top ten songs about women's week

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I first became aware of Festa delle Donne (Women's Day) in the 1980s in Italy, which is quite appropriate as that is where it appears to have begun. At the end of the Second World War, it was decided to consolidate several days celebrating women in March, some with roots in antiquity, in March 8. I remember going to university and seeing just about all of the women wearing flowers on their coats - small, white flowers, I wish I could remember the name.

March 8 is still, of course, International Women's Day, but it has accrued a whole week around it, which this year lasts from Saturday 5 March to Saturday 12 March, with the day itself in the middle on the Tuesday. And, as a bonus, Women's World Day of Prayer on the inaugural day, Saturday March 5, focussing on Cameroon.

I'd been planning a Top Ten pertaining to women for some time, because I looked at my music collection and saw that there were few women fronting a band or singing solo there: Carole Fredericks, Ulanda McCulloch and Bonnie Tyler, for example, and, of course, Cambridge-born songstress EJ Norman (right - click to hear her music). Is collecting music by other blokes something men do when we graduate from stamps?

It's not an idle question: last night I had a bath, which among other things affords me the only opportunity I get to read for a prolonged time, and had BBC Radio Cambridgeshire on the shower radio. Having the germ of this blog in my head, it shocked me that well over an hour passed between hearing one female vocalist and the next, despite there certainly being no dearth of good music written and/or performed by women. If this phenomenon is threaded through the fabric of society, is it possible that, say, all-women shortlists to select Prospective Parliamentary Candidates - which I've always felt vaguely uncomfortable with but are supported by many including Ellee Seymour - are the way ahead?

On the other hand, the opposite situation doesn't pertain with Maxima: although she certainly listens to more female vocalists than me - like Diana Ross, Nancy Griffiths and Katie Melua - she also has in her collection The Jam and the Police (with their respective solo leaders Paul Weller and Sting), Madness and Planxty, as well as her family's favourites such as Guy Mitchell and Tommy Steele. (And Buddy Holly. Being a Buddy Holly fan makes life easier in our house.)

Making a list for this post, I found myself trying to identify only pieces sung by women but also composed by women, and wondered if I were unconsciously applying a sort of gender-apartheid? The thing is, if I am, I am therefore part of the problem and will be unable to appreciate it from the outside. I'm confused...

10 - what men think women think

I can only ever write this post from the outside, so here's Nick Lowe with Girls' Talk, showing how men can be paranoid about women when there aren't even any present.




9 - self-assurance

Beverley Knight released this recently with Chaka Khan, and these lines go right to the heart:

Where's the man to quantify
Everything I'm worth and who I am?
He should look me in the eye
Tell me where he figures in my plan...!





8 - remembrance and sorrow

Fannie Hurst's 1933 novel Imitation of Life was filmed twice, the 1934 version being eclipsed by the 1959 one - which I remember watching with my Mum in the late 1970s: here Mahalia Jackson sings at the funeral of the black woman who brought up a white girl who didn't quite appreciate the worth of her foster-mother until it was too late.




7 - remembrance and joy




6 - the girl he left behind

All around my Hat was originally written from the viewpoint of a minor English criminal sent to Australia for several years, but here legendary folk singer Sandy Denny fronts Steeleye Span in turning it round so that the girl he leaves behind will wear a ribbon in her hat for "a twelve-month and a day".



5 - sticking with it

French singer/songwriter Jean-Jacques Goldman (who wrote for Céline Dion before she started singing in English) found himself surfing TV channels one night and was suddenly faced with a documentary called "Far West", part of which dealt with a group of nuns in the delivery suite of a maternity hospital. He was amazed by the footage and wrote a song that he performed with the supergroup he formed with his chums Michael Jones and the late, great Carole Fredericks, to whom this video is dedicated.



4 - incertitude?

Nena (Gabriele Kerner) released 99 red balloons (or luftballone) in 1983, not long after a British TV survey of the concerns of schoolchildren revealed nuclear war to be their greatest fear. Towards the end of the video, set on an army assault course in Germany (the father of one of the band members was a NATO colonel), if the band look distressed, it's because they were: unscripted gasoline bombs were exploding around them. But it made for a good video.




