[This is one post in a series about my music mixes. The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use. You may wish to read the introduction for more background.
Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguou
I have a very clear memory from a few decades back: a friend, excitedly trying to describe a great new song he’d heard on the radio. “It’s this woman, and she’s singing to her ex, and she’s ...” and here he faltered, unable to find the right words. He finally came up with “she’s so mad.”
The year was 1995, and the song, of course, was “You Oughta Know,” by the then little known Alanis Morissette, and it ushered in a whole spate of pissed-off women singing about being pissed off ... so much so that the original title of this mix was “Angry White Female.” I’ve captured the greatest hits of that musical movement here: Tracy Bonham’s glorious screamfest “Mother Mother” and Patti Rothberg’s bluesy take “This One’s Mine” from the following year, all the way through Veruca Salt’s amazing punk-grunge-pop anthem “Volcano Girls” in ‘97. Louise Post and Nina Gordon can do it all, but I’ve always felt their unique combination of harmonizing, screaming, and sick guitar licks really reached the perfect crescendo in “Volcano Girls”: when they sing “warm us up and watch us blow,” it’s kinda the perfect expression of this mix (and that’s why it’s the volume title, natch).
Of course, there were other women singing during this period, and they weren’t always pissed off. For instance, I don’t think Gwen Stefani was actually angry when she sang “Just a Girl” (released just a few months after “You Oughta Know”) ... but then again she doesn’t seem very happy about it either. “Oh, I’m just a girl, all pretty and petite, so don’t let me have any rights,” she sings, and the mockery is crystal clear. At the other end of the spectrum, while No Doubt was making fun of people who dismissed women for being emtpy-headed in ‘95, Natalie Imbruglia was making fun of the women who were giving those people those impressions in ‘97; “Don’t You Think” contains lines like “there’s more important things than making sure your shoes walk just right” and “your second-hand opinions don’t make you look any smarter.” What all these women had in common was not necessarily being angry, but having a certain ... attitude.
Of course, women singing with attitude didn’t magically start in 1995, nor end in 1997. Even just a few years before, there were a few pretty important precursors to Alanis Morissette, like Julianna Hatfield’s growling “Dame with a Rod,” which was always my favorite tune to crank up to the max from Become What You Are, which is turn was one of my favorite albums of the ‘90s: throughout the entire decade, if you took a road trip you took with me, you could pretty much count on hearing the entire album at least once. Certainly I feel like you can draw a pretty straight line from Hatfield to Veruca Salt. And, for an example of a woman who can scream with power and artistry and still make it sound beautiful, it’s tough to beat PJ Harvey; “50ft Queenie” is only one of many awesome candidates from Rid of Me; produced by Big Black’s Steve Albini, it’s raw and noisy and just amazing.1 Among those that came after, I was actually somewhat surprised when I went back to dig out Michelle Branch’s “Are You Happy Now?” to find that it was from 200
And then there are the “bad girls” of rock. One couldn’t possibly do a mix like this without including Amy Winehouse, and “Rehab” is the obvious choice. Luckily, it’s a top-notch song too, even though the lyrics are quite sad in retrospect. Perhaps less known (outside her native New Zealand) is Gin Wigmore, who I first heard of when I just had to look up who was singing the awesome theme song for Crazyhead.2 Then I heard “Black Sheep” and I was blown away. There’s a good reason she holds the #2 spot on this volume.
But I would say the undisputed bad girl of rock has to be P!nk, and I put my money where my mouth is by giving her 3 tracks on this volume, which I rarely do. But she has plenty of songs to spare when it comes to attitude. Possibly my all-time favorite P!nk song is “So What,” where she sings to an ex “I’m just fine, and you’re a tool.” Seriously, how can you not sing along to this song? It was the perfect opener. “Trouble” is also a lot of fun (“I’m trouble, y’all!”), but pride of place as the centerpiece of the mix goes to her best diss track, ”‘Cuz I Can.” While I’ll admit to being a bit disappointed that she appears to have actually written down “ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff” as an actual lyric, you can’t beat insults like “I could fit your whole house in my swimming pool,” and especially “my life’s a fantasy that you’re not smart enough to even dream.” Chef’s kiss.
