My favorite musical genre is not really a genre, in the strict sense. It’s an attitude and a point of view that I can hear across songs by punks and soul divas and songwriters and pop stars alike; it’s the sound of women who are just completely over it. Not in an angry way, more like in an exhausted and resigned and I-do-not-have-time-for-this-but-here-we-are vaguely irritated way. It’s Aretha Franklin when she sings Runnin’ Out of Fools, in which she is completely unsurprised that some bozo has picked up the phone and is bothering her but she can’t even bring herself to waste her energy on giving him the time of day. It’s Kim Deal’s resigned goodbye on No Aloha, Sarah Harmer’s exasperation on Don’t Get Your Back Up, and it’s P.P. Arnold affirming that no actually, you cannot always get what you want. (Her version is better than the Stones’; fight me.)
These songs appeal to me because they represent a way of rejecting the world’s bullshit for those of us who are exhausted and overwhelmed and tired of having to constantly reject the world’s bullshit. They’re songs for those of us who have seen some things, hated all of them, but are so tired of yelling about them.