I wrote much
of this review before somewhat belatedly reading Wesley Morris's article "Voices in My Head" in the October 8 Sunday Times Magazine, and now that I've
read it I feel much better. I thought that any reader who found his or her way
to my blog posts on the NPR list of "150 Greatest Albums Made By Women" would wonder if I had a few screws loose, spending so much time
listening only to music by women, and not incidentally offering my critique of
the list. Now I can at least respond that I am not the only one: Morris informs
us that for months he listened to the entire NPR list, from #150 to #1, and at
least 75 more albums by women to boot. I have not even been through all 150,
though the still unheard albums tend to be those by artists I am familiar with,
even if I don't know the chosen album in full, as well as some of the jazz and
classical artists. I have, on the other hand, listened to way more than 75
other albums by women, probably closer to 200 or so, not to mention attending
concerts by Rickie Lee Jones, Tori Amos and an ensemble performing works of
Pauline Oliveros.
Did all
this increase my appreciation of the importance of music "made by
women" (a term Morris does not seem to question, in spite of its
inaccuracy)? I at least owe Powers et al. a note of thanks for sending me off
on a journey of music discovery that has turned up numerous gems of which I was
unaware. Some are albums on the list, some are other albums by artists on the
list, and quite a few are albums by artists who were not included at all. Had the
NPR list done nothing more than bring to my attention the brilliant early
1970's Filipino-American female group Fanny it would have done me a great favor.
In fact, you can also now count me as a confirmed Siouxsie and the Banshees
fan, and throw in The Bangles and a few others.
But it
also pushed me to check out the empty spaces where Suzanne Vega and Janis Ian albums
should be, and to listen to many alternatives to the listed works. Morris notes
the exclusion of artists like Shawn Colvin, and questions (subsequent to a Tori
Amos quip about the lack of "testosterone" in the Lilith Fair lineup)
whether we are making the wrong demands on music by women. I would put it more
bluntly: the list indulges vulgar commercial efforts at the expense of more
serious artists, and often picks albums based on hits and sales rather than
inherent quality.
Morris
also makes some questionable judgments in his piece. Nostalgia for Donna Summer
is perhaps understandable, as the loss of her and Whitney Houston in the same
year is still an open wound five years later. But calling her "the
musician who paved a boulevard for lots of women who top charts" is a bit
much. The women who paved that boulevard aren't even allowed on this NPR list –
Betsy Smith, Patsy Cline, Martha Reeves, and many others who laid down that
pavement are not there due to being pre-1964 artists. Dionne Warwick is not on
the list; neither is Judy Collins. But even if we stick with those who are on
the list, after Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, Dusty Springfield, The Ronettes and
Aretha Franklin put down the blacktop, all Donna Summer needed to do was walk
on it. Nostalgia for Janet Jackson is a bit harder to explain, but since his
tastes also include an outsized admiration for Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville and the dismissal of Janis Joplin's Pearl as "not a great album" I
guess all I can do here is shrug and move on.
Morris
also indulges the statistical game of counting albums "by women" in
this or that list and comparing them with the much larger number "by
men" and concludes that indeed music by women is underappreciated. It
takes more work than this numbers game to show that, if it's true. There could
be many reasons why there are fewer women than men represented in lists and
such; those reasons may well show that women have not been treated fairly in
the music industry (this would hardly surprise anyone) but not that the
achievements they managed in spite of this are underappreciated.
Morris
does not seem fazed by any of the criticisms I've harped on in my posts: that
most of the albums are not in fact "made by women" in any sense other
than (at most) having female lead vocalists; that it does not really recognize
the greatest albums but rather offers
us representative albums by those considered the greatest or best known female
lead vocalists; that its tokenish inclusion of a few classical and jazz
artists, and slightly more international artists, is ridiculous and results in
absurd juxtapositions; that the rankings themselves are extremely arbitrary and
could be radically revised even for the albums selected, to say nothing of
those not selected (e.g., probably 2 or 3 albums each by Joan Armatrading, Suzanne Vega and Janis Ian could be among
the top 25 albums in the list); that what is included has an overall commercial
tilt that ends up under-representing many of the greatest female songwriters and
musicians (Morris does hint at this point but doesn't target it directly); that
it is not even an original idea, largely repeating the choices of earlier,
similar lists; and that the starting point in 1964 is very arbitrary and
excludes those who set the standard for female recording artists, on the
misleading notion that before 1964 they did not primarily make albums.
Well,
back to business, as I have elaborated all those objections in previous posts. Having
had my say on the choices of Joni Mitchell albums, I will now discuss the rest
of the list, identifying the albums in groups by their numbers on the list.
*****
1 (Joni Mitchell, Blue), 121 (Joni Mitchell, Hejira)
Please see my previous post regarding Joni Mitchell's albums.
2 (Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill),
9 (Amy Winehouse, Back
to Black), 12 (Erykah Badu, Baduism) 57 (Mary
J. Blige, What's the 411?), 77 (Aaliyah, Aaliyah), 92 (Meshell Ndegeocello, Peace
Beyond Passion), 116 (Macy
Gray, On How Life Is) 149 (Alicia Keys, Songs in A Minor)
If there
is anything particularly new or provocative about the list it is the promotion
of neo-soul, hip-hop soul and other variations on classic 1960's soul music to
the center of the musical conversation. The sub-list doesn't stop with those
seven selections, especially if you include early influences like Sade, and
fellow travellers like Norah Jones and Adele, and of course Beyoncé, whose
sometimes soul-inflected album Lemonade sits at #6 on the list. I
am inclined to ask: is this correct? I mean, is Lauryn Hill's neo-soul/reggae/hip-hop
crossover album the second greatest album ever recorded by a woman? The women I
have asked tend to raise an eyebrow and then suggest that it's not a bad choice, but perhaps a bit
surprising. To put it another way, are 3 (or 4, if you include Lemonade)
of the 12 best albums ever made by women neo-soul albums? That's a lot of
credit for this subgenre. Historically speaking, neo-soul had a brief heyday
around 20 years ago, while hip-hop/soul confections continue to crop up. (Aside
from Lemonade,
Kehlani's SweetSexySavage is the latest entry in this category to win all
sorts of accolades.) Not all of it represents what I would call first class
songwriting, which is one of my main criteria for a great album.
