'What do you call a woman...' From Billie Jean to Jolene, Esme Patterson gives voice to the women of popular songs

Well, my Daily Carlo project, whereby I blog every single day, has been going absolutely brilliantly, with blog posts every single day since the end of February, if the only days that we've had since the end of February have been March 2, March 17 and March 20.

So as long as we exclude a few rare exceptions/overwhelming majority of days, I've been totally solid.... and who the fuck am I kidding? I have failed you all, loyal readers. I am so sorry! I promised you daily posts and have utter failed to deliver. I feel terrible and take full responsibility for my failure.

And I know I've let you down terribly and have no right whatsoever to ask for your forgiveness... but please, PLEASE, PLEASE! I beg you, beloved readers, please give me ONE MORE chance! I promise I'll change! I PROMISE! I LOVE YOU! Please don't go... please... I'm quite lonely...

My point is, I know how important I am in your lives, delivering, as I do, the far-from-latest, hardly up-to-date news in obscure folk or country or Tom Waits-related areas of popular music, but in a totally inconsistent and random fashion. It's wrong to deny you this, I can see that now.

But at least I do know a key rule of blogging is be short, sharp and to the point, and also that I refuse to follow the rules. So starting with that rambling introduction, I will, eventually, via a strange ranting detour, get to my point: which is to highlight Esme Patterson's Woman to Woman album dedicated to giving voice to the female characters in popular music.

Esme Patterson.

From an angry Billie Jean, to an indifferent Jolene, to an Eleanor Rigby who is actually perfectly happy with her life alone, Patterson has written songs that allow the women written about by others, to tell their side of the story.

Sick of such women characters being reduced to one-dimensional props for others to comment on, Patterson has responded with a series of "answer" songs where they sing back.

I first came across Patterson as a result of her work co-writing and co-singing several tracks on the latest album by Texas country singer Shakey Graves, most notably on Dearly Departed. (I had the sheer pleasure of seeing Shakey live in Sydney last month when he opened for the unspeakably glorious country husband-and-wife duo Shovels and Rope.)

'You and I both know that the house is haunted...' Shakey Graves with Esme Patterson.

Among other things, the Colorado-based Patterson is known as a leading figure in the very unfortunately-named "folk'n'roll" scene. Yeah "folk'n'roll", I cringe just to see that phrase even written.

So before I even get to the songs in question... what the fuck is with the insistence on the world to impose ever more ridiculous labels onto popular music??? Among other things, I have described Patterson, Shakey and Shovels and Rope as all country acts, and deliberately, even though they are all more likely to be called "folk'n'roll", "Americana" or "alt.country", in no particular order, and why???

And why the fuck do I even want to *keep living* in a world where all the fucking decent country music acts are syphoned off into stupid and offensive labels like "alt. country" or "Americana" just to pander to the prejudices of ignorant people who hear "country" and think of rednecks in stupid hats who, when they are not called "Garth Brooks" are singing songs with titles like "Achy Breaky Heart" ... I mean FUCK!!!

It drives me insane. The stuff they call "alt. country" is just fucking country! The utterly ridiculous over-produced saccharine shit that comes out of the Nashville establishment should be called "alt.country"! It sure as hell has nothing to do with the real, living country music tradition and none of these empty, commercialised over-produced labels or stations would dream these days of ever releasing of playing anything as haunting or raw as country legend Hank Williams' "Alone And Forsaken".




'Alone and forsaken by fate and by man...' Makes Ian Curtis sound like Julie Andrews singing 'These Are a Few of My Favourite Things'.


But NO!!! No we live in a world were people need fucking Hollywood to produce a fucking biopic starring Joaquin Phoenix fucking TELL THEM it is OK to like an act as brilliant and cool as Johnny Cash!



'I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down ...' We live in a world so fucked an entire generation needs Hollywood to tell them it is OK to listen to someone as cool Johnny Cash! And people wonder why I despair!

Where do people think rock music came from??? From a melding of all these popular music genres, a melding of country, blues, folk and jazz into a new whole... the earliest forms of what is considered rock'n'roll, by the likes of Elvis Presley of Bill Haley, were called "rockabilly" -- in other words, it was considered, and in fact was, largely country music played fast!

