"For me," Melanie says, "the anticipation of the grief helped. Because I had a feeling it was all going to wind down, it wasn't a massive shock. They were getting more negative press, then there was that, 'Is This the End for Bros?' article and part of you goes, 'No!' But another part goes, 'Well, you know what, the death knell is coming.'"

Bros were a British band formed in 1986; they split up in 1992, and Melanie still remembers the pain. She's part of a panel of music lovers convened by author Hannah Ewens to reflect on fandom and the passage of time; One Direction fan Grace calls Zayn Malik's departure "the worst moment of my life, ever," and Karah reflects that "if Backstreet Boys broke up, it would be almost like grieving a death."

Karah sounds just like she might have 20 years ago, but the mere fact that Ewens is bothering to follow up with women who were boy band fans in the "noughties," as Ewens calls the century's first decade, is evidence of the nuanced approach she brings to Fangirls: Scenes from Modern Music Culture (buy now).

Like Jessica Hopper, who edits the University of Texas Press series of which Fangirls is a part and who gets the book's opening epigraph ("Suggestion: replace the word 'fan girl' with 'expert' and see what happens"), Ewens wants to elevate the young girls whose fandom has been ignored, dismissed, or mocked in favor of the older men who are supposed to be the "real" music experts. Beyond that, though, Ewens want to unpack the many ways that fandom works in the music world.

For the author, the topic is personal — and Ewens doesn't make any secret of that. Frequently writing in the first person, the author (now in her late 20s) shares her own experiences with fandom, notably as one of the legion of young women inspired by Courtney Love. (More on that shortly.) Fangirls reads as an extended essay, but one informed by on-the-ground research with fans of artists from Elvis to Fall Out Boy.

Although music fandom has been around for a long time — Ewens, like Maria Sherman in Larger Than Life, cites the precedent of Lisztomania — the birth of rock and roll produced what are still the defining images of fangirls. The young women screaming over Elvis and the Beatles as though they were literally going to die seemed to exemplify youth's strange obsession with this new genre, and the seeming irrationality of a form of hero worship that was so extreme, it eventually drove the Fab Four off public stages altogether.

That form of fandom has had extraordinary longevity; Fangirls opens with the account of a girl who screamed so hard at a One Direction concert that her lung literally collapsed, a case so extreme that it was documented in the medical literature alongside a drill sergeant and an opera singer. The One Direction fangirls Ewens talks to, though, argue (not exactly in these words) that judging their subculture by its most extreme surface manifestation is akin to thinking you understand the Sufi just because you've seen their whirling dervishes, or the Shakers just because you've seen them, well, shake.

Fangirls are often described as "hysterical," a gendered term long associated with women who go temporarily insane because they let their primary sex organs somehow get the better of them. When girls aren't given any legitimate space to express themselves as sexual beings, music fandoms can be ways for them to claim that space. If there was any doubt that being a fangirl takes courage, Ewens points to the example of the Ariana Grande fans who were targeted with the 2017 Manchester bombing. It's clear to Ewens, as to other observers, that the bomber sought to intimidate girls and young women seeking to frankly express their sexuality as Grande was then doing.

In one of the book's most amusing passages, Ewens catches up with fans of Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz. These days, of course, the 40-something bassist is a little long in the tooth for a teen idol, and his young fans recognize that with language that fetishizes him as a man of maturity. Among the comments Ewens transcribed:

"Dad" "daddy" "Shaddy" "Zaddy" "father pete" "still daddy material" "I AM CRYING THE DADDYCATION IS STRONG TODAY." Funnier still: "woah there cowboy," "heavy breathing w r o w," "cause of my death: Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz II," "look at this four course meal," "SNACKKK," "I'M PREGNANT."

Do these young women really want to be impregnated by an aging emo stud? Well, in some cases, maybe. Comments like these are also, though, a kind of performative sexuality: a way for young women who experience unwanted sexualization every day of their lives to turn the gaze around. One girl explains that her comments are just a way to tell the musician, "hey, I love you, you're awesome." (A sample of how this lands on Wentz's Instagram: "STRANGLE ME WITH YOUR PHONE CHARGER.")

The girls who tore Elvis's clothes from his body notwithstanding, a recurring theme of Ewens's book is how artists' fandoms actually have more respect for the artists as human beings than do the press that hound them for paparazzi pics and gotcha quotes. It's significant that the author hails from Britain, where the tabloid culture can be downright deadly — as could be attested by the Royal Family, as well as by fans of Amy Winehouse, who Ewens notes would answer the door for her female fans even when the press were camped out at her garden gate.

Ewens also writes about Halsey, who brought a newfound visibility to bisexuality for her millennial and Gen-Z fans. "One hundred girls asked me to be their first kiss," Ewens quotes the singer as explaining in an early interview, "so I said 'OK.'" Even so, one fangirl Ewens talks to explains how she didn't make a kiss request until she'd had multiple meetings with the star — and even then, made amply clear that she wouldn't want to cross any boundaries Halsey wasn't comfortable with. Quite a counterpoint to the male DJ who casually groped Taylor Swift.

Alongside accounts from veteran fans of artists like the Backstreet Boys, the Beatles, and Elvis (one fan recounts striking up a friendly relationship with a Presley cousin who staffed Graceland), Ewens also takes a deep dive into the Beyhive. Despite their reputation as an unusually fierce fandom, Beyoncé fans certainly don't fit the stereotype of teenybopper tagalongs. For one thing, many are grown women who've followed Bey since her Destiny's Child days. For another, they face the challenge of stanning one of the most famously and effectively private major celebrities on the planet. They hang on every bit of news from their idol, not because they want to tear back the curtain, but because they respect just how thoughtful and deliberate the star is about what she says and how.

Fangirls concludes with a tribute to one of the author's own favorite stars: Courtney Love. Attending a career retrospective in upstate New York, Ewens looks around at the women of diverse ages who've come to pay tribute.

There in the crowd, I could see all the different versions of myself in some sort of union. Not in a linear progression or through line but as though they all existed simultaneously. I was carrying them all inside me like a Russian doll, and I felt quite invested in taking them all forward in me — especially the first one. The one who had discovered Courtney, who went out and bought bleach from the chemist for her hair, who saved money all summer for a new guitar, even though she was terrible at playing, who was obsessed with this other person's narrative as she became invested in her own. There was also the one who survived that time, the next time, and all the other times. When I tell people, as these women do, that I will always be a Hole fan, this is how I know.

Before the event, Ewens met up with some other fans she'd met in the Broken Dolls Facebook group and they peer into the windows of a building where Love is appearing at a private event. A staffer comes out to yell at them and the women run laughing back to their car. "I kind of love that we got told off," Ewens tells her fellow fans. As with the young girls organizing their own numbered queues outside arena shows (to the visible consternation of men who think they can just show up when the doors open and stroll up to the stage barrier), fandom is a bonding experience for the fangirls to share. Ultimately, that's what may matter most.

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Tune in to The Current at 8:30 a.m. (Central) every Wednesday morning to hear Jay Gabler and Jill Riley talk about a new book. (Note that as of Sept. 3, the Rock and Roll Book Club will move from Wednesday to Thursday mornings.) Also, find Jay's reviews online.

September 3: If You See Me: My Six-Decade Journey in Rock and Roll by Pepé Willie (buy now)

September 10: Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell (buy now)

September 17: Blues All Around Me: The Autobiography of B.B. King (buy now)

September 24: My Life In the Purple Kingdom by BrownMark (buy now)

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