Some,
like Baduism,
make a kind of musical/poetic statement: trim down the arrangements, don't be
afraid to express your deepest feelings, make each single note as expressive as
a symphony. These are solid ideas, but my simple ear just wants to know if it
is an album full of great music. I'm not sure; after playing it maybe half a
dozen times it still doesn't seem to compare with Sade's Diamond Life, for
instance, nor with soul-inspired classics like Marvin Gaye's What's
Going On? or Isaac Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul. Similarly for
many of the others here. Alicia Keys' Songs in A Minor is a very nice,
listenable album, especially if you ignore the lyrics, which rarely rise above
sentimentality; it would be hard to argue with a rank of #149, barely making it
onto the list, if there weren't so many other better albums by artists who were
not included on the list. Mary J. Blige's What's the 4-1-1? is also a
perfectly fine album, on which she does a great job singing a collection of
fairly straightforward R&B covers. Her My Life would have been a better
choice: like Baduism and Aaliyah it's a completely seductive
album on which (like Badu, unlike Aaliyah) she co-wrote almost every song. It's
been listed again and again among the greatest R&B albums ever made, so why
the former would be chosen to represent her instead is just one more of the
ultimately unanswerable questions raised by this list. Ditto for Meshell
Ndegeocello's Peace Beyond Passion: very nice album, but Plantation Lullabies, her
first, seems to me superior to it in every sense.
But My
Life and Plantation Lullabies still do not sound like the cream of the
crop in popular music. Perhaps #57 and #92 would be good places for them,
assuming some of the stuff that does not belong at all was removed. But what
about #2, #9, #12 – can these really keep company with the best of Joni
Mitchell, with Diamond Life, Tapestry, Pearl – or with some of the greatest
albums by unaccountably excluded artists like Joan Armatrading or Suzanne Vega?
Not to my ears. In fact I don't think they compare with #139 (The Bangles, All
Over the Place) or with #133 (Fanny, Fanny Hill) for musical
interest, and certainly not with #122 (Siouxsie and the Banshees, The
Scream), or with Kate Bush, Tori Amos or Sonic Youth for innovation. So
what are they doing in these exalted positions?
What I
described above as "the fog of music" may have enveloped the brains
of the list's jury members. The truth is, every one of these albums is
pleasant, easy to listen to, takes some interesting new approaches, includes
some notable performance moments, etc. They may be among the top albums in
their genre, even if that is construed broadly. None of this adds up to being a
great album, a term that brings
together a number of outstanding qualities that create a surge of musical
satisfaction and that rise far above the multitude of good albums released every year. Generally, such albums either
identify themselves as summits of achievement in a certain style or era of
music, or become points of reference for much that comes after them. But all
these neo-soul albums stand on approximately the same plane, like latter-day reflections
on Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes and Nina Simone after the social and musical developments
of the 2-3 decades since their greatest albums. Like neo-psychedelia and neo-punk,
some excellent music can emerge, but this is rarely the place to look for great albums. Which, unless we are going
to be uncharitable, suggests that they are over-represented and overrated on the
NPR list.
***
3 (Nina Simone, I
Put a Spell On You), 28
(Nina Simone, Nina Simone Sings the Blues)
Nina
Simone's I Put a Spell On You is an odd choice for a #3 album on this
list. For one thing, in spite of the fact that this was also the title of her
autobiography, it is not her best or most representative album, and seems to
have been picked solely because it is the first acceptable one post-1964, the
list's arbitrary cutoff date. Secondly, in spite of the fact that she has
influenced a lot of artists, Simone herself is fairly controversial, and not
just for her advocacy of violent revolution, use of gun threats to get her way,
or fabled histrionics. Her artistry, though widely revered, is a bit uneven. I
personally think Robert Christgau's highly critical assessment, cited in Simone's
Wikipedia entry,
is too harsh by half – he was clearly not listening to her best work either as
vocalist or pianist. (See my previous post on his mis-assessment of Joni
Mitchell's later work.) That said, my feeling is that in contrast to some rich
early recordings, both tone production and emotional resonance are somewhat
spotty in her subsequent work. The controlled vibrato of her early (pre-1964)
work is largely replaced with a tremolo that is not always applied to the best
effect. Her keyboard work is impressive at its best, humdrum at worst. She has
an enormous recorded legacy and I am far from being ready to speak about all of
it, but my impression is that there are more important albums to occupy the
title of "3rd best album made by a woman". Now, having said
that, I am going to flip back the other way and say that Nina Simone Sings the Blues,
at #28, is one of her better later albums; her performance of the
Gershwin-Heyward song "My Man's Gone Now" by itself deserves some
sort of place in musical history, a sockdolager in every way. Overall her voice
shines, and even the tremolo works better than in more popular material. Her
keyboard playing is no great shakes but there are other worthy musical
performances on the album, and it's her voice that is front and center on this
album anyway. In short, #28 no problem; #3, not convinced.
