Four "disruptive divas" -- Tori Amos, Courtney Love, Me'Shell Ndegeocello, and P.J. Harvey -- have expanded and upset the boundaries of "acceptable" female musicianship. By challenging our sense of what a female pop musician ought to be, they disrupt a dominant discourse that includes particular ideas of femininity, sexuality, desire, and the social relations of domination and subordination. Taking these women, their music, and their personae as exemplars of subversive elements within the pop culture milieu, Lori Burns and Melisse Lafrance examine a collection of their songs from both cultural and musicological perspectives to discover how a woman/musician/icon can disturb the very logic of her own popularity. The result, disruptive divas, is a remarkably engaging look at how these musicians challenge and overturn a host of conceptions about female identity through the medium of pop stardom. Book jacket.