The Day the Music Changed

There was a time (not too long ago) when I couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing T.I.’s single “Whatever You Like.” And I will freely admit that yes, I would leave the song on, and yes I do know all the words. (Although usually I would substitute the words “Joe Biden” for “yo body”). I associate this same ubiquity with Nelly’s inspiring little ditty “Hot in Herre” (no, I don’t understand the use of the double r either). Like most other catchy songs on the radio, these two are blatantly sexist dance beats designed to facilitate grinding asses and make women writhe their bodies in order to give men whatever they like. While there are thousands of songs circulating the airwaves just like these ones, I’m singling out these two in particular because of the fact that they’ve been reclaimed. Both have been turned upside down, their meanings drastically altered, by female artists who were sick of the chauvinist messages put out there for the world to revel in and enjoy. Dehumanizing narratives of women as sex objects and commodities which serve only to reinforce patriarchal power structures have been completely turned inside out by the women covering these songs.

The third song I discuss in this post, however, is the most powerful of the three: Tori Amos’s amazing, life-changing cover of Eminem’s “’97 Bonnie and Clyde.” Singing from the perspective of the brutally murdered mother, Amos more than changes the meaning of the song. She indicts Eminem and anyone who listened to that song and enjoyed it. Anyone who didn’t go “the fuck is this?” upon listening, wondering when someone was going to say that something was wrong with it. All of these women reclaim disgusting, misogynist songs (although “Hot in Herre” and “Whatever You Like” barely touch the horror that is “’97 Bonnie and Clyde”), and inject the female experience—being objectified, disrespected, dehumanized, and brutalized—into the dominant narrative. The end product is, then, empowering and pro-woman, most certainly not what the original authors intended.

If you watch the video, bizarrely the setting to the song is an igloo. Which seems weird, I know, and then you get to the lyric about “it’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes” and it makes sense. Why take off your clothes in an igloo, that’s fucking crazy? Well, Nelly, why would I take my clothes off in a fucking club? Right. Remove the simpering, male-pleasing women’s voices as the background, because now men are the background singers. Youngs’s voice is dominant here, she’s the focal point. She’s telling a man to “give that man what he askin’ for.”

When it comes time for the hook of the song? You know, “we are getting’ so hot, we’re gonna take our clothes off”? Yeah, that’s also men saying they’ll take their clothes off. For her. No longer the object of the song, the commodity, the body there for the taking, Youngs is now the viewer, she’s in charge, and she’s clearly fucking loving it. The entire cover is so cheeky, it’s such a wink and a nod to its originally sexist meaning, and then she’s saying she isn’t going to take that laying down. Or so to speak.

So the next song is possibly one of my favorite covers of all time. OF ALL TIME. (If you get the Kanye reference, then thanks).

As we all know, the original point to the song is a guy who is rich as shit buying this woman whatever she likes, and in doing so, buying her sexual services for whatever he likes. Not so, in this version, and once again the video is crucial.

She works in a sex shop. And not just any sex shop. Marina is working in Babeland, a woman owned and operated sex store. I had the opportunity to visit the Soho location this summer, and it’s none of that sketchy you can’t  actually look at or touch, you don’t know what you’re buying, some guy is leering at you over the counter kind of place. Babeland is such an open environment, the salespeople are well educated in what they’re selling, and, especially as a woman, you feelcomfortable not weird or gross or dirty.

Instead of being the commodity, the body that he is buying with his Patron on ice, she is selling commodities. She is no longer a sexual object, just taking it, she is selling sexual objects and making her own damn money off of sexual objects, and she is fucking enjoying it.

She has the money, and she can drop it whenever she wants. She has the money, she has the power, and no man has that power over her. And when she says you can have whatever you like, you can bet that means she’s asserting her own sexuality and consenting the way she wants, someone is not pressuring her through money and goods.

Perhaps my favorite part of this cover is that the lyric “my chick can have whatever she wants” is totally different in this context, you can either apply it to the lesbian couple buying toys, removing the heteronormativity from the song, or interpret her as saying she’s her own chick, and she’s gonna buy herself whatever she goddamn likes.

“97 Bonnie and Clyde” as covered by Tori Amos, brought to my attention by aliasmitch, is the most important reclamation of a misogynistic narrative I’ve ever heard. I’m linking the original version, but please keep in mind it is extremely fucked up.

As sung by Eminem, an “artist” who has made his living off of a slew of songs about domestic violence, the original is a narrative glorifying domestic violence, there are no apologies here, no condemnation. He says it outright, unflinching, mommy was bad to daddy, and because daddy is a crazy fucker who got his feelings hurt, mommy is demonized, not a victim. She has no voice, she is brutally murdered because she had the gall to leave daddy and that’s it. Daddy never apologizes, he just slaughters her. This is the song partly responsible for Eminem’s fame, a song which exalts a man who kills the mother of his daughter. And the whole time this woman is locked in a trunk, dead, unable to defend herself from Eminem’s insane tirade.

Tori Amos’s cover appears on her album of covers, songs about women, written by men, but sung from the women’s perspectives. Amos’s explanation for why she covered this song is crucial to understanding why women must reclaim such music:

T: This is not about storytelling–this is about getting nailed if you’re a fucking pig. On this album, I say words are like guns. And if you don’t believe that, well, check-fucking-mate, cocksucker.
S: So your [sic] basically calling Eminem out?
T: This isn’t about just one artist. All of the songs support the theory that the view changes depending on where you’re standing. Let’s understand the power of our pens. I’m all for people writing what they believe in. But this is about then saying that you don’t believe in it–that “it’s only words.” You cannot separate yourself from your creation. You can’t. You have to be responsible for the shit you put out there.

(from the website hereinmyhead.com)

So Amos locks herself in the trunk of a car, literally, and she records this cover. She gives a voice to the murdered mother dead in the trunk so the woman doesn’t have to be silent anymore. And so she’s completely transforming this male dominant narrative. Because she, like every other thinking person on the planet, is so sick of hearing men justify such violence, and she’s disgusted that, in Amos’s words, “half the world is snapping its fingers and has empathy for this man who is butchering his wife.” Because that’s always how it goes, is it not? She was asking for whatever brutal action someone else took against her. Mommy upset daddy, so daddy had to kill her. She was wearing a short skirt; someone was going to rape her eventually.

But Daddy isn’t the dominant voice anymore, he doesn’t matter anymore. Because of Amos, Mommy can finally talk, she can refute the undeserved blame. She can exact justice, in a small way, by pointing a finger at this man, a haunting finger; because once you hear this cover you cannot possibly listen to the original in the same way ever again. In doing so, in ensuring that her audience’s view is transformed, Amos is in charge, and she is strong and powerful.