***
5 (MIssy Elliott, Supa-Dupa
Fly), 33 (Queen Latifah, All
Hail the Queen), 43 (M.I.A.,
Kala),
71 (Salt-N-Pepa, Blacks'
Magic), 96 (Lil' Kim, Hard
Core)
No expert
on rap, here, though I've listened to it on and off since the days of Grandmaster
Flash. I think I can distinguish great rap from average run of the mill rap,
and I can certainly distinguish intelligent lyrics with something to say from
gratuitous scatological garbage and self-indulgent violent rants. Here, in the
few more or less pure rap selections, we have both ends of the spectrum.On the
one hand, Queen Latifah holds down the classic end of the genre on All
hail the Queen, which more or less made it a commercial and artistic
success. Salt-N-Pepa's album Blacks' Magic mixes fairly
straightforward rap rhythms with a sometimes feminist message that defied the often
misogynistic tenor of rap at that time.
Lil' Kim also defies misogyny, as well
as taste, decency, the law, and a long list of other rappers, with whom she has
feuded endlessly. Her foulmouthed and violent lyrics earned her music the label
"gangster porno rap", which is fitting for someone who has been
convicted of perjury for covering up her violent friends' perfidious
activities. Any complaints I have aired regarding the moral fiber of Nina
Simone, Britney Spears or Amy Winehouse are lightweight stuff compared with
this treasure. Or is it not just obvious
that the answer to sexism is not to offer one's vagina and anus as weapons in
the battle to conquer male sexual dominance? All the rappers here can be
explicit enough about sex and sex roles; but explicit can be in good taste,
while raunchy and violent cannot. Really poor judgment putting Hard
Core anywhere on the list, in my opinion.
Missy Elliott is one of the most
important people in hip hop and in R&B generally, but that is more the
result of her production and songwriting activities, which also helped catapult
Timbaland into the first ranks of hip hop producers and musicians. As for Supa
Dupa Fly, it is a fine album, but its exalted place at #6 on the list
may be more a token of recognition for Elliott's overall contribution than a
true rank for the album itself. Neither her singing voice nor her rap skills
are first rate, but her great creative talent makes it a very good recording
nonetheless - at some points not unlike some of Aaliyah's work, which she helped
write and produce.
As for Kala, I'm not sure what
to make of it. Being the only Tamil pop superstar certainly makes M.I.A. a
person of interest. The eclectic mix of rap, dance, electronica and I'm not
sure what else ranges from musically inspired to boring, and the lyrics, where
I could follow them, have patches of interest and obscurity among their various
personal and political directions.
***
6 (Beyoncé, Lemonade), 134 (Solange, A Seat at the Table).
Am I the
only one who finds it a tiny little bit suspect that two albums that are just
over a year old, done by two sisters, both happen to make the list, all but serving
as bookends? I've heard and respect both of them, but as to the extraordinary
confidence in placing the recently released Lemonade near the top of
the list... can we talk? I mean, I can see the argument for it: Beyoncé has practically
invented a new form of musical expression, something that is equal parts rock
opera, hip-hop, poetry, video art, soul, electronica - it is so much to digest
that perhaps the course of least resistance is to just call it one of the most
innovative albums of the 21st century so far, and leave it at that.
But I have asked, and will continue to ask, the more basic question in relation
to list-formation: is it a best-ever experience as music, as songwriting, as
instrumental and vocal performance? Perhaps this is unfair to hip-hop and its
ever-expanding reach into popular music, since "songwriting" is not
exactly what it's about. (Nobody would characterize the achievement of Kendrick
Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly as somehow lesser because it is not an
album of tunes you can whistle.) But for me, that is one of the things that needs to be there for an album to be near
the top of a "greatest" list. There are a couple of outstanding songs
on Lemonade
("Sandcastles" is an instant classic, and "All Night" is a
beauty too) but it is the album's concept, spirit and visuals that have
captured the imagination. It gets a seat at the table for that reason, but I'm
not putting it at the head of the table without a more or less continuous
stream of great music. Speaking of A Seat at the Table, Solange's album
too may deserve one, but only by opening up numerous places from albums I don't
think belong there, since there are quite a few more obvious choices that were
omitted from the list altogether.
***
9 (Amy Winehouse, Back
to Black), 93 (Britney
Spears, ...Baby One More Time)
How did Lindsay
Lohan's two recordings get overlooked? These two singers' personal issues have
made for at least as much copy as their musical efforts. True, one can turn up
plenty of tabloid worthy material on Janis Joplin, Nina Simone and others; we would
lose a lot of talent if we denied people their rightful place in music history
based on a few run-ins with the police or stints in drug and alcohol rehab. So
what exactly does that place consist in? Amy Winehouse captured a lot of attention
on the basis of her soulful but highly derivative style, and even if her
notorious self-destructive force rates up there with some of our recent
hurricanes, it is hard to deny the effectiveness of her music. I seriously
question, though, whether she should be at any such illustrious position on
this list or any other. She ranks here above Whitney Houston, than whom there
is no greater vocalist in pop history; Barbra Streisand, about whom little
needs to be said; and people like Kate Bush, Tori Amos and Rickie Lee Jones,
all deep fonts of creativity on a level that Amy Winehouse does not even
pretend to. Back to Black is a brilliant pastiche of soul-inspired styles,
as is Frank, her only other commercial recording. But recognizing
that is quite compatible with her being assigned a more modest role among the
many creative women in popular music.
As for Britney Spears, there is
absolutely nothing to recommend her from a musical point of view, unless
popularity with teenage girls is in itself a sign of greatness. She has no
particular vocal abilities; the material on her recordings is about as trite as
you could dream up, even if some of it may have been vaguely transgressive in a
quasi-feminist way that Madonna had long since made into a brand, or tickled
the nascent sexual imaginations of teenage girls everywhere. I think the
popularity of her recordings, to the extent it has any relationship to the
music itself, is 90% about the production, for that is all that stands out as
differentiating them from the mass of mainstream pop, if anything does.
