50 years ago, at the legendary Woodstock festival, Jimi Hendrix demolished the American national anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner.
Woodstock, August 1969: During his gig at the most famous festival in rock history, Jimi Hendrix suddenly starts playing the American national anthem on his electric guitar. Oops! Is he trying to show his patriotism? The irritation that sweeps the hippie audience only lasts for a few seconds. Then they realize that Hendrix has exactly the opposite in mind. Let’s remember: The American national anthem was born in 1814 during the British-American War. According to the myth, lyricist Francis Scott Key was inspired to write the words when, after a battle near Baltimore, he saw the American flag, the ‘star-spangled banner’, still waving above the US fort. But when Hendrix plays the anthem, nothing remains intact and there’s no feeling of pride at all. The exceptional black musician is acoustically tearing the US flag apart. And that’s not all: With sound effects like tremolo, feedback and extreme pitching, he is simulating machine gun fire, alarm sirens and bloodcurdling screams. In doing so, he is reminding his listeners of the brutal war during which the original anthem was written – and using it to voice a resounding critique of the Vietnam war. In this version, America is not the “land of the free and home of the brave” but a nation of warmongers who interfere in distant conflicts, throwing napalm bombs and „producing“ countless victims. The heroic lyrics are being masked – you could also say: They are being drowned out by the instrumental battle noise.
Of course staunch patriots and the American establishment interpreted this kind of destructive act as an insult. Especially in the American South, people threatened to become violent if he were to play his version of the national anthem onstage. Hendrix also polarized as a black artist and as a symbol of integration: In his bands, for example in several Experience line-ups, it was taken for granted that black and white musicians would play side by side. And there were many white women in his entourage who didn’t give a hoot about racial segregation. This led to drastic reactions on the one hand, and to changing attitudes on the other. In her essay ”Vodoo Child: Jimi Hendrix and the Politics of Race in the Sixties“ historian Lauren Onkey narrates how, especially in the South, the band was denied hotel rooms and access to restaurants. Their status as a well-known ”integrated band“ simultaneously laid bare the opportunities and limits of racial integration. As the author explains, Hendrix ultimately achieved some success when it came to emancipation: ”His extensive touring claimed the right of an African American to play with white musicians and consort with white women whenever and wherever he chose.“
In March 2019 my new book Provokation! Songs, die für Zündstoff sorg(t)en was published. It presents about 70 hit songs from the last 100 years which caused a stir in their time, and some of which are being discussed even today – from Rock Around the Clock to Relax, from Anarchy in the U.K. to Punk Prayer, from the ”British Invasion“ to ”shock rock“. The last chapter of the book explains some basic lyrical techniques and answers 26 FAQs around the topic of controversial songs. Due to issues of space, this little Jimi Hendrix piece didn’t make it into the printed version of the book.
About three decades ago, the conservative British politician Maggie Thatcher provoked an unprecedented flood of protest songs.
Great Britain under Margaret Thatcher “inspired” many bands and songwriters to compose protest songs which ranged from extremely critical to downright cynical. And in the last 70 years, few politicians have so often and so explicitly become a target of song lyrics as the British Prime Minister. Politics during her term of office (1979-1990) was characterised by privatisation, deregulation, and the destruction of trade unions, which – despite all economic success – led to an increase in unemployment, social hardship, and a widening of the gap between rich and poor. Her political reputation was further tarnished by the foolish war in the Falklands and by regulations which led to discrimination against homosexuals. A situation full of conflict for songwriters: On the one hand they were experiencing an increasingly tough struggle for existence, on the other they were getting lots of inspiration for moving songs. However, Bruce Robert Howard alias Dr. Robert, once a singer of the Blow Monkeys, doesn’t believe in the idea of Maggie Thatcher “as the ‘midwife’ of a thriving British counter-culture during the 80s and early 90s,” as the German newspaper “taz” puts it in a 2013 interview. “No,” Howard protests. “She was a polarising figure who encouraged greed and selfishness and destroyed people’s lives. Art may be able to flourish under these kinds of circumstances, but that’s nothing to be thankful for. In my opinion, Thatcher had a cynical view of human nature.”
