I was looking for songs that reflected the positive sense of self that I felt I'd gained from the women's movement. I couldn't find any. All I could find were these awful songs like, 'I am woman and you are man, I am weak so you can be stronger than,' so I realized the song I was looking for didn't exist, and I was going to have to write it myself. | | | | Hear me roar: Helen Reddy circa 1970.
(Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) | | | | | | “I was looking for songs that reflected the positive sense of self that I felt I'd gained from the women's movement. I couldn't find any. All I could find were these awful songs like, 'I am woman and you are man, I am weak so you can be stronger than,' so I realized the song I was looking for didn't exist, and I was going to have to write it myself.”
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| | rantnrave:// All music exists on a long continuum of gradual changes, inspirations, appropriations and occasional small earthquakes, and any suggestion that artist A or song B wouldn't have existed if not for artist C or song D is almost always a bad argument. So while it would be stretching the laws of art and physics to suggest that JOAN JETT, DESTINY'S CHILD, CARDI B and MEGAN THEE STALLION wouldn't have existed if not for a certain middle-of-the-road '70s pop singer from Australia, let's note, for the record, that it would be equally wrong not to notice that songs from "BAD REPUTATION" to "INDEPENDENT WOMEN to, yes, "WAP" do in fact exist on a long, squiggly cultural line that had no choice but to go through "I AM WOMAN," one of those small earthquakes. Inspired by her newfound interest in the women's liberation movement, HELEN REDDY wrote the lyrics and recorded the song in 1971 for her little-noticed debut album, and rewrote them and rerecorded the song a year later for her third album, after which it still had to wait several months before it truly caught on. "I am woman, hear me roar / In numbers too big to ignore" may not sound like much today, but it was a radical proclamation half a century ago. And it may have taken the disarming presence of an AM radio pop singer, whom ALICE COOPER would call "the queen of housewife rock" and FRANK ZAPPA would lightly skewer in a song about a date with an office worker with vanilla tastes, to sell it to the world in 1972. (Australian university professor MICHELLE ARROW on the "housewife" dig: "I doubt Helen Reddy saw this as the insult Cooper perhaps intended it to be." She was singing for those housewives, amplifying and enabling their dreams.) "I Am Woman" is an empowerment anthem for the ages—it's my party and I'll roar if I want to—with an unforgettable melody and musical build (guitarist RAY BURTON wrote the music). Plenty of men, not surprisingly, were offended (and not just Alice Cooper and Frank Zappa), and Reddy baited them when she accepted the 1973 Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female (she was the first Australian to win a Grammy), thanking "GOD, because She makes everything possible." Women's liberation had its theme song. When Reddy got her own TV variety show in 1973, one of her first guests was GLORIA STEINEM. She was a major star for much of the '70s, with a string of hits that were a lot darker than their sunny pop production may have suggested, and she branched out into TV and film. She's the singing nun who performs for a young LINDA BLAIR in AIRPORT '75. She made a brief comeback to live performance in the early 2010s, and was the subject of the documentary I AM WOMAN, which premiered at the TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL in 2019, years after she was first diagnosed with dementia. She died Tuesday at 78. RIP... MAC DAVIS, who died the same day, also at 78, had a '70s pop career that, as Billboard notes, closely paralleled Reddy's. As a performer, he had a laid-back ease with soft-rock, pop and country, and a brief flirtation with disco. As a songwriter, he had range, both stylistically and chronologically. He first came to fame with a string of hits written or co-written for ELVIS PRESLEY (the King of Housewife Rock, if you will), including the masterful "IN THE GHETTO." The last major co-writes on his resume include this worldwide dance hit for, and with, AVICII, and this BRUNO MARS pop jam. Respect. Fellow songwriter BOBBY BRADDOCK called Davis "the BLAKE SHELTON of the 1970s." He was better than that though... K-pop powerhouse BIG HIT ENTERTAINMENT will debut on the Korean stock exchange this month with an implied valuation of nearly $4 billion. The company gifted pre-IPO shares to the members of BTS reportedly worth $55 million. Still working for a living nonetheless, BTS is appearing on THE TONIGHT SHOW every night this week... STEVE STOUTE chats UNITEDMASTERS with LIGHTSHED's RICH GREENFIELD and BRANDON ROSS... WEIRD AL remixes the first presidential debate... The HEROES ACT, including a proposed $10 billion in grants to the US live music industry, has been introduced in Congress... Heartbreaking news from CHRISSY TEIGEN and JOHN LEGEND... RIP also WILLIAM E. MCEUEN, ROCCO PRESTIA, CHRISTIANE EDA-PIERRE and DONNY HILLIER. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| It was just a year ago that BTS ' Love Yourself: Speak Yourself tour was selling out stadiums all over the world. Each night of the 20-date trek, which grossed $116 million, a total of nearly a million ticket buyers around the planet witnessed a thumping opening liturgy at the top of the K-pop band's set in the form of the song "Dionysus." | | |