3 - identity

Here Gali Atari, who won the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest for Israel singing Alleluia wih Milk and Honey, sings of the joy and the pain of belonging to a place one cannot separate oneself from.



2 - What have they done to the weather?

Originally released as Weather Song, writer Malvina Reynolds wanted to highlight the effects of nuclear testing, which - reports the Telegraph's Bonnie Malkin, is still bearing bad news to the Aboriginies of the Australian outback. For a while, this became the anthem of a generation sufficiently secure behind their countries' nuclear deterrents to call for said deterrents' dismantling. (See the passionate support of the recently demised Labour leader Michael Foot for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which he helped found.) Here it's sungby one of the most beautiful voices of all time, Judith Durham, with of course the Seekers.




1 -trust

When Minima asked to play this at the start of an Advent course and I heard the first few lines, I thought it was time to hide behind my hands; but I hadn't trusted her enough - just over halfway through the song by Nashville-based Christian band Zoegirl, the lyrics develop to completely change the meaning of the piece.



If you enjoyed this, click here for more Top ten songs about...

for one night only

We don't watch much TV these days because of the abuses visited by the BBC upon the viewing and listening public, but last night we watched a classic piece of television based on a format which has passed the test of time - the variety show.

I used to love variety shows, like the BBC's Seaside Special in the 1970's, which featured musical acts such as ABBA, Mireille Mathieu and Lena Zavaroni, and comic turns such as Little and Large, the Goodies and the Wurzels. Bruce Forsyth, now languishing in the controversy-ridden Strictly Come Dancing, fronted some cracking variety shows, including a run as host of Saturday Night at the London Palladium, during which the Musician's Union was on strike, leading Forsyth and Norman Wisdom to carry a show by themselves in a now-legendary performance. There was also some great stuff from across the pond, like The Andy Williams Show, The Donny and Marie Show and the daddy of them all, The Ed Sullivan Show; I've read that crime stopped in New York during the Beatles' performance on this. Every country and region had them - for instance Scotland's Welcome to the Ceilidh and Thingummyjig, an updated version of The White Heather Club.



For One Night Only was apparently commisioned for three shows, and last night we caught the Christmas special, presented jointly by Tom Jones, and classical musician, broadcaster and presenter Mylene Klass.

Guy Freeman, ITV's Controller of Music and Events, remarked of For One Night Only how good it was to be making a variety show again. And what a night it was - like the best variety shows, there was something for everyone. I put it to Maxima that she was staring rather intently at David O' Mer, a burlesque artist who was performing a unique acrobatic act in a bathtub, and she went red; but it was her turn to have a go at me for perking up a bit when the all-girl classical quartet eScala played Children; and for all the family Il Divo performed La Fuerza Major, their Spanish translation of The Power of Love, recently covered also by another favourite of mine, EJ Norman.

The comics were ones I haven't seen before, which is part of what variety shows are all about: introducing you to new talent in a fun family atmosphere which is far removed from the amphitheatre of reality shows. The first part of Jimeoin's act concentrated hilariously on his eyebrows, while Will Smith played the wall-faced English snob to a T ("there's been a terrible mix up with bookings; I'm here, and the other Will Smith's giving a talk to the Eton Chess Club").

Tom Jones is, of course, a legend, and his new album has been crafted by professional songwriters, in an echo of the Brill Building. He bookended the show with songs, the first from 24 Hours (Give a Little Love) and the last Baby it's Cold Outside with Cerys Matthews, and the multi-talented Myleene obviously enjoying herself on the piano. The comfortable dynamism between him and Klass held the whole thing together, it was everything that a variety show should be, and nobody got abusive messages left on their answerphone. BBC - watch and (re)learn! (And give Brucie a show where he can shine instead of minding monkeys, eh?)

more Christmas music

It's hard choosing your favourite Christmas songs, because there's so many of them.

One of my favourite bands, the Beatles, used to release Christmas records especially for their fans; but in their public releases had discovered that records released in the run-up to Christmas tended to make a mint, like I want to hold your hand in 1963 (British release - in the US it was released in January), I feel fine in 1964 and Day Tripper in 1965.