But I knew I had to also pay some respect to the OG bad girls: Pat Benatar and Joan Jett. Benatar was one of my first rock crushes: 1980’s Crimes of Passion was one of the first albums that I developed a fondness for when I began developing my own musical tastes.3 And it was also the first time I realized that an album could have more than one or two hits: featuring not only “Treat Me Right,” which I showcase here, but also “You Better Run,” “Hit Me with Your Best Shot,” and “Hell Is for Children,” Crimes of Passion is jam-packed with radio fodder, and the rest of the track
[ Warm Us Up and Watch Us Blow ]
“Black Sheep” by Gin Wigmore, off Gravel & Wine
“Uummannaq Song” by KT Tunstall, off Tiger Suit
“Just a Girl” by No Doubt, off Tragic Kingdom
“Rehab” by Amy Winehouse, off Back to Black
“Bubblegum Bitch” by Marina and the Diamonds, off Electra Heart
“Mother Mother” by Tracy Bonham, off The Burdens of Being Upright
“A Dame with a Rod” by the Juliana Hatfield Three, off Become What You Are
“Kiss with a Fist” by Florence + the Machine, off Lungs
“Are You Happy Now?” by Michelle Branch, off Hotel Paper
“Treat Me Right” by Pat Benatar, off Crimes of Passion
“'Cuz I Can” by P!nk, off I'm Not Dead
“Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett, off Bad Reputation
“50ft Queenie” by PJ Harvey, off Rid of Me
“Johnny Feelgood” by Liz Phair, off Whitechocolatespaceegg
“Don't You Think?” by Natalie Imbruglia, off Left of the Middle
“Volcano Girls” by Veruca Salt, off Eight Arms to Hold You
“You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette, off Jagged Little Pill
“Wild Woman” by Imelda May, off Tribal
“One Way or Another” by Blondie, off Parallel Lines
“This One's Mine” by Patti Rothberg, off Between the 1 and the 9
“Trouble” by P!nk, off Try This
“Tell That Girl to Shut Up” by Transvision Vamp, off Pop Art
“That's Not My Name” by the Ting Tings, off We Started Nothing
Now, I’m not sure Liz Phair and her spiritual successor, KT Tunstall, ever really embody the anger of Morisette, the brattiness of P!nk, or the growling power of Harvey, but I love their music so much that it felt weird to exclude them altogether. And one can define “attitude” however one wants, no? “Johnny Feelgood” appears to be about an unhealthy relationship (“he knocks me down and he orders me around”) but it still portrays a strength in the singer. Meanwhile, in “Uummannaq Song” (Uummannaq is a small town in Greenland), Tunstall sings lines like “did you see it, that I needed to prove that my stinger always stays ...” Just as I did on Sirenexiv Cola, I drew from the best albums from each: whitechocolatespaceegg and Tiger Suit.
Likewise, Florence + the Machine’s output primarily consists of soft, sparkling pop gems like “Dog Days Are Over,” the big hit off of Lungs. But, somehow, right in the middle of that album that Wikipedia assures me is “art rock” or maybe even “baroque pop,” there is the stripped-down, almost punky, glory that is “Kiss with a Fist.” Another abusive relationship song, in this one the singer gives as good as she gets, and produces a song that is short and brutal, like the relationship of its subject. Contrariwise, Irish-born Imelda May is known for a sort of rockabilly revival style.4 But with lyrics like:
I knew a feral girl, once upon a time.
She grew into a werewolf: that monster was all mine.
She was incarcerated, to the inside of my skin,
And then I sat and waited, for my nice life to begin ...
“Wild Woman” is quite perfect for this mix. A wicked, wicked, wild woman, dying to be free ... that sort of says it all.
Finally, we close with a pair of pop-punk songs that I’ve always felt were spiritual sisters, despite being separated by 20 years and about 2½ hours on the M1. London’s Transvision Vamp has strong opinions on your current girlfrien
Next time, let’s get dark.
1 My second choice, for what it’s worth, was “Me-Jane.” Perhaps we’ll see that one show up on volume II.
2 Gin Wigmore’s music is also featured in Wynonna Earp, yet another show about badass female
3 As distinct from just listening to the music of my parents. I delve into this topic a bit more in my intro to 80s My Way.
4 We first head from May on Salsatic Vibrato III.
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