|
|
Chick Who Rock W/O- The 30 greatest female songs of the Rock era, Pt.1Dec 14 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
Popular Products in Music
The Bottom Line Oh, hush.
(Note: this is an early entry in the Chicks Rock Write Off, hosted by dustygold and kristinafh. The aim, of course, is to write about, uhm, chicks who, like, rock. Alas, I cannot post on the official w/o date, since I’ll be in Germany by then...so enjoy this early contribuiton, and await great entries by adjensen, Afterglow34, arielssong, brothermansoul, Charles_Tatum, chezon, chrisceb, churst, cletta1201, cynicalone, Darkmistress, DavidK93, DavidMac, deaser26, Debbie26, divad23, dolphin4a, dragonfire88, educatedphool, eplovejoy, FraggleMom, frazzledspice, GinaHill, Greatpilgrim, gungian, HawgWyld, JediKermit, jeff_wilder78, Joubert, jphalt, kcfoxy, kevlog, KingpinLJC, kuuleimomi, lambchops, LEDOMAINE, madtheory, MattA75, mauriced, melissasrn, MiDoyle, mnehr, movielover123, ObiWanJabroni, Officer, pageclot, paulyoungotti, pogomom, Psychovant, repulsemonkey, sarah_knipper, saulsbury, Saxguy, scmrak, seric26, shadow_dream, sleestakk, sslabs, sumo_rhino, SurgRN911, theciscokid, 3BCoach, tigger500, 29th_Candidate, Wokelstein, xiphoid, and your two adorable hostesses, kristinafh and dustygold.) (Note #2- Due to size restrictions- or, as Epinions wants to call it, unaccpetable HTML code- this is a two part article) Whenever I read something about “Women In Pop” in some magazine or other, it makes me wanna puke. It gives me the same icky feeling as when I hear about “Black Music” or deem The Smiths “that gay group”. In my mind, the great thing about art has always been that it goes beyond these classifications- it shouldn’t matter if you’re a woman or a man, if you’re white, black, Arabic, Asian, if you’re gay, bi or straight. I don’t really care what an artist’s gender is- I care what he or she has to say. And if that’s anything I can emphasise with, hey, great! But alas, I am naive to talk this way. The world doesn’t work that way- at least it doesn’t yet- and unfortunately women are still being dragged into categories and stereotypes: you’ve got yer vaguely feminist singer/songwriter; you’ve got yer R&B Soul Sistah; you’ve got your scantily clad teen idol; you’ve got yer militant Rrrrrriot Grrrrrr Punk bands, and, well, that’s basically it. While some blame must be put on the artists themselves- especially Sarah McLaghlan and her atrocious self-isolationst blunder commonly known as Lilith Fair- most of the fault still resides firmly on the shoulders of a music industry- and consumers- that is still hopelessly male based and seems unable (or, more likely, unwilling) to allow females to produce great art without sticking some sort of stamp like “Women In Rock” on it to assure everyone that it’s only a fad. Young female artists, thus, are still encouraged to think of themselves as woman artists, not just artists, period. And that’s just plain unfair. This becomes all the more absurd when one looks at what a great variety of legendary female performers popular music has; that the old “women can’t rock” argument is *still* being thrown around (and it is, believe me) in this post-Brenda Lee, post-Poly Styrene world just goes to show how easily people forget. So here I am, doing something I’d normally hate to do- a list of the greatest songs ever performed by women. Why do I do this, you ask? Well, apart from the obvious geeky ”High Fidelity” appeal (as Dave Marsh once said, everybody loves a list), I also hope to shed some light on performers whom today’s Lilith Fair-bred generation of music lovers might never have heard of, people who gave their all to music. These are all chicks that rock (in a way, I guess you could say some of them don’t rock, they just have soul, but c’mon, if we don’t distinguish between Springsteen and Otis why should we distinguish between Joan Jett and Aretha?), but more importantly, these are all great artists who have spoken to many (well, me at least) on both an intellectual and an emotional level. Enjoy. 30-”It’s Too Late” by Carole King Carole King is indubitably one of the biggest figures in Rock history. As a Brill Building writer in the early 60’s, she wrote the melodies to such immortal songs as “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”, “Up On The Roof” and “One Fine Day” (she also made some very embarrassing solo singles, but let’s not get into that). Her husband, Gerry Goffin, wrote the lyrics, but after her marriage to him dissolved (due to him getting another woman pregnant, mind you), Carole set out on her own...and after one lukewarm debut (”Writer”), she created a true masterpiece, the album which spawned an entire genre of confessional Singer/Songwriters in the early 70’s. I am, of course, talking about ”Tapestry”. ”Tapestry” came along in the definitive album