My favorite women in music:
As I sit in silence on New Year’s Day reading headlines and year-end/ year-beginning lists, my mind wanders to the past and, lo, a wild hare presents itself up my ass. For no good reason that I can imagine, I decided to review some of the female musicians that mean the most to me. Why? I don’t know; random nostalgia, melancholy for the glorious past, anything not to be doing some work that I know needs to be getting done. Any of it. All of it.
I’m a white guy born during the ascendency of rock and roll and I lived the first 20-30 years of my life witness to the pinnacle of the genre. I’ve seen it unfolding live at its best and I’ve watched its inevitable corruption and pixelation from the Overton Window of pop culture, taking its place in the modern world as a music genre akin to jazz, the other music that was once huge and now it just is. There will never be another jazz star and, it is quite possible that there will never be another rock and roll star. I suppose that some day there will never be another hip-hop star and so on and so forth. But rock and roll is written in the sinews and scrawled across the bones that I carry around in this ever-loosening bag of skin all day. I know it the way I know my freckles.
But as a white rock and roll fan, I’m aware of how much of my music collection is made of white guys. I always have been aware of this, as each Led Zeppelin album took its place on my shelf, as each Clash lyric was memorized and hollered, as I read each new biography or critical analysis of the Beatles, the Doors, or the Smiths. I knew that it was not good to only like those that looked just like me. I wanted more than that and I’ve always maintained an open mind for music from others, the folks that don’t look like me. I like seeing women get in the ring and rip it up. I’m just as thrilled by bad-asses like Mo Tucker, P.J. Harvey, and Delia Derbyshire as I am by the greats like Lemmy, Johnny Marr, or John Lydon. So, these are the women in my record collection that mean the most to me:
Patti Smith: I did a lot of corny things in high school and I was mostly a square with a rather Catholic outlook on life. But I will always give myself a little bit of credit for having covered “Dancing Barefoot” at a battle of the bands that was held my junior year. Patti Smith’s Just Kids is the book that made me feel the way I wanted people to feel when they read my writing. She is in the pantheon. She was/ is such a rock icon that she had the guts to walk away from the spotlight to take care of Sonic Smith and her children. And she is such an American legend that when she came back, it was as like she’d never left. She is as natural as the water. She will be here like the wind.
P.J. Harvey: P.J. Harvey was one of my very first discoveries that was truly mine after I left high school. After freshman year of college, I lived with a roommate that worked at Hasting’s Records and Tapes who brought home handfuls of promo CDs every week. One collection included Dry, the first release by P.J. Harvey. I didn’t know anyone else who listened to her and I feel like my opinion is pure. And it has endured. After that first album, the 90s and 00s were solidly on her side. As a guitar player that you’d think was a dude, P.J. Harvey’s music could sit adjacent with Grunge, and Brit-pop, while not being part of those movements at all. Her songwriting is impeccable—very English, very spooky. She can duet with Thom Yorke and hammer with Josh Homme.
Trish Keenan (Broadcast): I discovered Trish Keenan and Broadcast when the Facebook algorithm threw her obituary into my news feed. Something about the haunting face and ripped up photograph was alluring enough to get me to click on the link that took me to a YouTube clip of “American Boy”, a galloping anthem sung by a ghost that squelched and squawked its way across my transom and took up residence in my brain as I spent the lonely winter of 2010 walking the snow-blasted streets of downtown Dallas after I’d lost my job in the Great Recession. “I Found the F”, “The Black Cat”, and “Long Was the Year” became the soundtrack to that mind-blown era of not knowing what to do. I regret that she had to die in order for me to find her but, that is what happened.
Kate and Cindy (B-52s): “52 Girls” is the original inspiration for this list. The B-52s are another one of those bands that are so bad-ass simply because they were so weird and original and so incapable of being anything other than what they were that they earn miles of credibility and light years of respect.
Delia Derbyshire (BBC Radiophonic Workshop/ Dr. Who/ White Noise): An original. The classic definition of ahead of her time. Barely an ounce of respect in her lifetime. Still doesn’t get all she deserves. A maker of great noises.
Alice Coltrane: I can honestly say that Alice inspires me more than John but that’s kind of a shitty way to go about introducing her. She stands tall with her husband and the fact that they both measure up to the other is not insignificant. I guess I say it because she took a lot of shit for being the wife of the genius and her music took a lot of backseat to his. Her spirituality is brave and her devotion to her soul, her man, and her family is awe-inspiring. Her music from the ashram is full of blanks and air that my mind is drawn in to fill those spaces with my own melodies and intertwine them with the music of my own soul. She is as natural as old wood. She is as cosmic as the night.
The Breeders: Kim Deal will never be not cool. It is beyond her. She is one of US. And apparently, so is her sister, Kelly. One of the best live shows I have ever seen was the Breeders at Trees for the “Last Splash” tour. They played every good song they had and everyone had a blast, even me. Plus, they’ve got Steve Albini in their CV.
Neneh Cherry: “Buffalo Stance” still rules my world to this very day. It is a song that defined a seminal era of my adolescence and it will always rule a large portion of my heart. Throw “Slow Train to Dawn” on top of that and I’m done. She makes the list without question.
Nico: A big, old gal. So classical and still so original to herself. She shared stage and life with Lou Reed and Jim Morrison and John Cooper Clarke and was not minimized by their presence. Way out there with no discernible desire to get in touch with the mainstream. Her main instrument was a harmonium so you know she was entirely ensconced in her own trip.