***
10 (Carole King, Tapestry),
44 (Heart, Dreamboat Annie), 45 (Dusty Springfield, Dusty
in Memphis), 53 (Linda
Ronstadt, Heart Like a Wheel), 83
(Bobbie Gentry, Ode to Billy Joe), 85
(Joan Baez, Diamonds and Rust), 124
(Carly Simon, No Secrets), 126 (The
Carpenters, A Song for You), 133 (Fanny,
Fanny
Hill)
This
imperfect sublist captures what you might call the rock, light-rock and
country-rock genre of the decade from1967-1976 as represented on this list –
that is, whatever is not strictly R&B, traditional country, early punk,
experimental/jazz, etc. Of all of them, only two strike me as consistently good
in a way that ranks them among the greatest albums by men or women: Tapestry, of course; and the
discovery of the decade, Fanny Hill. The latter is like
discovering the equivalent of Canned Heat, Humble Pie, or maybe Bad Company,
having never even heard the name, and realizing that you have to rewrite the
history of the era. The Carpenters' A Song For You is an inspired
collection of songs, but I tend to relegate albums that are mostly covers of
other people's material to a different class from wholly original ones; and The
Carpenters are one of many - many –
groups on the list where men and women played roughly equal roles (see the next
section).
Most of the rest are really held in place by one or two hit singles. Carly Simon's No Secrets, for
example, is not even a good album
overall; I'm not even sure "You're So Vain" is a particularly good
song (my favorite of hers is still her first hit, "The Way I've Always
Heard It Should Be"). She is an excellent singer (way better than Carole
King in that respect), but a sample of her many other albums suggests that she
is good for one or two standout songs on a recording, a lot of fair-to-middling
material and the occasional unlistenably trite filler. Like Taylor Swift, she
sometimes makes me want to scream: "Not every single thought you've had
about some passing relationship is worth writing a song about!"
Bobbie
Gentry's Ode to Billie Joe is a dubious pick not so much for the songwriting
as for the recording, which sounds like it took place in a cardboard box and
managed to sneak into the mastering room without a final mix, or even so much
as a small concession to reverb. Heart's Dreamboat Annie is the source of a
couple of great R&R hits, but as for the album, they have better, including
their much more recent Fanatic. I love the title song of Diamonds
and Rust but repeated listening over many years has not convinced me
that the album is as essential as the song. (Her One Day at a Time and Gracias
a la Vida are two of my favorite folk albums.) Dusty Springfield and
Linda Ronstadt are each represented by "classic",
"landmark", "breakthrough" country-rock records that one
can't help feeling a bit sentimental about, without necessarily wanting to
listen to them much.
***
16 (Fleetwood Mac, Rumours),
35 (Blondie, Parallel Lines), 79 (Portishead,
Dummy),
87
(X, Los Angeles), 127
(Sonic Youth, Sister), 135 (The
B-52s, The B-52s), 138 (The
Cocteau Twins, Heaven or Las Vegas)
None of
these bands are female-led groups in the same sense that, say, Hole is truly
Courtney Love's group or The Pretenders is Chrissie Hynde's. The history of
Fleetwood Mac is very complex and it certainly is not adequately captured by
calling it a mainly female band in any of its several eras. Other than lead
vocals, Chris Stein had a roughly equal role with Debbie Harry in Blondie, and
The B-52's are also more or less gender-equal. Beth Gibbons seems to have had a
role roughly equal to her two male collaborators in creating the music of
Portishead. Calling this an album "made by women" seems like a
calculated attempt to grab some foundational trip-hop credit for
"women" when in fact nearly all the personnel except the lead
vocalist were men. Elizabeth Fraser's vocals are central to the Cocteau Twins'
sound but so are Robin Guthrie's synthesized guitars; songwriting credits are
given to "The Cocteau Twins". I will deal with X and Sonic Youth
below, and I have mentioned The Carpenters above. I do not understand why these
groups would be on the list and not ABBA – though I am not offering ABBA or
their material as instances of greatness. (They do, however, have the
distinction of having twice won prizes in the Eurovision song contest, with "Waterloo"
winning overall and "Ring Ring" placing third.) Given the largely mainstream
nature of the list they seem like equally good candidates. But if we are
talking about albums "made by women" these mixed gender groups are
even less appropriate than some of the albums which, as I pointed out in earlier
parts, are merely sung by women.
***
17 (Janet Jackson, Control), 75 (Donna Summer, Bad Girls), 118 (Chaka Khan, I Feel For You), 130 (Teena Marie, WIld
and Peaceful)
There
was a time when disco-era R&B performers like Janet Jackson, Donna Summer,
Teena Marie and Chaka Khan would not only not make my list of deserted island
disks, they would be sufficient reason to remove to a deserted island without
electricity. I may be more open to dancehall funk, disco and post-disco now
than I was then, but in spite of critics like Vince Aletti and changes in historical perspective, they are
still not going on that ship with me. I have a short list of disco-pop songs
(not many albums) that I like as pure music, for I am not really interested in
what songs are best to shake your booty to; but they are not "made by
women" even in the loose sense of this list. It is interesting to compare
these with R&B entries like 4
(Aretha Franklin), 14 (Whitney
Houston) or 15 (Diana Ross and the
Supremes) – I would argue with anyone who denies their artistry, whether or not
those particular positions are the right ones. But times have not changed
enough for me to put any but a handful of disco/dance-pop songs on a list of
"greatest" anything, and nothing I heard in the selected albums moves
me to change that opinion.
***
27 (Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes), 37 (Kate Bush, Hounds of Love)
Tori
Amos is represented by her first solo album, Little Earthquakes,
having made way for higher-rated choices like Selena, Janet Jackson and Madonna.