Rock era, but it still had one big hit single: the double sided “It’s Too Late/I Feel The Earth Move”. Both tunes are excellent, but I chose “It’s Too Late” because it reveals a maturity and emotional complexity which “I Feel The Earth Move” simply doesn’t posses (for all of it’s sly sexuality, that tune could very well have been a Chiffons or Shirelles hit in it’s day). Just notice the evocative beginning: ”Stayed in bed all morning/just to pass the time/there’s something wrong here/there’s no denying/one of us has changed/or maybe we just ain’t trying” The song never gets much more explicit than that, and that’s part of it’s greatness: it reflects those times when love just...dies...and you don’t know why or how but there’s nothing you can do about it. How do you deal with it? Well, I’m hardly the person to ask, but I think that the best way would be to act just like King does here: she’s heartbroken, but she’s also wise and mature enough to be firm and honest about the whole thing. Let’s not forget the music, either, which perfectly conjures up the image of a rainy morning. In fact, it’s so quiet and atmospheric that it’s the closest white Rock has ever come to the Quiet Storm sound. And as she sings the chorus, you know Carole has soul! 29-”Love Is A Good Thing” by Sheryl Crow This song’s title alone is enough to justify my judgement that Sheryl Crow was the greatest thing to come out of the mid 90’s Women In Rock boom. After all, let’s be honest- “love is a good thing” is what all the voices of the 90’s- from 2PAC to Kurt Cobain to Damon Albarn to Eddie Vedder- wanted but weren’t quite able to say, which is one of the reasons why we’re in this whole mess now. What’s so funny ‘bout peace, love & understanding? Mind you, it certainly isn’t the only thing that makes the track great. There was the Wal Mart controversy, of course- the event that turned this song into a great comment on censorship, even if Sheryl hadn’t originally meant it that way. Y’see, Wal Mart took issue with the song’s opening line: ”Watch out sister/watch out brother/watch out children while they kill each other/with a gun they bought at Wal Mart discount stores” ...and wanted Sheryl to remove the track from her album. She didn’t, and good on her! The shadow of PMRCism is thus firmly ingrained on this track, be it the sardonic comment about ”cops and robbers getting to be big boys”, the declaration that ”we don’t like the way you live your life” or , most notably, the following lyrics: ”Mary, Mary/quite contrary/close the door now, it’s much too scary/and you might see something you wish you hadn’t seen”. The song also works pretty well as an overall comment on modern society (but of course!). Finally, do please note that Sheryl Crow produced her entire second album herself. I think she’s totally underrated as a producer- the sound on here is rather unique; it has that rough Daniel Lanois-like quality to it, but it’s alot warmer and (dare I say it?) funky. Forget those lukewarm live albums of recent vintage, Sheryl Crow in ‘96 was where it’s at. 28-”Going Down To Liverpool” by The Bangles Despite being much maligned as an 80’s fluff band and a Prince vehicle, The Bangles were actually one of the all-time greatest Jangle Pop outfits, with more hummable Power Pop tunes than you could shake Alex Chilton at. They might have had pretty faces, but they also had much more- namely an oft underrated guitarist (Susana Hoffs), an ear for a good tune, a way of being fresh without being perky, and a very well developed taste in music (they were known to cover Love, Big Star and The Mamas & The Papas; one band member even described her dream band as “the Yardbirds with Fairport Convention vocals”). “Going Down To Liverpool” is one of the biggest classics of the Paisley Underground scene (a bunch of groups that, inspired by REM, decided to bring some of the joy and guitars of the 60’s back into the 80’s), a chiming, breezy affair that feels like eating ice cream on a warm Summer day with the one you love by your side. Which is ironic, because that’s about the last thing I could imagine Liverpool feeling like. The title, of course, immediately conjures up The Beatles, and of course any Jangle Pop band stands in the shadow of the allmighty Byrds, but what really makes this tune so good is the wit and charm that it exudes, and that’s the merit of the band itself. 