That said, we are in an exceptionally rich moment for musical storytelling. In some ways it parallels what's happening in literature. Just look at any of the Best lists for this year's fiction, for example, and you'll find novels confronting racism in the New South and violence in post-colonialist India and the Philippines; memoirs recounting childhoods marked by racism and sexism in Mississippi or rural Idaho, and meditations on women's power and shared fates with titles like The Female Persuasion and Girls Burn Brighter – not to mention the boom in books about women's rage at (among other things) historical exclusion. The women and men writing these books have benefited from incremental changes in the gatekeeping systems at universities and in publishing, and mostly from their own determination and resilience; they've made extraordinary work and people are hungry for it. Partly, it must be said, people in power are hungry in this way because the virtual experience of reading, or listening, can be a balm for feelings of guilt at our own entitlement. The same is true in music. There's a thrill at hearing the mostly young women who dominate our list declare their right to speak and then do fascinating things with that right. "Went from making tuna sandwiches to making the news," spits Cardi B, post-millennial empowerment's emblematic star, "I started speaking my mind and tripled my views." Her Invasion Of Privacy – this year's most sensational pop breakthrough alongside that of the newly self-assured Ariana Grande – refashions battle rhyming as big-tent feminist empowerment, a women's movement that pops.