The injustice of this is startling. A brilliant songwriter, classically trained
keyboardist and superb singer, she is one of the most interesting artists of any
gender in the last 20 years. In the way she creates poetic, free form lyrics
and then manages to coax formally coherent and powerful songs out of them she
seems to me unique and something of a genius. Her From the Choirgirl Hotel,
Scarlet's
Walk and Abnormally Attracted to Sin, and possibly several others deserve
to be on the list as much Little Earthquakes. Other than Joni
Mitchell and Aretha Franklin, only Madonna seems to have been deemed worthy of
multi-album representation (Joan Jett and Beyoncé each appear in two different
musical formations), but that is ridiculous, and Tori Amos is one reason why.
The recognition of Kate Bush's work is
also pretty lame. As great as Tori Amos is, she walks in part in Bush's
footsteps, as do so many other female recording artists. Yet Bush's Hounds
of Love is ranked below Adele's 21, Björk's eclectic Post,
Grace Jones's interesting but hardly earth-shaking Nightclubbing, etc. While
I am still searching for the Kate Bush album that will thrill me as much as the
best work by Tori Amos (or the unaccountably overlooked Suzanne Vega), many of
them are greater creative works than anything Adele has yet done (and produced
more charting singles than Adele may ever do, for what that's worth). Perhaps
the lesson here is that by offering a spurious and chaotic ranking of
individual albums the NPR list does a disservice to women whose musical
accomplishments are far greater than the sum of their parts.
***
30 (Adele, 21)
Adele
has sold a lot of albums. "Rolling in the Deep" was a great single.
But it will be a long time before we know whether there is a legacy here worthy
of this sort of recognition. While she clearly has a strong voice, nothing else
she has done signals more than another good pop singer/songwriter. That's just
not enough to be selected for this position in a "new canon" because
there are just too many such artists, big in their day and largely forgotten
not long after. (Don Williams died a few weeks ago; remember him? Even if you
do, does he stand out in the pantheon of Nashville stars? He had seventeen #1 singles on the Country
charts, and 14 albums in the top 15. Get my point?)
***
35 (Blondie, Parallel Lines), 56 (X-Ray Spex, Germfree Adolescents), 72 (The Runaways, The Runaways), 74 (The Raincoats, The Raincoats), 87 (X, Los Angeles), 119 (The Slits, Cut), 122 (Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Scream), 127 (Sonic Youth, Sister)
Scattered
around the list are these late 70's/early 80's groups with punk roots (or
pretensions), many of them dominated by women. (I have omitted ESG's Come
Away With ESG because I am not sure they really fit the category – they
may be in a category or their own, like "minimalist dance-punk" or
whatever.) The first question posed by this category is how many of these bands
fall under the "made by women" label at all? Blondie and Siouxsie and
the Banshees were co-founded by a male and a female member; in both cases, the
female member did the lead singing and co-wrote some of the material, and the
male member created the guitar parts and co-wrote some of the material. As for
X, after joining the band formed by her boyfriend John Doe and guitarist Billy
Zoom, Exene Cervenka contributed many of the lyrics for the album and shares
the vocals with Doe. Sonic Youth is an even more dubious choice for the
"made by" label. So half the bands in this category fit tenuously if
at all in the list. The second question is, what justifies this distribution of
punk-related albums? Does the order hold up even in itself, much less in relation
to the rolling wave of genres and styles that characterizes the list? Here are my
thoughts:
Germfree Adolescents by XRay Spex is one of the great one-off albums in rock, a masterpiece of punk by a band that crashed and burned before releasing a second album but left a big mark, largely thanks to their female lead singer, Poly Styrene. With or without the punk anthem "Oh Bondage Up Yours", an early single which was added to the original LP later on (I have to credit the Trouser Press review for pointing this out), this album could easily exchange places with many of this list's top-30 selections - Adele, Lucinda Williams and several others, by my lights.
The Runaways were more like punk wannabes than a true punk rock band; The Runaways is a slick hard rock/heavy metal album that could have been the work of Deep Purple, Black Sabbath or any other competent metal band of that era, lyrics aside. Unlike The Raincoats, Siouxsie, or The Slits they are not much given to experimentation (an understatement, perhaps) but reliably land one hard rock number after another. Their later albums occasionally veer into a slightly more punk sound, while still exhibiting the same polish - think of ZZ Top covering The Ramones. Being a sucker for solid, guitar-driven hard rock I have no bones to pick with them on that score, but the sense of self-consciously pandering to adolescent rebelliousness sort of leaps off the vinyl every third song or so, and other than their gender very little of their music (particularly on this album) breaks any new ground at all.
The eponymous The Raincoats is here accorded the honor of being the 74th greatest album "made by women", ahead of anything by Laura Nyro, Sheryl Crow or Carly Simon, for example. In spite of the endorsement of Johnny Rotten, Kurt Cobain and other Ministers of Noise, one can go either way about calling this album one of the "greatest" of anything. It may be one of the greatest recorded jokes in the industry: the lead singer can't sing, the rest of the vocals consist not in harmonies but off-unison shouting, the guitarist certainly can't play anything resembling a solo even when she is actually in time with the band. The drummer is quite competent and Vicky Aspinall, the violinist, suggests what might have happened if Chubby Wise or Buddy Spicher had moved to London and joined a punk band. That's as much as you can say for the performances. The lyrics, to the extent one can understand them, do seem a bit more interesting, and the music as a whole has a kind of anti-commercial integrity that is admirable if not often lovable. Perhaps it deserves a place somewhere at the nether reaches of the list, but that surely suggests that all nonsense by the Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Taylor Swift and the like is excised to make room for it.
As for Los Angeles by X, it is not even remotely an album "made by women". The style sometimes verges on "punkabilly", but however unusual, it's a great record and a piece of classic American post-punk, made mainly by men with significant contributions by a woman.