27-”Rock & Roll nigger” by Patti Smith I can’t help it. As soon as I start writing about Patti Smith, I get all giddy and excited, like some teenybopper writing about The Backstreet Boys or something. It’s most undignified, but it also kinda shows what’s so special about Patti- she turns all conventions upside down, and she bloody well will get her freedom even if it means confusing the hell out of everyone else. In my mind, there is no better role model for any aspiring female rocker than Patti Smith- she’s proven time and again that she can rock as hard as any male without ever denying her womanhood. She doesn’t deem herself too mature to rock out as Joni Mitchell does, but she doesn’t succumb to the occasional self parody of the rrrriot grrrl movement either. And apart from that, it should be noted that her highly original mix of beatnik poetry, Garage Rock and Yoko Ono-like vocals are the best thing to come out of the mid 70’s NYC Punk movement and one of the greatest things in Rock music, period. These days, “Rock & Roll nigger” is known primarily as being the song that Maryiln Manson covered, thus starting the preposterous rumours that he’s a racist. It’s a pity, because the Patti original easily blows away the whole Maryiln Manson repertoire. The track starts with Patti doing one of her customary sexual/spiritual poems, which concludes with the statement that ”in heart, I am Moslem/in heart, I am an American artist”. Then the tune starts, and one is rapidly made aware of what the apparently racist title *really* means- she’s using a race cuss word as a metaphor for her own voluntary exclusion from the most po-faced aspects of society, and while that’s an overtly romanticised stance (skin colour, after all, cannot be changed- attitudes can), you can hardly fault her reckless enthusiasm as she rattles off a list of fellow niggers: Jimi Hendrix, Jesus, her grandmother and Jason Polock. And yet she never succumbs to the self isolationist, whiny attitude that countless Nu Metal bands and even intelligent people like Richard Hell have made their own- no, Patti has an undying faith that the world will understand her someday- ”outside is society/just waiting for me!” 26-”Hot Topic” by Le Tigre Recently, the terminally hip Rough Trade store released a commemorative box set featuring everyone’s favourite Indie artists, from Pere Ubu right up to Ryan Adams. It is telling that, amongst all the electronic feces that we are forced-fed throughout disc 4, the only relief comes in the form of Bubble-Grrrl (now there’s a genre I can get into) outfit Le Tigre. Formed by ex-Bikini Kill femme supreme Kathleen Hanna, this band combines a strong (if delightfully over the top and occasionally humorous) feminist ethic with a very creative use of both conventional instruments and electronics to make offbeat, quirky Pop tunes. “Hot Topic” is a seriously retarded song, a bunch of singing that resembles nothing so much as the “nya nyah nyah” schoolyard chants of yore set to a duff drum beat. The fact that it’s also highly infectious serves the song’s purpose well- the lyrics, you see, deal with the dilemma of maintaining an identity whilst staying militant. The song is basically one big session of name dropping (these ears, admittedly ignorant of the history of female emancipation, managed to hear references to Emily Dickens, Angela Davis, Laurie Anderson, Gertrud Stein, Nina Simone, The Slits, Aretha Franklin, Joan Jett, James Baldwin, Yoko Ono and Sleater Kinney), and in the middle of it Hannah even sounds a bit downtrodden by the fact that there’s ”so much stuff to get and get into”. What the track seems to say is that it takes more to be a feminist than just having read the right books and heard the right music- and yet, at the same time, it conjures up the giddy enthusiasm that one can get by just listing one’s heroes... A very simple song about a very complex subject. 25-”Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush Supposedly about the book of the same name, but who knows? This song is less easy to understand than “Louie Louie”! There seems to be something about getting married in there, and she says ”oooh, it gets dark” at one point. I love it already. But you don’t really *need* to understand the lyrics, because the ornate backing, the kickass guitar solo and Kate’s own deranged (in a good way) vocal delivery already make it a Monster Classic (TM). I won’t mention the fact that Tori Amos has made a career out of trying to be Kate Bush, because that’s as obvious as saying that Aerosmith have made a career out of trying to be The Rolling Stones... 