Links & Bits: 9/14/12

The Frisky gives us a history of "Boston Marriages."

The F-Word's Holly Combe wrote a nice piece about Tori Amos's "Me and a Gun."

Monica Roberts from TransGrio talks about trans athletes breaking barriers.

Female Artists and Authenticity

I've been reading a fascinating book, Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music by Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor, and there's a pretty meaty chapter on autobiographical songwriting. The authors, using Hank Williams as an example, state that as a confessional songwriter he had a way of "taking his own experiences and making them universal; the autobiographer, however, makes them particular."

Ignoring my usual issue with labeling anything "universal," I think this is a good way to differentiate between confessional songwriters, and autobiographical ones -- though it makes sense that the two overlap. Though a lot of songwriters today fall into the "confessional" camp, very few truly write autobiographical songs, the primary reason -- according to the book -- is autobiography's limited commercial appeal:

Simply revealing oneself in song, a goal that we now all rake for granted, is a rather recent and comparatively artificial development in the history of popular music. We now think of an autobiographical song as a natural form of expression but that anyone who has ever tried can attest, writing a song based on one's life with a verse and chorus structure, that will appeal to a mass-market audience is no simple matter. It is far easier to sing about almost anything else.

Most of the examples cited in the book were blues and country, notably Loretta Lynn's "Coal Miner's Daughter," but when I think of truly autobiographical songs, Tori Amos's "Me and a Gun" was the first one that sprang to mind:


Another more contemporary example (and yes, I realize my definition of contemporary stopped somewhere around 1998) is Lauryn Hill's songs about her song, "To Zion:"


I think both these songs easily fit the "autobiographical" template. Both are intensely personal, yet but not "universal" in the way that a standard break-up song -- even the intensely personal ones -- aren't: one is an account of a rape, and another about the birth of the songwriter's son. Also, both are generally thought to be women's experiences. I realize this is problematic in that rape doesn't happen to women exclusively happen to women, though it's often treated as a "women's issue," and both songwriters are cisgendered, hetero women. (Hence my problem with the word "universal" to describe, usually, cis, hetero experiences.) 

Although the book focuses on a lot of old blues and country, I wonder what that says that my sole examples were two contemporary female songwriters. Is confession or autobiography expected more from women than from men?

Only three, huh?

According to a humorous post at The Awl, there are only three female musicians that matter -- to male rock critics: Kate Bush, Bjork, and Tori Amos.

Of course that only covers the spritely and the fantastical. Rocker chicks have Chrissie Hynde, and country rocker chicks have Lucinda Williams. Don't Dance Her Down adds PJ Harvey as the probable (in the eyes of rock critics) inspiration for every girl who's ever picked up a guitar:

Whenever there is a new girl with a guitar and soemthing to say she will always, till the end of time itself it seems, be compared to one PJ Harvey.

It's annoying for the artist to be labelled and also annoying for fans. I hate it when you're promised a PJ Harvey and really you get a Harvey-lite at best

Though the original article was intended to be funny, it hits a nerve: Are there really so few examples of women in rock? Are critics just lazy? The answer to both is, of course, yes, assuming you've spent any time with fanboys or rock critics. (I'm not a man, but I've Tori-fied a few artists.) Liz, the post's author, said it best in the comments: "Lots of critics find it hard to accept that maybe Tori isn't a reference point for a lot of young female artists. I think Bat For Lashes said it well when she asked in a Pitchfork interview why she was never compared to male musicians."