The Slits' Cut, another more-or-less one-off (discounting compilations and variations) stops short of being "experimental" but neither is it easily accessible, either in the way punk and post-punk can be, or as standard rock. "Artpunk" may be the best term to describe it. Because I'm partial to experimentation that somehow manages to work as songwriting I give this choice a thumbs up, keeping in mind that it feels more like a preview of things which never came than a completely convincing statement.
Siouxsie and the Banshees are surely the greatest, boldest and most influential of these groups. If The Scream were not on the list at least 2 or 3 of their other albums could be; critics seem to prefer Juju, Tinderbox and Peepshow to this one, and it is extremely difficult to see why The Raincoats or Cut would come out ahead of just about any of their albums, including their uncompromising Join Hands, some of which already brings to mind the much later rock trend known as "shoegaze". I thought this list was the work of people who have some in-depth knowledge of rock history, so I am a bit flabbergasted how this seminal group ended up with a single album near the end of the list, making way for higher-rated purveyors of superficial Top-40 pap. Then again, Suzi Quatro is represented by no album at all, so perhaps we should be thankful that the feminist listmakers saw fit to recognize one Siouxsie under an alternative spelling.
It is hard to imagine what on earth convinced Powers et al. to include Sonic Youth's Sister in a list of albums made by women, unless it was the album's name (referring to a sister of Phillip K. Dick who died shortly after birth). Nothing about the band's history suggests that it was so dominated by Kim Gordon as to justify the claim that any of Sonic Youth's albums were "made by women" – Gordon didn't have a more than equal role in the lead singing or songwriting, nor can the band's often noted alternative treatment of guitars (modified tunings, insertion of objects under the strings, etc.) be her invention alone. (None of those techniques were new to popular music in any case.) I am not trying to minimize what she did do, which is contribute to one of the most original and influential bands in history, but to call their albums "made by women" puts this in the wrong perspective. It is reasonable to point out the role that women have had in all sorts of innovative ensembles, from Pauline Oliveros to The Breeders, The Raincoats to Sonic Youth, but overstating the case does not help correct any historical oversights. The choice of albums is perhaps beside the point; their next album, Daydream Nation, is often considered their masterpiece, but the band's constant evolution makes the choice of any one album even more arbitrary than with many other groups.
1. (7) Siouxsie and the Banshees – Scream
(or any of several others)
2. (2) XRay Spex – Germfree Adolescents
3. (1) Blondie - Parallel Lines (I'd
replace it with Eat to the Beat)
4. (8) Sonic Youth – Sister
(not really an album "made by women")
5.
(5) X – Los Angeles (not really an album "made by women")
6. (6) The Slits – Cut
7.
(3) The Runaways – The Runaways (Waiting for the Night might have
bumped them up a notch)
8.
(4) The Raincoats – The Raincoats
If
the original order is so far off, interspersing these albums in that order
between albums that are far removed in musical style seems like a recipe for a
pretty random list.
***
47 (Celia Cruz, Son con Gauguanco), 73 (Astrud Gilberto, The
Atrud Gilberto Album), 78 (The
Bulgarian State Radio and Television Choir, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares), 103 (Umm Kulthum, Enta Omri), 112 (Mercedes Sosa, Mercedes
Sosa en Argentina), 115 (La
Lupe and Tito Puente, La Pareja), 137 Ofra Haza, 50 Gates of Wisdom, 145 (Oumou Sangare, Moussoulu)
If the
list's efforts at cross-cultural inclusion are slightly greater than their
efforts at cross-genre inclusion (see below), it is still a mere token
selection of third world female artists. There is so much else to choose from,
and so little to go on in choosing albums by these particular artists that it
just does not make sense. Without trying too hard I can think of Greek, Polish,
Lebanese, Israeli, Chilean, Mexican, Venezualan, Jamaican, Algerian and Inuit
artists who have as good a claim to inclusion as many of these artists, and I'm
sure this is also just scratching the surface. It's silly to imagine that of
the 150 greatest albums made by women, just 10 or so are albums made in non-English-speaking
third world countries. To take a few examples: While the nueva cancion genre is represented by Mercedes Sosa, the great
Cuban singer Sara Gonzalez is equally important and deserving of recognition.
Umm Kulthuum seems to be representing the entire Arab world, but there are
others not quite so famous but perhaps more accessible, like the contemporary
Algerian/Berber singer Souad Massi; her 2003 album Deb is one of my favorite
pieces of so-called "world music". Please see my next post regarding
the Greek singer Maria Farantouri.
***
55 (The Go-Gos, Beauty and the Beast), 59 (Indigo
Girls, Indigo Girls), 64 (Spice
Girls, Spice), 139 (The
Bangles, All Over the Place)
Girl
groups? Where's Bananarama? How about Pajama Party? (Just kidding – I happen to
know someone who was in the band, though not on their recordings – you can see
her introducing them in concert here.)
One thing the list brings out is how differently we perceive bands with women
filling most of the key instrumental and vocal roles. I've never heard anyone
refer to Heart or Hole as a "girl group", and even Bikini Kill, which
actually coined the term "girl power", is not really a "girl
group" in the sense that the Spice Girls, who co-opted the term in support
of a completely different musical experience, are truly a "girl
group". A few comments are in order, anyway.