Like all genres of popular music, country incorporates a wide variety of acts and influences, spawned all kinds of sub genres and has intermixed and melded with many other genres... It includes stuff that ranges widely from the horrific to the glorious... as all genres in popular music do.

Because more than anything, it is just one form of popular music, and the lines between one form and another are inevitably blurred. The line between country and blues is blurry, as it is with other forms of folk and what became known as rock. Because they are all variations on the same thing, the same chords and chord structures, the same verse/chorus/verse forms...

Country music, like other forms of folk (of which country is one), has a particular emphasis on story-telling, on using songs as vehicles to create characters and give them life, to use the stories to capture universal emotions and paint scenes the listener can relate to and empathise with, that can humanise the listener's own emotions and struggles... Which you might thing is an especially glorious thing to do...,

But obviously you'd be wrong, because everyone knows country is UNCOOL, country is crap, country is for inbred right-wing redneck white trash... and this despite the sheer brilliant, often groundbreaking and hugely influential quality of great country acts like Hank Williams or Patsy Cline or Johnny Cash or Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Guy Clarke, Townes Van Zandt, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle, Emily Lou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Alison Kraus, Gillian Welch, Neko Case, Gurf Morlix, Blaze Foley, Todd Snider, Corb Lund, Hayes Carll... and so many more.

BUT NO. Just turn your back on that! Not cool enough! Hollywood hasn't told you that you are allowed to like it! SPIT ON IT!!! REFER TO IT ONLY IRONICALLY AT BEST AND MOST OF ALL LAUGH AT IT AND MOCK!!!!

But I digress...

Answer songs. What Esme Patterson is doing is not new, by the way. Those who, based on ridiculous stereotypes and prejudices, might imagine that the most country music has had to say on the matter of gender is Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man",  would not know about Kitty Wells awesome "answer" song to a track by Hank Williams.

The song, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honkey Tonk Angels", was released in 1952, a full 16 years before "Stand By Your Man". In it Wells answers Williams' "Wild Side of Life", which was about women being led "astray" by the "wild side of life" and becoming "honky tonk angels" -- also known as "women drinking in bars".

Taking the same tune, "It Wasn't God" responded by putting the blame for men being unfaithful entirely ... on men themselves.

It's a shame that all the blame is on us women
It's not true that only you men feel the same
From the start most every heart that's ever broken
Was because there always was a man to blame

Following in this tradition, Esme Patterson takes well-known songs by a range of (mostly but not exclusively) male artists about women and writes a response by the woman in question. It is, as she explains in a Vice.com interview, a creative and intellectual exercise -- it is a challenge to write in their voices to "humanize these characters".

This means the songs are not intended as attacks on the originals, as such -- you don't have to disown Dolly Parton and her classic "Jolene", for instance, to appreciate the witty, irreverent response Patterson has written for Jolene, whose attitude to the man Parton loves is, after all, unrecorded.

It also means that Patterson is not suggesting this is the only possible response by these characters... just the ones she has written.

Asked by Vice.com how she felt about others considered the album to be a feminist work, Patterson responded:

I welcome that. It’s a noble word to be associated with. I took on this project mostly as a personal journey in songwriting, and didn’t have any big plans with where it could go. But I certainly identify as a feminist, and I’m happy to have the work that I do give strength to that cause.

The highlight is the angry, up-tempo guitar-driven response Patterson has Billie Jean gives the character Michael Jackson adopts in his famous track. In response to the singer's insistence that Billie Jean "is not my lover" just "a girl who thinks that I am the one, but the kid is not my son", Patterson has Billie Jean spitting back: "What do you call a women when she's lying in your bed?"




'What makes a lover from a woman that you've had?'


"Never Chase A Man" is a close second, with Patterson's Jolene telling Parton that her man is a sexist creep who's "always leaning in", and, bluntly: "Your man don't mean a thing to me."




'Men should be chasing you, never chase a man.' Patterson has Jolene give Dolly Parton some advice on how to treat men.


