Stella Donnelly's Beware of the Dogs

This deep dive into Stella Donnelly's award-winning debut album highlights its skewering of rape culture, contextualizing the indie rock take on gendered violence in Australia's social, cultural, and political milieu.

Beware of the Dogs (2019) is a significant addition to political Australian albums. Hailed as a generational triumph, Donnelly has been lauded for her savvy songwriting and biting wit; the political urgency in her music has irrevocably changed the landscape of Australian music. This book explores Donnelly's lyrics and their Australian context alongside themes of feminism and social and gender equality, touching on the #MeToo movement and gender roles in relationships as well as institutional and governmental failures in protecting the young and the vulnerable.

In the same way that Donnelly sought to interrogate and dismantle power imbalances and cultural hegemonies, Emily Wilson here seeks to interrogate how Donnelly's album comforted the traumatized and attacked the predatory, and how Australia was changed and is still changing as a result.