I Am the Warrior: My Crazy Life Writing the Hits and Rocking the MTV Eighties

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Barbara Wilkov has a varied career background, having worked in education, sales for several start-up magazines, fundraising and event planning for the American Heart Association, and marketing, communications, PR, and social media for a congregational church, a children’s non-profit, and an emergency and specialty veterinary hospital.

Holly Knight on songwriting for Tina Turner, Pat Benatar Holly Knight on songwriting for Tina Turner, Pat Benatar

She started playing classical piano at the age of four, continuing her studies for ten years at the Mannes School of Music. I enjoyed reading about her personal life and escapades as a woman as well, because I think it's critical to understanding the mind and heart of the composer of the most powerful and anthemic songs of empowerment and independence for women. Not only was Holly a woman in a male-dominated industry that didn't welcome women warmly into the inner sanctum, she carried with her the baggage of a difficult childhood and a fraught relationship with her mother, the substance of which informed the themes that made her songs so anthemic. I've spent so much time in the studio playing around, that I completely related to her description of spending 12 hours in the studio and feeling like 12 minutes. In 1980, Knight's first big break came when she played keyboards (uncredited) on Kiss' Unmasked album.If you watched the show Schitt’s Creek you heard the beautiful song, “The Best,” if you saw the Jennifer Garner movie, 13 Going on 30, you likely sang along with “Love is a Battlefield,” and if you ever rocked out to Tina Turner singing “Better Be Good to Me” you have enjoyed just a few of the huge hits written or co-written by Holly Knight. Full of sex and drugs and so much fun name-dropping, this is a breezy, readable look at an era that simultaneously seems distant and not that long ago.

Holly Knight - Wikipedia

I was watching Martha Quinn on MTV talk about a woman named Holly Knight, who had written several hits I've enjoyed on the video channel over the years. Defiant, purposeful and ultimately triumphant, her work with Tina Turner, Pat Benatar, and the band Heart, among others, also helped pave the way for the next generation of defining female musical masters including Amy Winehouse, Adele and Lady Gaga. I appreciated her direct, conversational writing, and it's a bit of a pity that the cover and jacket flap design do not match the quality of the text inside. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately. I understand I can change my preference through my account settings or unsubscribe directly from any marketing communications at any time.The name dropping isn't terribly gratuitous, in that there really were so many connections among people in the industry, and she clearly explains her relationships to them and each other. Songs such as The Warrior (title of her book), Invincible, Better Be Good to Me, (Simply) The Best, Never, and so many others! Defiant, purposeful, and ultimately triumphant, her work with Tina Turner, Pat Benatar, and Heart, among others, also helped pave the way for the next generation of defining female musical masters including Amy Winehouse, Adele, and Lady Gaga. Many biographies can be wordy and stuffy, too much information but this book left me wishing that I could meet Holly Knight and just sit and listen to her talk for hours. She showed the boys how it was done when many women were still struggling to get a foot in the door.