You can read Patterson's own explanation for what motivated her and what she was trying to achieve in a column she wrote for The Guardian:

It all started when I was in a hotel room in Spearfish, South Dakota, learning to play Loretta by Townes Van Zandt. I looked the words up and was copying them to my journal, and realised I was really reading the words for the first time ... 

Among other things, Van Zandt says of Loretta that she “loves me like I want her to”. Reading that line in that moment, I had a revelation. What if Loretta could tell her side of the story, what would she say? How would the story change? What does she want? 

That night, I gave up learning to play Townes’s tune and instead wrote a song from Loretta’s voice called Tumbleweed. Once I’d heard Loretta in this new way, I felt as if I was listening to a lot of the old music for the first time – and it inspired me to get to work. I wrote a song from the perspective of Dolly Parton’s Jolene, Elvis Costello’s Alison, The Kinks’ Lola, the Beach Boys’ Caroline, the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby, Bob Dylan’s Ramona, Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean, the Band’s Evangeline, and Leadbelly’s Irene...

I believe that our experience is the only truth we can honestly claim – and to create this album, I had to reach deeper than my own life and into the stories of these fictional women, into what makes each of these characters human ... 

The key thing I realised writing this album was that I had never really known what some of my favourite songs were about. A catchy melody or an amazing singer takes the spotlight while the story being told takes a backseat. One aim of this project was to take an in-depth look at songs about women that I had heard hundreds of times before and to finally really listen.

Woman to Woman gives a voice to female archetypes shown one-dimensionally in pop music. The record aims to transform these characters into women, to make them human.

My top 25 songs by female artists -- FINALLY THE WORLD CAN KNOW!

So, like, in 2010, in response, like, to Triple J's "top 100 songs of all time poll" coming up with only two songs sung by women, the socialist youth organisation Resistance ran this, like, poll themselves to determine the top songs ever by female artists.

Anyone who wanted to take part got to send in 25 songs and, like, I *totally* took part and my votes kinda made no difference to anything but you know, kids these days eh? But I was not put off and, like, was totally determiend to *immediately* get my *shit together* and put my 25 songs onto this VERY HERE BLOG so the world could see the *TRUE* list.

That was, like, three years ago now. And every year, espeically around International Women's Day, I think: "THAT IS IT I WILL GET IT DONE RIGHT NOW!" and something happens, like I go and get another beer. And then nothing happens.

BUT FEAR NOT HUMANS! I have finally decided ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and HERE IS MY LIST OF THE 25 GREATEST SONGS BY FEMALE SINGERS EVER!!!

I shall make a few brief points of introduction. One is, this list has changed a fair bit over three years. There are songs and artists I didn't really know then that I have had no choice but to include. Also, my tastes have shifted -- there is less indie guitar pop stuff and more country-flavoured glorious storytelling brilliance.

And, as it is not a competition, the criteria has changed a bit too -- I don't feel the need to pick a particular song by an artist I like just coz that I think *that one* will have some chance of getting other votes too (not that this made any difference).

But most importantly, this is no longer an attempt to make a case for the "greatest songs ever by female singers". Such a list is highly subjective anyway, and there is always so much any individual hasn't heard. So, now, the list is just simply 25 songs I happen to like a lot by female singers.

As a result, it acts as a bit of a intro into some of the acts I think are cool, and as a result there are few multiple songs by acts I love, coz I just cannot bring myself to only choose one -- it doesn't do 'em justice. Also, it ranges from very well known acts like PJ Harvey through to far less known (but should be well known) acts from Australia -- such as the brilliant Cash Savage and Mojo Juju.

There is no doubt many songs I am missing, and would have added if only I have thought of them. So, less "25 greatest songs by female artists", it is just "25 songs by female artists that I really like".

So here it is (in no particular order). (And here it is handily compiled in a YouTube playlist for your listening pleasure.)

You don't like it, go and fucking make your own list you useless whining motherfuckers.

* * *




"This world is crazy, give me the gun." Wise words from PJ indeed. Is this really better than a good half dozen other songs from her 2000 clssic Stories fFrom the City, Stories From The Sea, let alone countless others from albums before and since? That would be a big call. But, as it is pretty much just impossible to chose, fuck it. "Big Exit" kicks it off.






