A Girl With a Dream Became the Woman Behind the Most Iconic Songs of the 1980s

By Barbara Wilkov, Booktrib | Where were you in the ’80s? Even if you were too young to remember or not even born yet, music from the decade continues to resonate today. Reading the bestseller “I Am the Warrior: My Crazy Life Writing the Hits and Rocking the MTV Eighties” (Permuted Press) by Hall of Fame hit songwriter Holly Knight (with a Foreword by Tina Turner) brought me right back to the big hair, even bigger shoulder pads and the great music of the era (that we still listen to today!)

What’s It About?
Holly Knight’s singular music career included crafting a good part of the soundtrack to the MTV 80s with mega-hits for Tina Turner (“The Best”), Pat Benatar (“Love Is A Battlefield”), and Patty Smyth (“The Warrior”) — songs that celebrated female empowerment and shaped pop and rock for years to come.

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. I couldn’t help but hear the chorus of the title song, “I Am the Warrior” running through my head while reading the book!

From Difficult Childhood to One of Songwriting’s Elite
This is the story of a young girl with a dream and the story of the music scene of an iconic decade. Holly dedicates the book “to anyone who ever had a dream and was told ‘No’.”

Growing up in New York City, Holly’s childhood home was filled with music and she started piano lessons at a very early age. Her parents divorced while she was young, and she struggled with a very difficult and abusive relationship with her mother. “Thinking back on all this craziness, what I find most compelling is how common maternal abuse was amongst creative women back then, so much so that it almost seems cliché, or, at best, a rite of passage. It certainly ignited something fierce in me that said, I will not be like you. I will be the opposite of you, and I will be special.”

Asked by an interviewer once why so many of her songs are about fighting or going into battle, Holly, realizing he was right, reflected: “…my songs were more about fighting for something, rather than with someone.”
> > > > > > > > > >
Writer Behind Songs Like “The Best” and “Love is a Battlefield”

As to why, of all her famous songs, Holly chose I Am the Warrior as the title of her book, she says that when she first wrote this song, she didn’t know that it would be a big hit, nor did she know that it would “serve as a kind of theme song for the rest of my life. It didn’t feel autobiographical when I wrote it, but as I’ve learned, sometimes we don’t write songs – the songs write us.”
> > > > > > > > >
Read more of the book review here:
https://booktrib.com/2023/05/03/i-am-the-warrior-holly-knight/

About Holly Knight:
A vital force behind the sound of some of rock’s most powerful female artists, Holly Knight’s iconic musical imprint is woven into the very fabric of the MTV generation. Throughout the 1980s, singer/songwriter Holly Knight composed anthems that became the soundtrack for millions of people’s lives and also created and crafted empowering odes to independence, liberation, and equality. These universal themes have never been more relevant than they are today which is why we still hear her music every day. On television, films, and commercials, Knight’s work has become not just ubiquitous – but also generation-defining.

For all of the dozens of recognizable songs she has written, however, working with legends including Rod Stewart, Kiss, and Aerosmith, it was her collaborations with female artists that truly broke through, giving a new voice to women all over the world. 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. It was the music and words she wrote. But it was also the visual representations on MTV that helped define Holly’s work for the masses.

About Barbara Wilkov:
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. Barbara is also the co-founder of an award-winning website, https://www.Motherrr.com, that focuses on healing difficult mother-daughter relationships from the adult daughter’s perspective. Look for a Motherrr.com book in the not-too-distant future! A Stamford, CT, native, Barbara has an undergraduate degree in Psychology and English, and an MS in Education. She loves to act and is honored to be a member of the Screen Actors Guild.

https://thebrunswicknews.com/news/national_news/a-girl-with-a-dream-became-the-woman-behind-the-most-iconic-songs-of-the/article_92accca9-5b3d-54c5-81da-4e4e01520611.html