In the 1980s, the Blow Monkeys not only belonged to “Red Wedge”, an initiative led by the musicians Billy Bragg, Paul Weller, and Jimmy Somerville to support the Labour Party, but also “dedicated” their 1987 album She Was Only A Grocer’s Daughter to the daughter of a grocer. It included the hit (Celebrate) The Day After You, which the BBC banned from its radio programme at the time. But where others only celebrated the “day after”, i.e. the end of the Prime Minister’s term of office, Morrissey went even further. The former front man of the Smiths, who had already declared The Queen Is Dead in 1986, even used his 1988 solo album Viva Hate to imagine the despised leader’s execution, not without conjuring up an anti-aristocratic popular uprising scenario like that of the French Revolution. ”The kind people have a wonderful dream / Margaret on the guillotine / Cause people like you make me feel so tired / When will you die?” Of course only a first name is mentioned in the lyrics, but the allusion is more than clear. So clear that – as the singer revealed in his 2013 autobiography – Morrissey was questioned by Scotland Yard. According to the star, the goal at that time was to find out whether he posed a real threat to the famous politician.
Numerous other songs from that era used clear or veiled references to provoke: I’m in Love With Margret Thatcher by The Not Sensibles, Kick Out the Tories by the Newton Neurotics, Maggie, Maggie, Maggie (Out, Out, Out) by the Larks, Thatcherites by Billy Bragg or Shipbuilding by Elvis Costello – a song that cynically revolves around the construction of warships for the Falkland War, juxtaposing possible new jobs with future casualties of war. In 1986 even a French singer, Renaud Sechan, joined in the Thatcher bashing. His song Miss Maggie formulated nasty declarations of love to womanhood itself, each topped by a gibe aimed at the hated British politician. Always the same boorish line of reasoning: women, no matter how underprivileged they are, can never be as stupid, as brutal, as warmongering as men – with one exception: Madame Thatcher …
When “Madame Thatcher” actually died in 2013, it helped a punk song of the band Hefner, which had already been released in 2000, to get heavy rotation on the internet. The Day That Thatcher Dies lets a song protagonist look back on the 1980s and his political socialisation by the Labour Party. The lyrics are defiant: „We will laugh the day that Thatcher dies / Even though we know it’s not right / We will dance and sing all night.“ Towards the end, the piece also quotes a cheerful children’s song from The Wizard of Oz, the famous 1939 film musical, namely Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead. Ding-dong, the witch is dead? For many of Thatcher’s critics, that seemed to fit all too well. Ding-Dong! itself promptly experienced a revival, even advancing into the top echelons of the British charts thanks to social media promotion – and was also boycotted by the BBC. But nobody really cared.
Something is wrong with feminism in the USA, at least when it comes to pop music: female superstars who revel in posing erotically in hit videos are regarded as the epitome of the self-confident, emancipated woman. Thank goodness there are female artists who propagate other images of womanhood. The most fascinating come from Europe.
Recently, the British singer Florence Welch was at the top of the US charts with her band The Machine and the album “How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful”. What’s remarkable about that isn’t so much the music, which quite conventionally combines folk, soul, indie-, synth- and stadium rock to make truly catchy tunes. No, what’s remarkable are the videos that accompany the songs. Again and again, they show the singer – pale, without make-up and in street clothes – wrestling, and not just with men: There is embracing, shoving, hitting and struggling, and often the female protagonist – like in the hit “Ship to Wreck” – literally stands in her own way or runs away from herself. “Did I drink too much? Am I losing touch? Did I build this ship to wreck?”, the lyrics ask programmatically. Wrecking something, messing up, derailing a figurative train – Florence Welch likes to show women on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Certainly unintentionally, but in a very incisive way, she has thus set an exciting counterpoint in the American charts in particular: to the glossy videos of superstars like Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj and Miley Cyrus – and to the hype surrounding the emancipatory message that these videos supposedly convey. “I think I’m one of the greatest feminists in the world,” explained Miley Cyrus in a BBC interview one and a half years ago – even though in her videos she poses seductively in underwear or sometimes swings completely naked on a wrecking ball and licks steel parts. Her reasoning: “I show women that they don’t need to be afraid of anything”. With her show-stopping public performances, which included a very embarrassing “scandalous” appearance at the MTV Awards, the young lady may have emancipated herself from the clean teen star image she had established as Hannah Montana in the Disney series of the same name. But this has nothing to do with feminism as most people understand it.
