Yoko Ono's Plastic Ono Band is centered on her unique and powerful voice; even decades after its release, it still sounds utterly fearless.
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Santigold's self-titled debut combines "look what I can do" attitude with a galvanizing magic.
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Photo Illustration by Renee Klahr/NPR; Getty Images; Courtesy of Downtown Records
Tracy Chapman's debut album "was the music that I needed at a time when I felt pressure to know everything before it was taught," says writer and scholar Francesca T. Royster.
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Occasionally, a woman artist will make it her mission to speak as the monster others fear her to be, turning shame into strength. That's the power of Kate Bush's The Dreaming.
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On Muthaland, bbymutha's songs play out as if she's rebuilding her confidence in real time.
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Photo Illustration by Renee Klahr, Amna Ijaz/NPR; Courtesy of The Muthaboard
When she first heard Fiona Apple's album 1996 Tidal, writer Lindsay Zoladz says the record stood out to her for how it "validated [her] experience of pain."
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On The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the singer provides a re-education in Blackness 101, in which she's both student and teacher.
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On 4, Beyoncé presented a dynamic, multifaceted expression of womanhood — and took crucial steps toward claiming full artistic control over her work.
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Hearing Tiger Trap's self-titled debut, released in 1993, was a turning point for writer Maria Sherman. "Tiger Trap's tender pop was punk in a hushed tone," she says. "I was, and remain, hooked."
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Photo Illustration by Estefania Mitre/NPR; Courtesy of Michael Galinsky and K Records
PJ Harvey's Uh Huh Her was a powerful force for critic Laura Snapes. "Seeing this woman I so admired derail a linear path to greater success and greater approval – the de facto path as far as teachers were concerned – was revelatory," she writes.
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Photo Illustration by Estefania Mitre/NPR; Getty Images; Courtesy of Island Records
The Pointer Sisters performing in New York City in 1983, the year the group released its album Break Out, which included four top 10 hits.
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Belinda Carlisle of The Go-Go's. She says at live shows, the band was "a runaway train that could crash at any minute, and I think that's what people respond to."
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Roberta Flack in 1975. Flack's impact as a performer in the pop music space in the 1970s was sudden and massive. Over the next four decades, Flack built a legacy on a quiet belief in limitlessness.
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(From left to right) Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders; Debbie Harry of Blondie; Viv Albertine of The Slits; Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex; Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie And The Banshees; and Pauline Black of The Selecter in London in 1980.
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Etta James, left, Marvell Thomas and David Hood rehearse a song before recording at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., circa 1967.
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House Of Fame LLC/Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images
