Theme Songs: Angry Women #1 - "Women Getting Violent/Creative Revenge On Men"

[meserach.livejournal.com]

On the theme of angry women:

Nominations please for the Best Songs About Women Getting Violent And/Or Creative Revenge On Men!

* You're aiming to nominate a song that is A) GOOD b) FITS THE THEME and C) YOU THINK I HAVEN'T HEARD YET

* Please OFFICIALLY NOMINATE one song only.

* Put your official nominations in BOLD, please.

* Please include some kind of a LINK whereby your nominated song can be heard! If it isn't easy for me to listen to your song I won't! Good methods for me are Youtube links and Spotify links, but anything else that works is fine, and I'll let you know if it doesn't!

* The BEST song that (in my judgement) FITS THE THEME WELL that I DON'T REMEMBER HEARING BEFORE will WIN, and the person who NOMINATED IT picks the next THEME.

* You may also mention additional songs - this is a good way to include classic songs which I probably already know. Other people may pick your suggestions as their official nominee, but unless this is done there is no guarantee I will listen to them, so please choose you ONE official nominee carefully! You don't have to provide links to songs you merely mention.

SOME GOOD SONGS I ALREADY KNOW ABOUT IN THIS THEME:
(man when did all youtube videos become unembeddable)

Carrie Underwood - Before He Cheats (unembeddably: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxofSejV-7w)

Jazmine Sullivan - Bust Your Windows (unembeddably http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCgfgkrz_BA)

Blu Cantrell - Hit 'Em Up Style (unembeddably http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekIuWl-Ffq4)

Obviously I know others but we'll find out together which!

EDIT Oh and I guess I will stop accepting nominations on Friday night (unless it seems to peter out way earlier) and then render my OFFICIAL OPINION over the weekend.

Comments

Re: hello i am pretending to work, excuse my typos

[meserach.livejournal.com]

Ok so, I am working my way up to a much lengthier post on this, but my first sally into these troubled waters goes like this - I think of music in general and music videos in particular as safe spaces for fantasy, for the expression and testing out of ideas which would be horrible in reality (revenge being a very strong example of something which sounds great in your head but is messy in the real world).

I remember reading an interview once with Blu Cantrell where she said she got fan mail about "Hit Em Up Style" and was horrified to learn that people had actually gone out and done as the song says - got revenge on cheating men. She said "It's just a song!". Blu creates a fantasy world.

Country music in particular draws on a strong folk tradition of murder ballads - stories in which someone comes to grief for the wrong they have done in their lives. AN detailed analysis of the semiotics of the murder ballad is beyond the scope of my reply right now but I will say that I don;t think the murder ballad was general every intended as a message saying "what the murderer did here was praiseworthy". There IS at least sometimes a moral message but it is usually aimed at the victim-class - "men, treat your woman right or she will go crazy and kill you", perhaps.

Perhaps this is all apologia for something I intuitively enjoy.

Re: hello i am pretending to work, excuse my typos

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's something that it's shameful to like, at all. I think I get uncomfortable with the concept of 'angry women' as a genre and particularly the casuality with which females seem to be able to use violence against men as pseudo-empowerment, even though it actually trivialises female capacity and also inspires images of hysteria etc.

The 'fantasy world' thing is certainly a very interesting aspect to a lot of these songs; the real world/catharsis of songwriting world split is always kind of interesting, especially when it's with blunt metaphor.

Anyway: I think it's a good thing to post about, I just wanted to talk about the fact the genre (if indeed it is etc.) is a complicated one for me. Sorry if I came across as overly negative in the first post, I was more wanting to open discussion on the thing and raise the issues or whatever.

Re: hello i am pretending to work, excuse my typos

[koganbot]

I don't think it is a genre, and if we get a lot of nominations and songs mentioned that could give us a sense of how disparate this all is, and how various cultural themes play within different cultural subgroups.

My guess* is that "Independence Day" was written by a liberal (Gretchen Peters) and sung by a conservative (Martina McBride) but as far as practical policies go they both would be arm in arm in thinking that battered women and children need the support of the community, and that a man's home is not his castle, etc., despite that song actually saying "Maybe it's the only way," "it" being murder-suicide. (Martina's got a Janey's Got Her Gun–type song on her latest album, so she hasn't given up on the issue.) But the excitement of the apocalyse is another factor that sane, humane social policies don't really embody, and I don't know if any social policies should embody them. And Miranda seems to be in different territory with stuff like "Down," which doesn't seem to imagine a better way, or to finger anything like a "social problem" here. I think that Miranda might "get" the Ramones in a way that Gretchen Peters and Martina McBride wouldn't.

*I put "guess" because I don't really know McBride's politics, whereas Peters made it clear she did not support the Republicans and resented when right-wingers took bits of "Independence Day" out of context and tried to co-opt it.