In a recent bout of nostalgia, me and a close friend began reminiscing about the very strong group of women singer-songwriters who became famous in the early to mid 90’s. We then tried to think of contemporary examples of such artistically gifted women who were also household names, we drew total blanks. Thinking back to the 90’s, there were a large group of women who wrote and performed their own songs and became famous: Sarah McLachlan, Shawn Colvin, Paula Cole, Tracy Chapmen, Natalie Merchant, Liz Phair, Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Alanis Morrisette, Sinéad O’Connor, and Jewel. While some of these artists had a hit or two, others like Apple, Jewel, O’Conner, and Morrsiette sold millions of albums.
Browsing the current billboard charts, you would be hard pressed to find female singer-songwriters who have a deep artistic talent that goes beyond having a nice body and a decent voice. Most of the current crop of famous female “artists” are mostly just performers and have little in common with the all-around talent of the 90’s female singer-songwriters. No one would argue that Lady Gaga is talentless, but I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who could convincingly argue that Ms. Gaga is deeply concerned with creating rich and substantive art. Katy Perry, Ke$ha, and Miley Cryus are other currently popular female singers, and none of them have a shred of artistic integrity.
The 90’s was a very fruitful time for female artists who wrote textured songs that involved complex and unsettling emotions. Paula Cole asked “Where is my happy ending / Where have all the cowboys gone?” and Tori Amos wondered “Why do we crucify ourselves?” Now, Katy Perry proclaims “We don’t mind sand in our Stilettos.” This is perhaps an unfair comparison, but I think the point I am trying to make is that artists like Cole, Colvin, Amos, Apple, and Jewel would not become popular if they had come along in our current time. I don’t mean to say that the 90’s was necessarily a special time or moment in American art, but rather the current period is so conservative and artistically restrictive that bold female songwriters simply have no place in our popular culture. Emotional depth has been replaced with a strange hyper-sexuality that allows woman artists to be sex fiends and little else. Are there any current popular female artists that present themselves in a way that is not overtly sexual?
When looking back on some of the more popular singer-songwriters of the 90’s, it is interesting to see how different it was only a couple decades ago. Take Sheryl Crow, for instance, who released her debut Tuesday Night Music Club in August of 1993. One of the big singles off that album was “Leaving Las Vegas,” which is a fantastic song that incorporates a fairly nuanced narrative about hope and loss of a particularly American variety. I am not sure a song with such darkness could become popular nowadays, especially being sung by a woman: “No joker, no jack, no king / Can take this loser hand / And make it win.”
Or perhaps we can look at one of the most successful female artists of the era, Alanis Morissette, whose Jagged Little Pill sold over 16 millions units. Her second single off that album “Hand In My Pocket” starts with the line “I’m broke but I’m happy / I’m poor but I’m kind.” I can’t imagine this line being sung by any current popular female artist, even the ones with a certain amount of integrity (Norah Jones, Alicia Keys, Joss Stone).
Finally, looking at Sarah McLachlan’s hit “Possession,” it becomes clear that our culture has drastically changed over the last 20 years. “Possession” is subtle and rich song that invokes a confident female sexuality that has little to do with the hyper-sexuality of Katy Perry, Ke$ha, or even Beyonce.
It is hard to pinpoint when the rules changed for female artists, but I am positive something significant has changed. I am pretty sure it has not changed for the better. Even looking at the individual careers of artists like Nelly Furtado, Jewel, and Liz Phair demonstrates a significant difference in the way female artists are presenting themselves. Furtado went from joyous and playful to super-slutty in two albums time (Before and After). Furtado’s ridiculous transformation is topped only perhaps by Liz Phair’s total artistic collapse via over-sexualization on her self-titled album released in 2003. Sherly Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun” should also be noted as a sad reminder that past artistic glories do not shield one from future creative failures. Even the pedestrian newspaper USA Today noticed the drought of talented female artists with a 2006 headline stating “Serious female singers harder to find on the charts”
The Reclaiming the 90’s series is about revisiting an artistic movement in the 90’s to highlight aspects of it that have been ignored, negated, or collectively erased. In the case of the 90’s female singer-songwriter movement, the issue is not so much reclamation as it is simple remembrance. Most of the female artists I have mentioned have been listened to by millions of people. The problem is that none of the popular female artists today are continuing the brave artistic work of Tori Amos or Sarah McLachlan. Sure, the indie scene in America probably has never been more vibrant for women, but Cat Power is not being listened to by young girls in Omaha. They are listening to Ke$ha sing “Before I leave, brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack.” When you take an even wider view, and look back to the popular female artists of the 70’s (Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Carole King), the discrepancy between then and now becomes absurd and disgusting. The 90’s female artists continued the legacy of those artistic giants, but current popular music is almost completely devoid of that beautiful and confident feminism so potent in the work of 70’s female singer-songwriters. Not even the grand post-modern spectacle of Lady Gaga can hide the fact that women are less respected as artists and musicians than they were 40 years ago.
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