A SMALL NOTE, before you begin — please ensure that you read the blog pages in the following order that they are listed in at the top of the page, as follows:

1. How Do Music, Sci-Fi, & Feminism Meet?
2. Soft Sounds from Another Planet
3. Metropolis
4. SF Musicians Help us See Into the Future
5. Works Cited

Thank you, enjoy.

Feminist Speculative Fiction: Hopeful, Healing, & Inspiring

Often, the hardships of a woman’s reality can quickly become disheartening in a world where women are subjugated by unequal treatment. When the world is not always the warmest place, hope can become a necessary survival skill that motivates people to continue to work towards change. One of the most effective approaches for inspiring optimism in many is through the arts. Film, television, books, video games, music, and more can provide audiences with great examples of human kindness or perseverance. Moreover, at its greatest use, the genre of science fiction can be applied to the arts in order to demonstrate to audiences that new worlds, kinder than our own, are possible. Inspiring or reparative art can be produced when feminist creatives use science fiction as a tool to envision worlds where women are at the forefront, a subgenre referred to as feminist speculative fiction.

SF Mediums & A Deeper Look Into Music

There are numerous forms of feminist speculative fiction (SF) including, novels, comic books, short stories, video games, films, animation, art, poetry, music, and fan fiction. As a music enthusiast and singer myself, I was particularly interested in the ways that music could be used to create new SF worlds. The most common way SF is utilized in music is through the production of a science fiction concept album.

What is a Concept Album?

A concept album is a unique album that is “unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative or lyrical” (Shuker 10). In other words, aspects of a main idea are expressed through different techniques and threaded through the songs of an album. Thereby, allowing for the album overall to express a specific message. By extension, the theme would not likely be identifiable in merely listening to one song, because that one song would only contain singular aspects of the completed project.

So… What Would a Science Fiction Concept Album Look Like?

Moreover, when a concept album is a science fiction concept album, the artist often employs many of the same tropes presented in general science fiction in their music. The album can feature futuristic worlds, dystopias, utopias, robots, monsters, new species, spaceships, or time travel in its narrative or lyrics. Additionally, science fiction concept albums will often fall under rather experimental categories of musical genre. Experimental music is quite science fiction in of itself in that it aims to create musical spaces that do not yet exist.

Seem Abstract? Here Are Some Examples.

In fact, within the past decade, two influential women musicians have created experimental science fiction concept albums that are forms of feminist speculative fiction. In 2008, Janelle Monáe released, Metropolis, and nine years later in 2017, Japanese Breakfast released, Soft Sounds from Another Planet. In this blog, I will first provide a brief biography on the artist, then describe how their use of narrative, lyricism, and music production within each album converge to create a work of feminist speculative fiction. Finally, I will highlight aspects of the albums that relate to course materials to compare and contrast. I will begin with Soft Sounds from Another Planet, and end with Metropolis.