Nicki Minaj is even more sexually aggressive. Even in German media publications which aren’t exactly mainstream, the flamboyant rapper is celebrated as a true feminist – because she breaks taboos, crosses boundaries and projects a self-confident “bad bitch” image. Stephan Szillus in the German newspaper “taz”: “When it comes to her image, the New Yorker skilfully plays with sexual identities and an ironically broken ghetto chic. With her crazy styling, various alter egos, and wild performances, the 31-year-old is actually something of a role model.” Sure, Nicki Minaj may treat samples without respect, present herself in her rap as a dominant, proud “slut” and tell adult stories about drug use and promiscuous sex with shady guys. But the videos about these issues always focus on Nicki Minaj’s body – and especially on her conspicuous backside. Self-confidence thus means showcasing one’s own physical assets in every erotic pose that you can think of. Celebrating the fact that the man is not allowed to touch her in the “lap dance” in the video for “Anaconda” as a feminist statement, as some critics do, seems far-fetched – after all, that is also one of the rules of the game in the relevant bars of every red light district. For the artist, it’s all about turning on and turnover.
Just how contradictory Ms. Minaj’s messages ultimately are can be seen when briefly comparing the video on “Anaconda” with the video on “Lookin Ass”: In the former, the derogatory remark about women with “fat asses” from another rap song is taken up and reinterpreted into a positive statement of admiration from a man’s perspective, as in: Look at this great ass, it makes every anaconda (i.e. the male member) wild. So the gaze is deliberately directed to Minaj’s most conspicuous body part and to the “hot” background dancers twerking through the video with her, which, for “Missy Magazine”, makes “Anaconda” the feminist anthem, i.e. “the big-butt-empowerment anthem of the year”. But in the video for “Lookin Ass” it is precisely this lecherous look, symbolised by a pair of male eyes, which is destroyed again with endless machine gun salvos – of course only after the artist’s curvy body, dressed seductively in lace underwear, has been shown for several minutes in slow motion. The strange message: “Hey, I’m only expressing my self-determined sexuality here – don’t you dare let it turn you on!”
R&B queen Beyoncé, on the other hand, is celebrated as the crowd-compatible epitome of the feminist pop star. What makes her an exception in the eyes of many music critics: She is living in a stable relationship with her colleague Jay-Z, is the boss of her own company, peppers her programme with songs about female self-empowerment, sometimes quotes feminists (like the Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in the song “Flawless”), supports educational programmes for women with her charity work and also showcases a self-determined sexuality – in short: She is the perfect emancipated combination of wife, artist, boss and sex goddess.
Beyoncé’s success is actually based on a merciless performance principle that has a lot to do with self-discipline and self-denial – Beyoncé has long been something like the Heidi Klum of Soul. What she exemplifies here seems like a superhuman effort and is unlikely to serve as a role model for the young woman next door – because this perpetual balancing act between career, family, and sexual desire, presented with perfect make-up, is hardly attainable in the real world. In addition, Beyoncé likes to dutifully explain that she does everything she can to “please” her husband, and her alleged “self-determined sexuality” is also highlighted in video images that are reminiscent of, of all things, red light district bar scenes and soft porn. You could add Shakira and Rihanna to this list, two US superstars who also control their own careers. They deserve great respect for that, really. But with regard to their videos at least, this independence mainly seems to mean that these days they can decide to let themselves be portrayed as sex objects – just think about the clip “Can’t Remember to Forget You” that Shakira and Rihanna released together, and which is also full of lesbian vibes.