There were certainly Christmas songs before this, like Judy Garland's Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and, of course White Christmas, which was so popular that the plates pressing the 78's wore out and Bing had to re-record it; but in general the Christmas single had to wait until the advent of the '45 to come into its own. Then, of course, since the '70's seasonal singles started to be specifically Christmas-themed, some cynically so.

I've just heard on the radio that Kate Rusby has released an album of Christmas songs from South Yorkshire. I saw her perform in the Cambridge folk festival in 2000, the year before she married Scottish folkie John McKusker, although sadly they're now divorced. Rusby is an artist who refuses to compromise in her music - like Willie Nelson, whose Pretty Paper is standard Christmas listening in our house.

But for me the Christmas song to beat them all this year is EJ Norman's sublime, soulful re-working of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's The Power of Love. It's been released electronically as a thank-you to her fans, and when I linked the computer to the music-centre speakers I was relieved to hear that the song had been lovingly produced with none of the compromises on the top parts or the bottom parts that John Mellencamp has so vocally criticised of late. When I heard EJ performing the song, I thought something that I very rarely think about songs these days: "perfect".

For a free copy, email EJ Norman at ejnorman@hotmail.co.uk.




Related post: EJ Norman: retro-techno moves forward

EJ Norman: retro-techno moves forward

EJ Norman
All songs written by EJ Norman/R Blandford
Enquiries to ejnorman@hotmail.co.uk


As I tap away here in the draughty old fen late at night, I'm listening to an eponymous album by EJ Norman, who hails from a nearby old fen but has emigrated to Brighton.

There are twelve songs, collaborations between EJ and novelist/lyricist Richard Blandford: each song has its own texture, moulded by an understated drum-machine, intelligently-played bass guitar, and subtly-phrased synth riffs that colour but never intrude. The synergy of the three instruments is sometimes reminiscent of Kraftwerk, with a soupçon of Eurythmics. In Anybody will Do I thought I heard Benny and Björn on keyboards, in reflective mood.

Then there's the words - described on her MySpace page as "pure synth-driven melodrama, evoking overheard arguments in tacky small-town nightclubs, the wistful dreams of escape imagined on lonely railway bridges, and the precise moment when you realise that a love affair is dead in the water."

EJ takes the voices of different players, like an actress in a series of performances: whereas Fall to Me is a dark tale of seduction told from the point of view of the temptress, In the Shadows tells of the hold a possessive ex-lover from an ill-advised relationship still has on the central character - "in the dark of night I call your name..." In Genevieve we get a picture of the fragile ties, so easily unbound, that keep a band together - echoes perhaps of Yoko sitting in on studio sessions and making comments - and Degrees of Separation charts the frenetic pairings surrounding a disintegrating couple. The only thing I would like to have heard added, I think, is the burnt-wood counterpoint of Mandy Anderson, Cambridgeshire musician and singer, sometime backing-vocalist, and EJ's mother.

Home is my favourite and always has been, through its various reworkings. Like George Lucas, EJ believes some projects are never finished, just left alone for a while (although, unlike Lucas' oevre, EJ's gets better every time). It's a plaintive cry for the securities of the past, within which it seems at last we are allowed backstage to see the actress remove her mask. The line "I just want to go back" brings to mind Seamus Heaney misquoting LP Hartley to call the past "another country". One might add that they do things differently there because life inexorably carries us away from a place where life was simpler and safer, even if that place never quite existed.

Home reminds me that like any art, great songs are born of great sufferings. Witness Judy Garland's body-image issues; Elton John wrestling with his sexuality; or John Lennon's attempts to transcend his complex personality problems, like Sisyphus' eternal quest to get his rock to the top of the hill.

As Billy Connolly shows, becoming comfortable can render one's art anaemic. But EJ is hungry, angry, raw and ready to serve up pure champagne for the ears and the heart. Her retro-techno style nods in the direction of great performers of the '80's (and even '70's) but she remains, quintessentially, herself.