"Death was everywhere,
In the air
And in the sounds
Coming off the mounds
Of Bolton's Ridge.
Death's anchorage.
When you rolled a smoke
Or told a joke,
It was in the laughter
And drinking water
It approached the beach
As strings of cutters,
Dropped in the sea and lay around us.

Death was in the ancient fortress,
Shelled by a million bullets
From gunners, waiting in the corpses
With hearts that threatened to pop their boxes,
As we advanced into the sun
Death was all and everyone.
Death was all and everyone.

As we advance in the sun
As we advancing every man
As we advancing in the sun

Death hung in the smoke and clung
To four hundred acres of useless beachfront.
A bank of red earth, dripping down
Dead is now, and now, and now
Death was everywhere
In the air
And in the sounds
Coming off the mounds
Of Bolton's Ridge.
Death's anchorage.
Death was in the staring sun,
Fixing its eyes on everyone.
It rattled the bones of the Night Horsemen
Still lying out there in the open

As we, advancing in the sun
As we, advancing every man
As we, advancing in the sun
Sing 'Death to all and everyone'."

If picking a song from PJ Harvey's general career was near impossible, picking one song off Harvey's stunning concept album on the horror of war (2011's Let England Shake) was a task to drive the best of us totally insane. Luckily, I am *far* from the best of us and a long way from sane. So here is this heartbreaking gem on the topic of the horrific slaughter at Gallipoli in 1915.






"Take another little piece of my heart now baby..." Some bastard ripped out Janis's heart and so then she ripped out her lungs and throat to let us all know about it. There is nothing else to say, except that if you think that is a great vocal performance...





"Honey I know she told you that she loved you much more than I did." ... then check the this shit out.






“We’ve lived in bars and danced on tables.” There is no denying it, this song by Cat Power speaks to me.






“Who needs love when there’s Southern Comfort?” That line alone from the Dresdon Doll's Amanda Palmer would warrant a spot on this list. But you place it in the context of Palmer's witty, ironic and increasingly desperate impassioned plea against the empty superficiality of the world around her, and... well... I kinda think I wrote that sentence badly and this part is redundant.






“I’m armed and I’m equal. More fun for the people.” That’s all that needs to be said, really. This track from M.I.A. is, once more, just one of a number that could be inserted here.






"Don't try and push me coz you'll get a reaction. Another drink and I'm ready for action." Lily Allen exploded onto the popular music scene with 2006's Alright, Still, brimming with attitude, swaggering, and giving one finger to sexist pricks and another to the world in general. This song sums up her approach. She was a young woman who refused to play by the set rules -- she drank, swore, and sung about screwing who she wanted and demanding her own pleasure... and the response from much of the media was predictable. I discuss Lily Allen and this phenomena in my blog post Explaining Lily Allen.






"Oh Jesus Christ almighty. Do I feel alright? No not slightly." Lily Allen's witty take on trying to live under late monoply capitalism... the hurt, frutration and anger at the "way that things go" just barely below the surface.






“God blessed me, I’m a free man. With no place free to go.” Neko Case sums up the entire capitalist system in 13 words.






“It’s not the smell in here that gets to me, it’s the lights. I hate the shadows that they cast. And the sound of clinking bottles is the one sure thing I’ll always drag with me from my past.” Such vivid imagery in this destroyingly beautiful melancholic song about love and guilt and memories.






"Here comes that feeling that I'd forgotten
How strange these streets feel
When you're alone on them
Each pair of eyes just filled with suggestion
So I lower my head, make a beeline for home
Seething inside"

Just to prove it is was not a one-off, there is this equally compelling poetic tale of feeling ambivalent, but ultimately happy, over the end of a relationship. Every line paints a picture -- and at times cuts deep. And the Cowboy Junkies can do devastating social criticism -- just check out This Street, This Man, This Life with its terrifying depiction of the horrors that lurk in surburbia ("This street holds it's secrets like a cobra holds it's kill / This street minds it's business like a jailer minds his jail / That house there is haunted / That door's a portal to hell / This street holds it's secrets very well").






