A joy from start to finish! 8 Jun 2010
By Evie1970
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
"Different For Girls" only arrived from Amazon yesterday, but I've already devoured it from cover to cover! It's an hilarious, poignant, painfully honest, clever and nostalgic insight into both growing up in the 70's and the Britpop explosion. Wener's intelligent, funny obvservations and self-deprecating narration draw you in from the off. Her self-awareness and unflinching honesty is disarming and very engaging.

Anyone growing up in England in the 70's will recognise and cringe - in a good way - at Wener's hilarious tales of her geeky childhood and teenage years. (I only wish my memory was that good!) The rest of the book is about "living the dream": the glamour, the parties, the TV appearances, the tours, magazine covers but also the gritty, disturbing reality of the music industry. It's peppered with some great anecdotes about pop stars from Blur to Stevie Wonder.

But "Different for Girls" is so much more than a "Britpop Babylon". It's a moving, insightful story about a person's relationship with fame: the yearning for it, the dreams, the actual attainment of it, the reality and then what happens when the bubble bursts. It's very relatable - I don't know anyone who at one time didn't dream of being a rock star. Except Wener actually did become a rock star.

I didn't expect to enjoy it this much, but "Different for Girls" is definitely the best rock memoir I've read in years.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Nostalgic 3 Dec 2012
By Miss AL Holloway TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I was a student when the whole Britpop thing was going on and it seemed like such an exciting time for music. I liked Sleeper a lot and had bought all three of their albums, I loved their catchy tunes and Louise's unique, breathy voice. I was at the REM concert in Milton Keynes that she writes about in the book, where Micheal Stipe sang Happy Birthday to her, and was very interested to read her account of that. I also like to read anything about the Britpop era as I can get quite nostalgic over it! Ahh, memories of crap student parties! Ha! Ahem, back to the book. It was much more than a look at Britpop from a female's point of view, it is also the story of Louise herself, her childhood and her experiences before and after the band were popular. I enjoyed it a lot. If you like Sleeper, Biographies and/or Britpop, you probably will too because Louise Wener tells her story well.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Ah, a walk down memory lane ... 11 April 2012
By Terry Bond, author
Format:Paperback
I'm six or seven years older than Louise Wener, but I was with her all the way on this musical trip down memory lane. Who DIDN'T tape Top of the Pops and the Top 40 show every week on low-tech cassette recorders (hey, we didn't have video recorders in THOSE days)? Who DIDN'T apply to sing on Opportunity Knocks? Who DIDN'T lust after moonboots (and in my case pink furry bomber jackets)? Louise writes with wit and catches perfectly the spirit of the 70s and 80s. The formation and rise to fame of her band was less enjoyable for me, but then even though I've heard of Sleeper, I couldn't have named anything they'd done. No matter, it was interesting to follow their 'antics' and sad to see their predictable demise. The epilogue, in which Louise commits herself to doing everything (embarrassing) in her power to prevent her kids becoming pop stars, reminds me of my brother's attitude to the raising of his daughter, who is not - apparently - going to be allowed to do anything until she's 30! A good read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Read
This book is superb. Really honest, and 'laugh out loud funny' in places. I read this just after finishing Keith Richard's book, Life. That's a great book. Read more
Published on 1 Mar 2011 by Brian S. Lloyd
4.0 out of 5 stars Pop this book in your basket.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book because not only do I remember the era and specifically the artist, but I am really into music and love reading about the experiences of people in... Read more
Published on 26 Nov 2010 by Flickering Ember
4.0 out of 5 stars Witty and Interesting
Louise Wener's adventures in the Brit pop scene of the 90's is funny and always an interesting read. Read more
Published on 8 Nov 2010 by Cat
5.0 out of 5 stars A very entertaining account
Sleeper are one of those bands that never quite rocked my planet. They released a few catchy singles and had a cute singer, but they weren't a band I ever gave a great deal of time... Read more
Published on 22 Oct 2010 by Jr Lorrimer
4.0 out of 5 stars Sparkling pop memoir
I was a bit old for Britpop - in my mid-30s when it was at its height, Sleeper barely grazed my consciousness. Read more
Published on 30 Sep 2010 by Lendrick
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, entertaining, funny and honest
I was 17 in 1994, when Sleeper released their first album, so as you'd imagine the whole Britpop thing was quite a big deal for me. Read more
Published on 30 Sep 2010 by T. SMEDLEY
3.0 out of 5 stars Part One is great
I raced through Part One of this autobiography and eagerly approached Part Two. At this point the book was a definite 5/5, then it just suddenly went down hill. Read more
Published on 20 Sep 2010 by SJSmith
5.0 out of 5 stars Well what a good read
This is the story of one persons travels through the peak of Britpop and for a music fan it's a fascinating insight into the passage of fame. Read more
Published on 9 Sep 2010 by McColey
5.0 out of 5 stars From hope to disillusion.
Looking at my bookshelf full of music biographies, they tend to split into two types. - Either they're about mega-successful acts who've sold tens of millions of albums, or they're... Read more
Published on 7 Sep 2010 by A. Miles
5.0 out of 5 stars Enter the wonderful world of britpop
Britpop was never really my thing and even if it's not yours either, don't let it put you off reading this truly remarkable book. Read more
Published on 25 Aug 2010 by Paolo Sammut
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