Lady Songs

One day you’ll find yourself rocking out to some tunes, it will be just a normal day, maybe you’re on the bus, headphones on, maybe you’re doing the housework and dancing with a broom, or just chilling on your bed with some songs, anyway, whatever it is, one day you’ll be doing it, and it will dawn on you that the last x amount of songs all featured dudes. Like heavily featured dudes. Dude singers, dude instrumentalists, dude lyricists and dude DJs. Startled, you will start to flick through tracks: dude, dude, lady and a dude, lady but only as a sample on a dude’s song, dude, dude, dude.

You will stop then, and ask yourself, where my bitches at?

Or maybe you won’t. Maybe flicking through your songs will produce a more balanced mix, or even a lady heavy mix, I don’t know, maybe you’re better than me. But if you *do* have a moment, like I did earlier this year, do not despair. Because your bitches are right there, waiting for you to listen to their tunes. Despite what our itunes libraries would suggest, there are HEAPS of lady artists out there, good ones, great ones, we just don’t buy their music as often as we buy dude music. And I have got some recommendations for you!

M.I.A - Boyz

You probably remember the song that goes "all I wanna do is *gunshot* *gunshot* *gunshot* and *ca-ching!* and take your money" but M.I.As other songs are also great. It was hard for me to choose one but I ultimately settled on this one because how nice is it to see ladies singing about dudes like this? About ten. Also that film clip yo. 

Peaches - Boys Wanna be her.

No list about lady singers would be complete without Peaches. And this song is winner. 

Beyonce - Girls

Ok so you should probably know that I have a playlist dedicated only to lady singers entitled "Who Run the World?" and yes I do dance like an idiot whenever this song comes on. Sometimes Beyonce says really weird things that kind of make my feminism cringe (my feminism is a person now?) but she is still great, and this song is amazing, and my dancing is a sight to behold.

Bertie Blackman - Mercy Killer

Blogger won't let me do an embedded link but click here

Australian Lady Songs! Yes! Bertie Blackman has an amazing voice and her songs are win. This is probably my favourite though.

Kate Miller-Heidke - Sarah

I've loved KMH for some time, so it's very hard to pick just one of her songs for this list, but this one is kind of amazing and I heard it for the first time live. It's incredibly haunting and bizarre and those drums are AMAZING. Also a true story (almost - happened to a friend of Kate's), which is creepy as hell.

Nicki Minaj - Va Va Voom

I love Nicki Minaj. I mean, sometimes her music is really terrible (like if I ever hear Starships ever again I may have to pierce my own eardrums with sticks) but other times it's really good. This song, is one of those. I think what I love most about Nicki Minaj is that she somehow rides this incredible line between femininity and the "man's game" that is her style of music. Also you should youtube "Nicki Minaj bossing up" for an incredibly candid Minaj-style feminist rant. 

Kimya Dawson - Loose Lips

Kimya Dawson is a perfect human being and this song is also perfect and I know all the words and isn't it WONDERFUL?

Janelle Monae - Q.U.E.E.N.

You know this song right? Everyone should know and love this song. I'm not even going to talk about it, just watch.

If you’re asking yourself why this matters, well I get that, it’s just music right? It’s not the end of the world, why on earth should it matter? Well I don’t think you need to go away and count the ladies and dudes in your playlists and make sure you have perfect ratios or anything. But I believe that the little things we do can make a difference. That difference might just be opening your eyes to gender inequality in a particular industry, or just to new music, which is always nice. The difference can also be bigger than that. More ladies can make more music for our ears if only we actually bought their songs! It starts with us, the consumer, we can be better buyers, better humans, better song listeners. And we can listen to songs about dinosaurs.

Words

Are these words working, do they work for you?

Damn I love words. Words are the cleverest thing humans have ever thought up. Like, science and maths and all that are pretty clever, but how in the heck do you explain your complicated new theory about fire to the other Homo sapiens if you don’t have some way to codify ideas into vocally expressed thoughts? With stick drawings in the dirt? I don’t think so.

Ta da!

I get unreasonably excited about words. Today, while watching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Jane said “loquacious”. I love “loquacious”. I had to stop the video to clap my hands like a kid. Number 1 best ever use of “loquacious” was by Hermione J. Granger in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (movie). It was the best ever because the joke in itself is funny: that Victor Krum is a bit handsy, but it’s even funnier because it’s Hermione, and she didn’t say “handsy” she said, “Victor is not particularly loquacious”.

Words make us laugh, but they also wound. You can stab someone, shoot them, throw a rock at their head, and hurt them, kill them, instantly. But words take time. They can twist and fester and pull right at the gut of a person. Even a cutting, scathing remark that hurts upon hearing will worsen with time, biting deeper and deeper. Words start wars, words end lives; words change us.

Even though words, at their worst, are brutal things, I still love them. I love them for their flexibility, for their changeability and for their ambiguity. I love that you can make people groan with a pun and snort into their tea with a particularly crude phrase. I love that you can put a lot of them together in a certain way and tell a story; that you can conjure them up out of thin air to make fiction.

Mostly I love that words belong to people. Words change, language changes, and there’s nothing you can really do about it. With words, in my firm opinion, majority rules. If enough people start pluralising the word “you” to form “yous” or perhaps, “youse”, then it’ll be a word. Lots of other languages have a plural, but in English; particularly Australian English “youse” is associated with lower class or uneducated speech. Well listen up, non-bogans, if the bogans get that word to spread enough, someone will put it in the dictionary, and we’ll be stuck with it. There’s a beautiful irony when people say “you can’t just make up words!” because that’s all words ever are, made up sounds that some motherfucker (probably Shakespeare) has decided mean something.

Don’t get me wrong. I like correct spelling and grammar. I’m not saying you can just write whatever you like and hope for the best. But the main reason I like it is not because it’s good and proper, but because English is so convoluted; there’s so many glorious ways you can say something, that you’re bound to be misunderstood if you don’t get it right. So you’ve got to get it right. Commas and apostrophes, they mean stuff. Without them, you start to turn words into letters again. Just boring old letters. You need all the other little dottie bits to keep those letters together, keep them as fantastic, beautiful, clever words.

I wonder why I’m talking coz I’m talking all the time. We won’t forget the message and just leave it all behind. The conversation’s trivial but trivial is fine when held up to the light. - Words, Kate Miller-Heidke.