“I Disagree”: Narratives of Empowerment in Poppy’s Project

Abstract

In this article I shall examine how Poppy uses her extreme grotesque effect to construct visual, audial and lyrical narratives of empowerment – in gender, personal, and musical context. I shall shed a light on the way her self-awareness as a female vocalist deconstructs the image of ‘metal woman’ – through subversive combination of hyperfeminine image with aggressive music and involved lyrics – to expose excluding paradigms which determine female presence in metal. Finally, I shall show how her post-genre aesthetics undermines hardened determinants of what is, and what is not ‘metal’.