Don’t get me wrong: This is not about being prudish or anti-sex. A self-determined and fulfilling sexuality is certainly desirable for every human being, and erotic music clips are definitely also beautiful to look at – if you are even interested in them. But one wonders why the ample exploitation of voyeuristic impulses is so aggressively sold as emancipation. Why the spin doctors are peddling this message to the music industry – and why certain media outlets are parroting it. In Europe all this stuff seems less relevant. Of course, here young female singers are also made to seem as appealing and sexy as possible. But you’ll mostly look in vain for American-style erotic performance shows. And: Besides Florence & The Machine, there are other interesting female artists who project completely different, more humdrum, darker images of womanhood in their clips. For example, the newcomer rock band “fon” from Leipzig. Their black-and-white video clip for the song “YMMB – You Make Me Break” shows singer Katharina Helmke naked, smeared with earth and paint, wrestling with another naked man. The initial tenderness turns into a brutal fight, a rape is implied. Then the female protagonist grabs a boulder and strikes it again and again. It’s unclear if this revenge is really carried out or if it remains a fantasy. It is a video that moves you without catering to any voyeurism – here, nudity stands for vulnerability.
The mistress of performing femininity in pop videos, however, is and remains Roísín Murphy from Ireland. Since 2004, the former singer of the duo Moloko (biggest hit: “Sing It Back”) has been releasing music clips for her Electronica-influenced solo albums in which she plays diverse female roles, similar to the photo artist Cindy Sherman. In contrast, Nicky Minaj’s flashy costume changes look like a children’s carnival party. The recently released CD “Hairless Toys” is accompanied by a few videos which Murphy herself directed. In “Exploitation”, for example, she plays a pill-addicted theatre actress, in “Evil Eyes” a frustrated wife and mother who, after various rebellious acts, falls into a deep depression. Other trademarks of Murphy videos are absurdly uncomfortable costumes and choreographies that contain strange elements of movement and are danced in a provocatively careless way. All of this undermines the perfectionism, glamour, and artificial sex appeal of leading pop industrial productions.
Against this backdrop it is interesting to note that Kiki Allgeier’s documentary “See me disappear” about the death of the anorexic model Isabelle Caro has recently been shown in movie theatres. These are all counter-images to the polished performances of female superstars in the USA. And so it’s no wonder that one of the most flagrant “women’s videos” that has recently been released is also from the USA. It’s called “Tiff”, was made by the band project Poliça from Minneapolis and describes, according to singer Channy Leaneagh, “a woman who is her own worst enemy”. And that is a literal description: The female singer/protagonist is sitting tied up in an underground dungeon and is being beaten to a pulp by her tormentor – who is herself. Repulsive, bloody, hardly bearable to watch.
None of these female artists describe themselves as being feminists. After all, it would be a disaster if contemporary feminism amounted to nothing more than showcasing women on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But it’s also a good thing that there are other versions of womanhood as alternatives to the squeaky-clean female superstar pin-ups – alternatives that can be positively inspiring. The best example is the American singer, dancer, and label operator Janelle Monáe: Without any kind of erotic hoo-ha, she captivates her audience with an incredible musical spectrum from soul to rock, from Latin to electronics, with fantastic dance videos (“Tightrope”, “Q.U.E.E.N”) and with (in a positive way) crazy album concepts that revolve around an android called Cindi Mayweather. We wish America would produce more of this kind of female pop artist.
Addendum February 2020: A current essay on this topic would, of course, have to mention Billie Eilish, an American singer who – alongside Poliça – delights in defying “classical” female roles und ironically attacking the rock and rap machismo.