Sinead O’Connor: She creeped me right out with that glitter-painted, bald head in the video for “Troy” when they world-premiered it on “120 Minutes”. I couldn’t wait for the song to end so they could get back to playing something lighter but that wouldn’t last long. Her first album is a stone-cold classic that doesn’t get near the attention it deserves, especially after it was over-shadowed by “Nothing Compares to U”, a song that I don’t like that is nevertheless part of an otherwise great follow-up album. She’s guested with some of my favorites (Edge, Jah Wobble, and The The). She’s gotten a little out there at times over the years but I still hope she gets the credit she deserves.
Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders): I’ve written about Chrissie Hynde’s influence in my interpretation before but I reiterate myself here. She’s got a storybook rock and roll existence that echoes Patti Smith’s. She was a true believer as a suburban youth and she believed in rock and roll so much and so hard that she turned herself into a rock journalist with a knack for Zelig-like appearances in the great scenes of the early and mid-70s from the same Ohio milieu that birthed DEVO. She was at the Kent State riots, she married Ray Davies, and she sang on “Pride (in the Name of Love)”. And of course, she wrote those songs and led the Pretenders through the kind of nightmares that swallow lesser human beings whole.
Raincoats: I will always give Kurt Cobain credit for being an artist that was very proactive in his promotion of the other artists that inspired him. I learned about the Meat Puppets and the Vaselines because of him. One of his great achievements of throwing his weight around for the good of humanity was in getting the three Raincoats albums re-released on CD with, I believe, liner notes by John Lydon on his own affinity for the band. Like others on this list, it is spooky, dream music. The music exists in its own time and on its own plane with its own rules. And in that place, everything works, in all of its lo-fi, warbling glory.
Siouxsie: I was 14 years old in 1987 when I purchased a cassette copy of my first Siouxsie and the Banshees album, Through the Looking Glass, a collection of cover songs by artists I had never heard (of) before, except for Dylan, the Doors, and The Jungle Book track. This album introduced me to Television, Roxy Music, Iggy Pop, Sparks, Billie Holiday, Kraftwerk, and John Cale. I look at those names and my mind is utterly blown. So much bedrock packed into one patch of earth. So much foundational material presented, sometimes in versions that I personally prefer to the original. That same year I caught the end of the video for “Spellbound” and, as crushingly corny as it sounds, was captivated by the snippet of the thundering drums and those weird lyrics about throwing your grandparents down the stairs. A sensation that disappeared with the rise of the Internet and YouTube is the pain and anticipation of having to wait for a radio station or MTV to play that one track that you heard one time, fell in love with, and lived and breathed only in order to hear the track again and again and again. I stayed up so late on so many Sunday nights just waiting for MTV or Night Flight (on Saturday nights) to play “Spellbound” and it was sooo delicious whenever it would finally pop up. The birth of alternative radio kind of killed this waiting game and like I said, the Internet nailed the coffin shut and packed the dirt on top of it. In the following year or so, I would begin to complete my collection of Siouxsie classics like JuJu and the crucial singles collection, Once Upon a Time.
Siouxsie is one of those girls like Chrissie Hynde that was around all of the punk pioneers (again in Zelig-like fashion) so much that she became one of their equals almost through osmosis and sheer tenacity. I mean, she spoke to Bill Grundy more than Paul Cook or Glen Matlock. She inspired the whole controversial remark from Steve Jones that seemed like such a scandal at the time. She probably sold a billion cans of Aqua Net between 1978 and 1992. And most importantly, she never embarrassed herself. She never got shitty. Where so many people so they don’t, Siouxsie actually didn’t ever compromise. She and the Banshees made their music and it was good. She was always Siouxsie and that means something tough, cool.
Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth): She’s written one of my favorite autobiographies that I read during the COVID-era. Girl in a Band tells that story, the story of a girl with a rock and roll heart and a love of art growing up in the 70s, moving to New York, and starting a band, just like Patti Smith or Chrissie Hynde. Only Kim Gordon wasn’t the focus of her band, Sonic Youth. No, somehow Kim Gordon was the sexy singer/ bass player that never distracted from what was going on with all of those guitars, all of that feedback, all of that hot noise. She was a woman in an almost universally male genre. She was not loud, needy for attention. She was/ is the archetype for that most beautiful of jewels—the cool chick. She knows the artists that make the music you like and they look up to her. Without being loud or obnoxious, she has become one of the most influential underground musicians in the past 40 years, not only for her work with Sonic Youth but also for her efforts promoting new talent like Beck or Nirvana. And I guarantee that she has greased more wheels behind the scenes than I or anyone will ever know.
I saw her from the front row when Sonic Youth played Club Clearview. I felt like the press from the audience would sever my legs at the barriers and I felt like that for two sweaty hours. It’s the most punk rock thing I ever survived. And a great show.
Latitia (Stereolab): The label chanteuse is not wasted on her.
Stevie Nicks: I don’t enjoy cokeheads and I hate the whole gauzy, California aesthetic of the 70s that is personified by the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. I have many problems with Fleetwood Mac’s entire history. But the Stevie Nicks tracks on Rumors are flawless. The whole album is immune to my hatred but especially her stuff. Throw “Edge of Seventeen”, “Stand Back”, and “Stop Dragging My Heart Around” on top and her reputation is airtight in my estimation. There’s some goofiness with the whole witchcraft thing and her godmother to the whole Lilith Fair contingent is a little eye-rolly but I’m fully prepared to overlook my reticence inspired by those bits of her biography in order to enjoy the music.
Mo Tucker (Velvet Underground): She is the pulse of the Velvet Underground. Her face is on Mount Rushmore in some alternate reality. A tough chick from the city. A cool chick that played the drums. A mom. John and Lou made all of the noise. She made it move.
Madonna: She’s become an embarrassment in the recent past but “Into the Groove” is a near-perfect pop song that was definitive in my pre-adolescent musical awakening and lasted through the 90s at least. The Immaculate Collection is worth your time.