I am a musicologist and professor at the Fountain School of Performing Arts, Dalhousie University, where I teach and write about how music works and why people care about it. I am the author of *Girl Groups, Girl Culture: Popular Music and Identity in the 1960s* (Routledge, 2007) and co-editor (with Allison Adrian) of *Voicing Girlhood in Popular Music: Performance, Authority, Authenticity* (Routledge, 2016). I served as Senior Editor for the *Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd edition* (Oxford 2013) and I am currently writing *Child's Play: Musical Prodigies and the Performance of Childhood*, under contract with Oxford.