24-”Fourty Boys In Fourty Nights” by The Donnas Ain’t nuthin´wrong with some sexism in Rock, as long as the emphasis is on sex. Songs about beating up your wife are only odious and hateful, of course, that’s not what I’m talking about. But can anyone deny the greatness of songs as blatantly sexist as “The Wanderer”, “Brown Sugar” or (to quote a completely different example) “Pretty Girls Make Graves”? Let’s face it, Snoop sounds damn cool when he says ”I don’t love you hoes/I’m out da door”, precisely because he’s being such a bastard. But what if we reverse the roles? Objectification of men never really worked in Rock music before (the most prominent example being Darlene Loves’ awful “A Fine, Fine Boy”) but recently, it got it’s first bona-fide classic in the hands of this group of snotty Hard Rock/Punk chicks. The Ramones sound is delightful, and the lyrics are just so wonderfully twisted: ”Spending every night/in a different state/spending every night/with a different date/I come into town, have a look around/then I find a boy who wants to get down/I got boys all over the road/I got boys helping me unload” Rock & Roll!!!! 23-”Midnight Train To Georgia” by Gladys Knight & The Pips Although her 60’s work is discardable, she has a tendency to get overly sappy and, well, her backing band is called The Pips fer crying out loud, Gladys Knight produced some undeniable classics in the 70’s, the best and most gut wrenching of which is “Midnight Train To Georgia”. The story is simple, really- Glady’s man came from the country to the city in search of fame and fortune, but fell flat on his nose. Now he wants to go back- and she’s determined to go back with him, even though it isn’t really her world. In these modern times, the concept of this working seems positively ludricious-but Gladys Knight sounds so assured and emotional that you can’t help but believing her anyway, as the song turns into a hymn of unconditional love triumphing over all adversities. 22-”Walking On Sunshine” by Katrina & The Waves How did they do it???? What insane amount of pills did this band take to make a song so amazingly, unprecdently, mind blowingly HAPPY??? The lead singer sounds like she really needs to be sat down and told about chemical warfare and global warming for three hours or so. The lyrics are mediocre, the singing is charming, and the horns, well...as Barry from ”High Fidelity” put it: “Da DA! da da da da da-da da-da da-da”. Whatever the hell these people are on, I want some! Random Note: The opening sounds like “Rock & Roll High School” by The Ramones 21-”The Winner Takes It All” by ABBA In a way, this might be the single greatest achievement by a female in Pop history, simply because it is Angetha Faltskog’s soaring vocal delivery that turns what ought to be just another crappy ABBA song into no less than a masterpiece. Sure, the moving piano and discreet Disco beat are clever, but it’s the vocals that make you shudder, cry, wonder why. She sounds deeply hurt, and yet also as icy as Bob Dylan on “Positively 4th Street”. I mean, just LISTEN to that last, powerful yell of ”The winner takes it all!!!”. Can you do that? I sure as hell can’t! 20-”Ballad Of A Ladyman” by Sleater Kinney An anthem, no less. True, Sleater Kinney are a bit of an one trick pony (and their dismissal of creative superiors like Beck and REM is embarrassing, to say the least), but hey, what a trick! As one of those self mythologising on the road songs, this is one of the greatest, much better than “We’re An American Band” for one: ”freak that I am/Live in Japan!/let’s rock with the tough girls/in this part of the world/take a photograph/portrait of a ladyman!” This is rrrrrriot grrrrrrl music at it’s best and most spine shivering, a sort of lesbian equivalent to the populist Rock of Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen. 19-”(There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me” by Sandie Shaw A lonley figure walks through the streets, every step reminding her of her lost love. She tries to get her mind off of it, but it’s no use- everything she does is drenched in the memory of the happy times she had. Her baby left her, and there’s nothing she can do but hope he comes back to her. Sounds familiar? Yeah, it’s also the plot of “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself”, another song which (like this one) was penned in the 60’s by the sometimes great, sometimes lousy song writing team of Hal David and Burt Bacharach. However, whereas “I Just Don’t Know..” is excessively sappy and overwrought, “(There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me” achieves just the right balance of dignity and despair, and we have Sandie Shaw (barefoot syren of the 60’s that she was) to thank for that. No wonder Morrisey brought her back in the 80’s- I’m sure he learned a thing or two about sad tosserism from her. 18-”I Love Rock & Roll” by Joan Jett & The Blackhearts Joan Jett’s coming out as a lesbian might have taken the fun out of “ I Love Rock & Roll”’s delightful gender role reversal (it does make one assume, after all, that she was thinking of a she, not a he), but it sure as hell hasn’t taken anything away from the song’s rocking power. Since Jett didn’t write it, you might argue that that isn’t her merit per se- but one listen to The Arrows’ sloppy, mediocre original (available on ”The Best Glam Rock Album In The World...Ever”)will blow that little argument into smithereens. No, it took Joan Jett and her black hearted companions to bring out the full potential of this Monster Classic (TM). No other guitar