We’ll start with mine. I love all of Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville to bits, but it’s hard to top the first track, “6′1″” as a feminist anthem. Other things I thought of, off the top of my head, include my current cellphone ringtone, “Revolution” by the Veronicas, and also maybe “Rise Up with Fists!!” by Jenny Lewis:
(I have a little bit of a girlcrush on Jenny Lewis, so you get to watch the silly video.)
Other suggestions from my Twitter peeps:
“Extraordinary” by Liz Phair
“I Love Myself Today” by Bif Naked
“Control” by Poe
“Girl” by Tori Amos
“Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett
“That’s Not My Name” by the Ting Tings
“Short Skirt, Long Jacket” by Cake
“As Cool as I Am” by Dar Williams [also kind of a personal theme song for me]
“When I Was a Boy” by Dar Williams
And generally songs by Otep and the Donnas and Slater Kinney and Sarah Slean and Tegan & Sara and I’m sure I could come up with a bunch of girl rockers I love if hard pressed.
What are your personal anthems/theme songs? What are some rockin’ feminist tunes?
I’m not usually one to get maudlin at celebrity deaths, but somehow I still managed to spend 3 hours last night watching Michael Jackson retrospectives on TV.
Songs have a way of imprinting themselves on your memory, or being associated with specific memories. Billy Joel’s “Time to Remember” was my prom song and so is indelibly linked to a ballroom at the Sheraton Crossroads, for example. This is the case with a lot of Michael Jackson’s catalog, me being a child of the 80s and 90s.
I was a toddler when Thriller came out, so that’s one of those things I came to appreciate more as an older person, although those songs were all classics by the time I was old enough to have taste in music. Bad is more familiar, although maybe because the kids at one of our babysitters’ houses would watch MTV in the afternoons, and we loved Weird Al, so I knew all the words to “Fat.” “Man in the Mirror” was a favorite slow jam for a while at the roller rink where all my friends had their birthday parties. Before Michael Jackson was weird, he was completely awesome. It’s easy to look back now and judge his affectations, like his penchant for wearing sparkly quasi-military jackets or just one glove, and say, “Oh, he was always weird,” but, no, we all thought he was the coolest in 1989.
Even later, everything he released got a lot of attention. I was in high school when HIStory came out. “Scream” was the most expensive music video ever made and was duly hyped, and my friends and I were mildly obsessed with it. We were probably bigger Janet than Michael fans at that point (remember how good the Janet. album was?) but that space-agey video was pretty wild. I remember us all going to the mall—because that’s what you did if you were a teenager in New Jersey—to buy the cassette single of the song.
I’ve never been much able to stomach Michael Jackson gossip and fall from grace. I think it’s amazing that his music transcends all that, that we as a culture have separated Michael Jackson music from Michael Jackson the man. No doubt he leaves behind an impressive legacy. So far, most of the tributes I’ve seen have been overwhelmingly positive, which I think is how it should be in the immediate wake of his death. So let’s uh, “Remember the Time” for now.
Don’t you just love sunny days when the sky suddenly turns dark and gray and then lets loose five minutes of harsh rain? Yeah, me? Not so much.
+ Interesting interview with Alanis Morissette in the Guardian. I haven’t been that crazy about her last couple of albums (though I adore “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie,” despite the fact that Alanis calls it “self-indulgent” in the interview), but this one kind of has my curiosity piqued after reading the interview. Alanis, I think, fell victim to what some of my favorite artists have: once they find happiness and are no longer angsty, their music starts to suck. But Alanis’s ex-fiance just got engaged to Scarlet Johansen! So… angst and anger!
(Speaking of which, I just got tickets today to see Liz Phair perform songs from “Exile in Guyville” in June. I know you’re jealous.)
+ Lost City has photos of an awesome lampost commemorating the Filmore East with mosaics of some bands that played there.
+ That whole “boy crisis” thing is a myth. Also, more women earn bachelor’s degrees and yet more men succeed in business. Makes you wonder if sexism will make your degree irrelevant, eh? (more)
+ Jennifer Weiner, who I adore, has a new book out called Some Girls. Jane Smiley, who I also adore, reviewed it, saying Weiner’s much better than her chick lit marketing, positing that Weiner has thrown in the towel by letting her new book be slathered in pink. This seems like a specious argument to me. While I agree that Weiner is a very good writer and that there’s something kind of demeaning about sticking shoes on the cover of a book written by a woman and something dismissive about calling it “chick lit,” I know first-hand that authors usually don’t have that much discretion over their covers or marketing plans. That’s in the hands of editors and publishers. Weiner essentially agrees, saying, “n terms of “is this book chick lit,” I’m not sure I’m the best one to answer that, or that I can say for sure that the book is anything other than a Jennifer Weiner book.”
+ Speaking of people I adore, check out this interview with Mike Doughty, who has a new album out that I must purchase. Also, Liz Phair’s “Exile in Guyville” is getting reissued. Guyville is one of my favorite albums of all time, so… I already own it. But, still, awesome!
+ Despite the butt bows and tightly pulled corseting, I love these vintage wedding gowns. This would give me ideas if Hypothetical Future Husband had put in an appearance yet.
+ Other Things I’m Reading: I spent a good chunk of yesterday reading Margaret Cho’s archives at HuffPo. I’ve seen her live twice, I think. She’s awesome, but you knew that. | I just bought this book at the Strand. It looks really interesting, thirty years of recent New York history. Plus, there’s a photo of my old block in Inwood on page 335, so I am already endeared.
+ Also just bought Lisa Loeb’s recently reissued Purple Tape. Am I the only one still listening to Lisa Loeb? The album is so deliciously early-90s New York, it fits pretty well with the new book.
I was thinking this morning that, when I first started blogging in August 2003, I was thinking that the blog would just sort of be a brain dump, a place for whatever I was thinking about to go. Then I started writing about politics and science, and it kind of evolved from there. If I start writing more often, it might go back to being a hodge podge of whatever, but either way, it’ll be fun, so I hope you stick around for the rejuvenated blog.
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