·
First
of all, the positions of The Go-Gos' 55.Beauty and the Beat and The Bangles'
139.All
Over the Place should at least be reversed. The Go-Gos occupy an
interesting place in rock history as perhaps the first all-female "New
Wave" group. But they always sound like they are knocking off some tune by
Blondie, The Knack, or The Cars; after all, Eat to the Beat, Parallel Lines,
Get the Knack, Candy-O and a bunch of other New Wave albums were out
before Beauty and the Beat. I'm not sure what makes it "one of
the 'cornerstone albums of US new wave' (AllMusic), breaking barriers and
paving the way for a host of other new American acts" (from their Wikipedia entry) – weren't those so-called
"barriers" long gone, or at least seriously diminished? (What were
Suzi Quatro, Joan Jett or Pat Benatar doing if not breaking those very
barriers? To say nothing of earlier female rock stars from Janis Joplin to
Linda Ronstadt.) I'd call it a good album, not a great or highly original or
pathbreaking one.
·
On
the other hand,The Bangles' All Over the Place is one
butt-kicking piece of rock and roll, good to the last drop, one that belongs in
any "greatest albums" list that goes this deep. One note, though: The
Bangles' 1987 smash hit "Walk Like an Egyptian" is more than a little
reminiscent of "You Can't Walk in Your Sleep (If You Can't Sleep)" on
this 1981 Go-Gos album – not close enough to call it plagiarism, but surely in
debt to it as a predecessor.
·
The
Spice Girls' Spice is bottom-feeding bubblegum trash, and with the very
partial exception of their hit "Wannabe", it belongs on a list of the
150 Least Adventurous Albums Made by Humans. There are dozens of albums that
could replace this in the list, even if we limit ourselves to overlooked albums
by the artists already represented. As for their historical relevance, here's a
quote from the album's Wikipedia entry: "It is considered to be
the record that brought teen pop back, opening the doors for a wave of teen pop
artists." And one from Britney Spears' Wikipedia entry: "Spears is... credited
with influencing the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s." Credited? Was that supposed to have a
"dis" in front of it? Something
tells me that Powers et al. were sufficiently impressed with the
"importance" of these pop outings that they felt it necessary to
include such clearly unremarkable recordings for fear of offending middle
school girls from Brixton to Brooklyn. I don't see why such pandering should
determine the "canon" of music by women.
·
The
Indigo Girls, by contrast, are more aligned with the folkrock genre, show consistent
artistic integrity, manage to be highly accessible without playing to lowest
common denominator tastes, and are all but a women's musical separatist
movement, so tightly do they control the gender makeup of their album
personnel. (They do have a few men in their lineups but they are a distinct
minority.) Whether you like this separatist approach or not, their results
speak for themselves. As for which album belongs in a "greatest"
list, this duo once again suggests that bodies of work rather than albums
should be the main focus, as Indigo Girls is on a par with
several of their other efforts.
***
78 (The Bulgarian State Radio &
Television Choir, Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares) 80 (Laurie Anderson Big
Science), 111 (Diamanda Galás, The Litanies of Satan), 128 (Pauline Oliveros, Deep
Listening), 136 (Yoko Ono, Plastic
Ono Band), 147 (Meredith
Monk, Dolmen Music)
Far be
it from me to deny that these artists deserve recognition, but such clearly
editorial choices seem so ridiculously out of place with the heavily pop
orientation of the list that they are almost embarrassing. Oliveros' 1989 album
Deep
Listening, for example, consists of a series of very long tones played
in an underground cistern. Is that better or worse, more or less important,
than the album 100 places above it - Nina Simone Sings the Blues? Aside
from showing that the one-list-fits-all idea was a bit loony, it also throws
into question what the limits of "greatness" are. If Galás'
incomprehensible and astringent wailing is to be bestowed with the
"greatest" tag, why not add Pharmakon's Bestial Burden, an esoteric
and deeply disturbing electronic assault that TheFader.com kindly placed on
their list of 150 More Great Albums Made By
Women? It is
also worth pointing out that while these particular albums may stand out among
these artists' work, it is far more difficult with experimental or classical
artists to identify a single album as "greatest" rather than
recognize the originality and influence of their work as a whole. The albums are
mere tokens, representing not only a few unique artists but a whole world of
contemporary music with numerous worthy female practitioners.
The same
goes for the few non-vocal jazz entries (Alice Coltrane and one or two others)
– they seem like mere placeholders. Apparently, for example, the listmakers
were not familiar with the brilliant pianist Geri Allen, who passed away this
year after making numerous recordings with many of the great jazz masters of
the last 30 years. What's the point of throwing in a few classical,
experimental, jazz or crossover artists without really exploring these areas?
And by what criteria do you select these artists or albums while not
recognizing someone like Blossom Dearie, also unique but not given to the vocal
experiments of of Ono, Galas or Monk?
89 (Shania Twain, Come
On Over) 99 (Taylor Swift, Fearless), 114 (Reba McEntyre, Rumor
Has It)
What
distinguishes the albums by any of these latter day country superstars from
their superstar peers like Faith Hill,
Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood or
several others? I can see the temptation to include older, known entities like Tammy
Wynette, Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn, who have a sort of legendary status,
whether or not they made any albums I'd call "great". I can
understand the impulse to recognize slightly off-the-beaten-path artists like
Iris Dement, Rosanne Cash, Miranda Lambert and the Dixie Chicks, all of whom challenge
Nashville norms in one way or another and have made some great music doing it. But
I do not see the point of including several mainstream, formulaic, slickly
produced country albums, even if some of them write their own songs, when
nothing makes their music stand out from the tidal wave of Nashville slush. Yes,
Twain supposedly broke some rules, edging very close to rock at times while
also playing to a Nashville audience, but I'm not sure what is so exciting
about someone figuring out that you could sell even more records by appealing
to both Nashville and rock mainstream audiences. (And that someone was mostly
her husband, Mutt Lange.) In any case that idea was not new, since Graham
Parsons, Linda Ronstadt, Dwight Yoakum and many others had already figured it
out; what was new was the over-the-top production job that added layers of
studio complexity to the standard Nashville sound. (This is how a Canadian
ended up as the all time best-selling artist, by some measures, of music
typically made below the Mason-Dixon line.) Why this is a significant
contribution to music "made by women" eludes me – the listmakers seem
to be so dazzled by the gold dripping from some recordings that they just can't ignore them.