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| Gifting nearly 1.5% of Big Hit Entertainment's pre-IPO shares to the seven members of BTS is looking like a win-win for all concerned as the company and the band remain invested in each other's success. But it does little to mitigate the notion that the Seoul-based firm is a one-act show. | | |
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| Anthony Fantano reviews albums and songs on his YouTube channel, The Needle Drop, bringing an old art to a new medium -- and perhaps ensuring it has a future. | | |
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| "The Anthology of American Folk Music" is probably the most significant example of how a particular collector's preferences can shape a canon. | | |
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| The icon of women's liberation has died in Los Angeles, aged 78. Her music shaped a generation of women. | | |
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| On the eve of the release of a solo concert film, Fleetwood Mac star Stevie Nicks opens up on Lindsey Buckingham's exit and looking for love in her 70s. | | |
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| The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the music industry upside down in many ways but among the direct artists community there have also been signs of resilience and creativity in the face of adversity. For these 'unsigned' artists, 2020 is both the best of times and the worst of times. | | |
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| I was pleased to moderate a panel on TikTok’s situation for the Music Business Association with an all-star panel of experts on September 25. You can access our voluminous panel materials here including the panelists biographies. | | |
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| In a rare intimate conversation, the rapper-actor opens up to Esquire about his struggles with mental health and finding his way back. | | |
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| Mac Davis is being remembered by many as a "country star," but that tells only part of the story. In truth, the Lubbock, TX native's musical trek spent just as much time, if not more weaving its way through the pop and rock realm, and it's in that capacity where he may have reached his highest peaks. | | |
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| | | a little less conversation |
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| How the internet's smartest fandoms fundraise to buy chart spots. | | |
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| Black artists and professionals discuss the roadblocks they’ve faced and offer ideas on how independent music scenes can change for the better. | | |
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| No stranger to insanely ambitious (or flat-out insane) projects, Abe Beame attempts to settle the debate over the greatest 5 mic album once and for all. | | |
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| Arrington helped turn Ohio into America’s funkiest state, but turned away from music for 25 years to work as a minister -- and find himself. Now he’s back with a new album. | | |
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| Late night TV musicians wrote an open letter to network heads at ABC, NBC, and CBS asking for fair pay, fair health care, and fair residual payments. And their bands are all led by men of color. | | |
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| The Violins of Hope concerts were suppose to showcase historic instruments, but the pandemic changed all of that. In the end, a bittersweet farewell. | | |
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| The singer’s memoir, out Tuesday, will dive into her struggles and early-life pain, but she’s always put her life on display. | | |
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| The former Def Jam A&R VP has signed stars and ushered hits. Now he’s got a new gig as the manager of one of the music industry’s biggest, but most polarizing, artists. | | |
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| After toiling in the margins of independent rap for about a decade, the Detroit storyteller is enjoying the biggest year of his career so far. | | |
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| Why is licensing music for a podcast like sailing in uncharted seas? In this episode of Musonomics, host Larry Miller delves into why this format creates so much complexity for music usage even as the audience for podcasts is exploding. | | |
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| The rap pioneer on the new Public Enemy album (reuniting them with Def Jam), Donald Trump, the broken music business, Kanye, and more. | | |
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| Before the hippies swarmed in-and before the city embarked on a disastrous urban renewal (or 'redevelopment') plan-the Fillmore District in San Francisco was a primarily Black cultural bastion on par with New York’s Harlem, teeming with jazz, rhythm & blues, and soul from the 1940s to the 1960s. | | |
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| | | | | | | Spoiler: They're not very happy. RIP. |
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