Salute to all who stood up
AS AN avid follower of the #Metoo campaign, a #ROSEARMY devotee and a devourer of the Harvey Weinstein scandal that unfolded from October, I thought it fitting to delve into the world of female empowerment songs.
This is especially since Rose Mcgowan’s documentary was aired on E! this past week and she has just published her autobiography, Brave.
For those of you outraged at the discriminatory practices the male gender has perpetrated for centuries, last year’s meteoric rise in social media and public discourse of the #Timesup movement, where finally female voices with a story to tell of sexual and emotional abuse or career compromise, this playlist is for you. No Beyoncé, Pink or Taylor Swift tracks are listed.
We’ll start with the forever cool gang of punk chicks, notorious for being the faces of the Riot Grrrl movement, Bikini Kill and their Rebel Girl track. Now most men and maybe a few more conservative picket-fence gals might be inclined to think this is an amorous lesbian song, but dig a little deeper and you’ll find it’s actually a tribute to females who are strong enough to buck the system, stand up for their worth and rule the world.
Frontwoman Poly Styrene of X-ray Spex would famously command the stage, chanting quietly at first the old preamble that “some people think little girls should be seen and not heard”, getting progressively louder and angrier until the band erupts into a cacophony with the dénouement of “but I think, oh bondage up yours!” A fight song like no other.
Sleater Kinney has a place in every riot grrrl (worth her chops) music selection and on their album All
Hands on the Bad One, featuring the self-reflective and sometimes meandering #1 Must Have, the popularisation of the women’s movement is given a time out.
The Slits’ Typical Girl is one of the loudest and proudest songs of the male-dominated 1970s punk scene, deconstructing the view of what a normal girl is and who she might want to be. Irreverent and often tongue in cheek, the song questions who invented the typical girl – male media, a husband, brother, classmate, teacher or preacher who drilled into girls what it meant to be a lady, how their careers were defined and how their lives were to be managed and pursued. The Slits obviously rebelled against the whole lot.
The one-hit, one-ep wonders The Brat emerged from the Los Angeles post-punk scene but combined the emerging New Wave movement with reggae and pure hell-bent anger. The style of delivery of their seminal song Attitudes is evident in modern outspoken female artists, like Nicki Minaj, with a touch of cynical voyeurism that only an angry woman with bucket-loads of intelligence playing a rigged game could appreciate.
Courtney Love is an obvious divider of opinion from both men and women, but to know her is to love-hate her and that’s her most tantalising quality. A T-rex for younger and older girls, we salute her undying commitment to popularising the F-you to any control.
Albums like Live Through This featuring the succinct, emotional Doll Parts will be forever embedded in our core. Just like the smeared mascara and lipstick and her torn vintage nightie, everything she does is a metaphor, everything she is a personal sacrifice in showing up the preconceived notion of women as little Bo-peeps lost in the male wilderness, crying for direction.