Between April 6, 1968, and September 15, 1975, Ellen Willis published fifty-four pieces of popular-music criticism in The New Yorker. This was at a time when there were relatively few pop critics of any kind, much less female pop critics. Willis wrote mostly about gender and politics after leaving the magazine, but had she included more than four of her New Yorker pieces in her 1981 collection, “Beginning to See the Light,” she might come up in discussions of rock critics as often as Robert Christgau or Greil Marcus. Her pieces were unfailingly clear-eyed, hip, and funny. Though a passionate participant in the revolutions of the sixties, she never bought a bill of goods. David Bowie, Woodstock, Elvis, and Bob Dylan all got fresh report cards every time: no groupthink or default positions can be found in her writing. Her death from lung cancer cannot be undone, but her place in the history of pop criticism should be modified, and now. Her contribution was early, big, and deserves rereading, every bit of it. 