"We're hanging here within an inch of our lives from the day we're born till the day we die..." This is the glorious country folk husband-and-wife duo Shovels and Rope. Cary Anne Hearst and Michael Trent mix up songwriting and singing duties, and Carly takes the lead for this one. Check out some more in this Shovels and Rope playlist I created.






"She said 'I know there's something deeper here I'm supposed to discover, but all I really want tonight is to find myself a lover. Cowboys are my weakness so won't you buy me a drink. Whiskey is my poison that way I don't have to think about it..." There is great bit at the end of the performance of this gem of a track by Kate Mann when some bloke yells out "Who *wrote* that song" and Mann looks up and says "I did".






"I've got your memories, or... has it got me?" It was very difficult to pick just one track by Patsy Cline, who evokes pain with such heartfelt simplicity... For further evidence, you could pick pretty much anything she recorded, but you good examples are Why Can't He Be You and If You've Got Leaving On Your Mind. Not recommended if you've spent an evening drinking by yourself... unless you like to cry.






"I was drinking here last night, and drinking here the night before too. And if you're looking for me tomorrow, you can bet I have nothing better to do..." Cash Savage, the heartbreaking blues singer from country Victoria, knows how to rip your heart out and stomp it into the dirt. When I first heard this song, I thought that songs just don't get much better than this. But then I heard...






"It took 19 years to find her. And three years to make her mine. We had four good years of loving. But it only took two words to bvreak her heart..." Oh, jesus christ. Just... holy shit that is a song. Fuck.






"Down at the Cross, out in the street, I shot somebody she loved more than me..." The first time I ever came across Australian singer Mojo Juju, she was part of a group of artists performing a Tom Waits tribute night at The Vanguard in Newtown, Sydney. Mojo Juju came out and gave a passionate speech about just exactly why she adored Tom Waits... which would have won me over by itself, but when she sung a spinechilling version of "Alice" to close the night... the whole place was under her spell. This accoustic recording, and the one below, don't quite do justice to Mojo Juju, who comes to life with a band playing live. But you can go and find that out for yourself on YouTube. The simplicity of these recordings, however, highlight her quality as a singer-songwriter.






"Did you see me last night in the carpark? Holding hands with a beautiful girl? Standing in the wind as the train rushed by, hoping it'd blow me on outta this world ..." It is not surprising Mojo Juju loves Tom Waits so much, she shares his knack for telling the stories of hopeless but deeply felt love.





"Queers and straights unite ... standing in the way of control, we live our lives!" Gossip's 2005 song was sparked by anger at the homophobic policies of the then-Bush administration. More than just a call to arms, it is a celebration of the daily resistance of simply living your life as you are.






"When you're ready we can share the wine... Call me." Simply because there is no way such a list could be considered complete without Blondie.






"I aint done nuthin' cept kill a man what belongs to me..." Blues singer Victoria Spivey's 1927 track. You wanna know why? Check out the next track.






"From the start most every heart that's ever broken, was because there always was a man to blame." Kitty Wells is to the point in this early example of an "answer song" (it was recorded in answer to a Hank Williams track Wild Side of Life which blamed "loose women" in honky tonk bars for leading men astray).





"There's a guy work's down the chip shop swears he's Elvis, just like you swore to me that you'd be true..." Ah, the lamentably late Kirsty McColl combines insanely catchy pop and a honky tonk vibe with a "fuck you" punk rock attitude ... just a classic... what popular music should be...







"Right proudly high in Dublin town, they hung out a flag of war. 'Twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky, than at Suvla or Sud el Bar." It is nearly Easter again, the anniversay of when Irish freedom fighters rose in 1916 -- not just to strike blow for Irish freedom but against the horrific imperialist system slaughtering millions of working people for Big Powers in the so-caled "Great War" of 1914-18. In other words, against the horrors depicted in the second song in this list -- PJ Harvey's "All and Everyone". It is a classic Irish rebel song, and Sinead O'Connor can damn well sing.



That is it. Don't forget, you can listen to offical YouTube Playlist for this blog post here. If you got better suggestions? Feel free to use the comment section. Or, you know, just KEEP YOUR GODDAMN IDEAS TO YOURSELF.