As for Taylor
Swift, she is a prolific songwriter, but has not an ounce of the depth that the
similarly prolific Mary Chapin Carpenter has in that regard, and is no great
shakes as a singer either. Once again, record album sales seem to speak louder
than musical accomplishments in this list. There's no question that Reba
McEntyre can sing, but Carrie Underwood is also an extraordinary singer, who
began (unlike McEntyre) co-writing her material after her first album, not to
mention exhibiting more of an active engagement with social causes than the
typical female country singer.
I have
questions about the selection of albums even for country artists I admire.
Lucinda Williams' 18. Car
Wheels on a Gravel Road is accorded a dizzying degree of respect in the
top 20; but it tries a little too hard, for my taste – her first album is
better, though I doubt it belongs anywhere near #18 either. Rosanne Cash's 68.King's
Record Shop is a good album with a lot of hit songs, but not especially
pathbreaking; starting with Interiors she set out on a less
commercial path, retreating from the Country Hot 100, and it might have been
better to recognize those efforts instead. I don't know who thinks Iris Dement's
second album, My Life, is better than her inspired debut, Infamous
Angel, but apparently such opinions are represented in NPR's committee.
To me,
all this adds up to questionable judgment in the country department. We can
consult Billboard or Wikipedia if we want to know who sold the most albums or
which album got the most rave reviews; the only reason to do a list like this
is to present the verdicts of taste, independent of album sales.
***
97 (Mariah Carey, Daydream)
I will
not stand on a soapbox and insist that no Mariah Carey album should be on the
list, but it is my duty to report that "One Sweet Day", the
zillion-selling single from Daydream, is a syrupy, sentimental,
bottom-feeding piece of trash. Other songs on the album are considerably
better, but it is also worth pointing out that Carey's endless melismas
sometimes hide an underlying lack of inherent melodic interest. This reminds me
to ask again, where's Mariah's melismatic sidekick Christina Aguilera? Selling over 100 million albums and winning six
Grammys is not enough to get her a spot in the parade of superstars? This is
the sort of thing that puts the whole list in question, as it seems like purely
arbitrary decisions were made about what's in and what's out.
*****
So, that's it for my comments on the choices for the list. I have
no regrets about devoting the time and energy to this, but I have also become
more convinced than ever that there are few artists and perhaps fewer albums
that deserve the label "great". Kate Bush is a great artist, but if Hounds
of Love is her best album – and I've listened to most of her others
more than once as well – she may not have made any great ones, on my definition.
A great album doesn't have one or two hits and a bunch of okay material to fill
out the record; it is an album where nearly all the songs are at such a high
level that the hits do not stand out as exceptions. A great album may have one
or two songs that don't generate much enthusiasm, without being completely lost
causes; or it may have a song that is a sort of throwaway but a very amusing or
entertaining one. Other than that, it has to grab you, song after song, right
to the end.
Most
great bands don't make many great albums. The Rolling Stones have made 26
studio albums by my count; other than singles collections I'd call only one or
two great albums. I may enjoy listening to half a dozen of them, but they're
not "great", they just have enough great material to warrant hearing
them again. Great albums are not defined by having multiple hits – that may in
fact signify an album that is reaching for commercial play at the expense of
artistry. Queen had just one hit song on Sheer
Heart Attack, "Killer Queen", but every song is exceptional; that
makes a great album. 10cc's The Original
Soundtrack sports the ever popular "I'm Not in Love"; it may be
the least memorable song on the record. King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King has no hits, but is a seamless, genre-defining
brilliant album. Steely Dan was not much of a hit generator, but by my lights made
one great album after another. The artists and bands who by general agreement created
more than one or two great albums are few and far between: you might get
consensus on The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell,
Elton John – after that (and possibly before), tastes will diverge. I would
gladly put Siouxsee and the Banshees as well as Suzanne Vega on that list. But
due to the sheer quantity of male recording artists and male-dominated groups,
there are a lot more great albums by males than females.
I have a
lot more questions about the list than I've had time to raise in the reviews
above. Like, whether there should be two
Madonna albums on such a list; or, for that matter, why the two Like
a... albums and not her first
album, which had a generally better critical reception, or her much more courageous
and artistic Ray of Light, which eschews the predictable hooks and sexual
innuendo in favor of a spiritual journey? Or whether Sleater-Kinney isn't way more important to women in music
than their #81 slot suggests? Or
whether Robyn's #143
electro-dance-pop Body Talk is more than a curiosity with it's cute-catchy
"Fembot" and a lot of sterile discotheque material. Or whether Joanna
Newsom's squeaky voice and monotonous melodic lines on #141 Ys have even less to
recommend them than the bloodless vocals of Lana Del Rey, whose Born
to Die was unaccountably overlooked for the Top Contemporary Female
Folk-Pop spot. Or whether Kelly Clarkson's
Breakaway
isn't so much better than Taylor
Swift's #99 Fearless; not that it
would be amiss to reserve a spot or two for Certified Pop Child Prodigy, though
Swift would have quite a bit of child-superstar competition these days. Etc.
But I
don't have the patience to argue for each of these claims; besides, they're
either as obvious to you as they are to me, or you probably won't listen to my
heartfelt arguments anyway.
Please
stay tuned for my next and last post on this topic, in which I offer a list of
overlooked artists and albums, serious consideration of which might force a
radical revision of the NPR list. [Note: various typos and other errors were corrected on 8/11/2018. And my next (5th) post on this topic turns out not to be my last - there will be at least seven altogether.]
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