could have given so much energy to that riff...and man, whatta riff! Better than anything by the bloody Jesus & Mary Chain, that’s for sure... Joan Jett started out in The Runaways, a third rate Hard Rock band that, despite a few flashes of brilliance (all togheter now- ”hello daddy, hello mom/ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!) was pretty much a no-hoper. Some revisionists have hailed them as heroes of Proto Punk, but one listen to dreck like “C’mon” will assure you that theirs was actually the kind of cheesy metallic sludge that Punk set out to destroy. After the group fell apart, Joan started up a new group (The Blackhearts), recorded a fierce monster of an album that got turned down by almost every label, and finaly attained fame (and a #1spot on the US charts) with this song. She then recorded a bunch of solid albums, and is still out there giving concerts...and, despite the occasional leather rock cheese of her shtick, she has also been rightfully hailed as one of the pioneers of the Rrrrrriot Grrrrrl movement, even collaborating with Bikini Kill. 17-”Typical Girls” by The Slits As a male, I obviously don’t know the full extent of the pressures and norms imposed on teenage girls- but I can imagine that, if a list of those were to be distilled into a three minute Pop song, it would sound something like this. Once referred to by the always endearingly clueless Kurt Cobain as ”The Clashs’ girlfriends” (for those interested- he mentioned this in the middle of dissing ”Sadinista!”, a work more daring and soulful than anything Nirvana ever came up with), The Slits were perhaps the most important of the late 70’s Post-Punk female groups, a genre that also includes the also off-beat, also great Raincoats. Despite releasing only one truly classic album (”Cut”), The Slit’s jerky, nervy style as well as their Reggae influence (courtesy of producer Dennis Bovell) have guaranteed them a place amongst the biggest legends of the Post-Punk era. “Typical Girls” is The Slits in all their artsy glory, managing to sound both awkward and aggressive as lead singer Ari Up recites a collection of stupid clichés about girls (they buy magazines, it seems), until the song ends with the gleeful realisation that we’ve just found ”another marketing ploy/typical girl meets typical boy!” 16-”I Have Learned To Do Without You” by Mavis Staples Forget about “I Will Survive”...this is the one true anthem for the broken-hearted, not only because it’s more honest, tough and pained than the song I mentioned above, but also because Mavis brings such Gospel fury and Soul smoothness to the proceedings that poor Gloria Gaynour couldn’t even begin to compare. “I Have Learned To Do Without You” might be the most gut wrenching record to come out of Stax Records- no mean feat, considering that this label also housed the likes of Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas and Johnnie Taylor. Purists will sneer at the strings, but the Stax house band is in great form, and Mavis Staples (also a member of the great inspirational Soul outfit The Staple Singers) manages to make every damn syllable of the song hit home: from the bittersweet memories of her first love to the pained realisation that all *he* was really interested in was a rendevouz. She never denies feeling hurt, but she’s sure she’ll get over it- ”I have learned to do without you/even though it hurts me deep down inside”. As the song ends in a series of painful hysterical shrieks, only the most shallow of persons could still be thinking about such follies as finger pointing soulsitta chic. This Song Saves Lives. 15-”Heart Of Glass” by Blondie In many ways, Blondie did more harm than good to popular music (they established the iffy attitude of conforming to conventional society standards and calling it “irony”- a practice which has given us the likes of Eminem and Garbage. It all begs the question, did the hundreds of teenage boys wanking off to Debbie really care whether she was being ironic?), but surely no one can deny that their music itself was, in it’s greatest moments, Sweet Pop Heaven. “Heart Of Glass” is Blondie’s finest, a masterpiece. It is also the second greatest Disco tune of all time (behind Chic’s “Le Freak”). Really, Debbie Harry could be singing about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on here, and it wouldn’t make any difference. “Heart Of Glass” is all about the shimmery Pop delight of the tune and Debbie’s a-whole-new-dimension-of-sexy vocals combining to offer up something truly irresistible.  |
| Read all comments (14)|Write your own comment |
|
Ads by Google
|
by kiwifella
by PacManY2J
![Jersey Boys [Original Broadway Cast Recording] by Original Broadway Cast Reviews](http://di2.shopping.com/images/pi/95/a4/8a/2006752046-100x100-0-0.jpg?p=p14.d14a10489a72f198cecf&a=2&c=1&l=8071320&t=120602190215&r=1)
