I grew up on the edge 70s glam, right through its 80s incarnation as hair metal, and then 90s acceptance of gender play. Bowie, New York Dolls; Poison and Motley Crue's eyeliner misogyny; and Kurt Cobain showing up on Headbangers Ball in a full ball gown. There are tons of examples of male artists finding ways to play with gender roles, but very few of women. Female artists, to have any chance at mainstream success, are stuck with the dichotomy of playing the sexy vixen, or the good, innocent virgin.
The recent popularity of artists like Janelle Monae and La Roux's Elly Jackson provided some much needed androgyny that didn't play to some male fantasy. (Yeah, Madonna wore a suit in "Express Yourself" but with a hefty dose of self-awareness, and her co-opting of gay culture never sat right with me.)
A while back I wrote about freeing myself from Bob Dylan. I mean, freeing myself of the idea that I absolutely must love someone so critically adored. It was, um, freeing. Anyway, I realized that I actually do like quite a few Dylan covers, particularly covers done by female artists. It doesn't make his misogyny any more palatable, but it does add another dimension to some of those songs I professed to "hate." Here are a few that I think stand out for various reasons. Some border on camp, some self-serious, but I'm drawn to all of them:
I think someone unfriended me for posting a Cher video.
Now I know that's silly and most likely not true. I was probably unfriended for a good reason. Maybe I offended him in some way I couldn't uncover by my combing through my most recent posts. Or maybe I was unfriended for the unforgivable crime of being terribly un-clever. Either way, I'd like to believe my greatest infraction was my questionable taste in music, 'cause I totally own that:
I honestly don't remember this song existing, but I know every word. I'm pretty sure I owned "Save Up All Your Tears" on a cassingle, the 80s and early 90s equivalent to downloading the one good song on a record. (Downloading itself is a huge guilty pleasure enabler.) And I'm pretty sure I belted it out in my bedroom when no one else was at home. Fear of having a Sue Sylvester moment keeps me from doing that right now.
I came to music late in my adolescence. I was still bopping along to Wham! when most of my peers had discovered REM, and it wasn't until my twenties when I became aware that some artists came with a critic's seal of approval. I bought myself a copy of The All Music Guide and scoured used CD stores for the highest rated records. Some of them, to my surprise, I liked, and some of I hated with the fire of a thousand suns and wondered why this dreck was even allowed to be recorded. A lot of them I just sort of pretended to like. Being a music blogger requires me to rewrite my own musical history a bit: no one wants to appear less knowledgeable than she really is, especially in the male-dominated music, indie=good, everything else=bad music blogosphere. And no one wants to think she has "terrible taste." But you know what? I simply don't care anymore. I refuse to label anything that makes me happy a "guilty pleasure."
