Singing Our Lives: When Pop Stars Are Super-Heroines

It's been more than twenty years since the Spice Girls gathered in the Mojave Desert to execute martial-arts kicks and throw space-age boomerangs for the Russ Meyer movie-inspired video for the group's second hit, "Say You'll Be There." Yet the superheroine scenario of that video still lingers in the minds of women for whom the Spice Girls weren't just fluff, but a means to empowerment. Considering women in popular music as guides to our braver, bolder selves offers one way to understand how music by the women artists who've proven historically influential – from the lightest-hearted teen pop to the most resonant rock and blues anthems – connected in very personal ways with their female listeners.

Last week, to celebrate the publication of the Turning the Tables list of The 150 Greatest Albums Made by Women, several contributors to the project gathered at the David Rubinstein Atrium at Lincoln Center to talk about the albums that have inspired them and the women who made them. What emerged was a shared experience of learning through listening — learning to take risks, to forge the path that became our lives, and to express ourselves. An edited version of that conversation appears below.

We initially conceived of the list as starting in 1967, partly because of the anniversary of . Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is a great record but it is of course the default when anyone says, "What is a great rock album?" And, of course, many other great albums including Aretha Franklin's that came out that year. So we were going to start in '67 but