NPR Music - 'How Women Made Music'

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

How Women Made Music, a new book out now from NPR, considers what the canon of popular music would look like without men.On this episode, we dig into the book and talk about the greatest albums and songs by women and other marginalized voices, with NPR Music's Ann Powers, contributor Marissa Lorusso and host Robin Hilton.Questions, comments, suggestions and feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

A quick note before the show, this podcast contains explicit language. You know what occurred to me? Neither of my kids have ever had to do a book report for school. Can you believe it? My oldest is in seventh grade. I remember giving oral book reports, like having to stand in front of the class and give a book report. Yeah, it's all we ever did, starting in first grade. When I was in seventh grade, everyone had to find a memoir or a biography from the library in my Catholic

school and do a book report on it, and I chose the singer Meatloaf and read his memoir. water and learned so much. Everyone else was doing like famous Catholic, whatever. Yeah, or like politicians. Yeah. And I was like, you guys ever heard in Paradise by the Dashboard? Likes, I'm about to rock your world. That is so funny. Well, a friend once told me how when he was in school, like elementary and middle school, that whenever he had to do a book report, he would just read the first few pages, you know, maybe a chapter. He talked about whatever happened in, that little section, and then he'd always end every report with, and if you want to know more, you'll just have to read the book.

And that's going to be a recurring theme on this episode, because we are talking about a new book that has way more than we could ever cover in a single show, Anne Powers, Marissa Lou Rousseau, the book from NPR Music that's out now. It's called How Women Made Music a Revolutionary history, and it is this collection of essays and archival interviews. that go really as far back as 50 years ago from NPR, but largely inspired a spinoff, if you will, of our Turning the Table series that we started back in 2017, and you were one of the creators of that.

Marissa, you were heavily involved with it as well. You were one of the editors and producers of the series. I'm painting very broad strokes here to sum up what is a pretty vast series and body of work, but the overarching question behind the series in this book is, what would the canon of popular music look like if women and other marginalized voices were put at the center of it instead of men. Yeah, that was our thesis statement, as long as we're talking about school projects.

If this was a book report, we'd be saying that was a thesis statement of the project for sure. Yeah, I remember the first time I heard about this project, that felt so revolutionary to me. Like, what if we just told this whole story of American popular music just through the contributions of women, Yeah, I was so inspired when I first heard you talk about it, Ann. Yeah, I mean, the first conversation that we had about turning the tables was with myself, Jill Sternheimer, who was a co-founder and Alison Fenster Talk, who edited this book, by the way. And we were talking about how to get forgotten artists back into the canon, like, you know, people who have been completely forgotten. But then we realize, you know, even the biggest women artists were always in the shade compared to the sun of, the biggest male artists. And that's what we wanted to change. So in addition to all the essays and

conversations and everything that this series produced, you also created a couple really big lists, the 150 greatest albums made by women and the 200 greatest songs, specifically by 21st century artists. So what I thought we'd do here is we can jump around these lists, play some of the picks, talk about, you know, how and why they were included, you know, and then along the way we can get into some of the themes and ideas and whatnot that come up in the book. And there's, There's so much incredible music here. I scarcely even know where to start. But, Anne, what do you think? Is there sort of one song or artist in all of these that's maybe a good jumping off point? How about a little big mama Thornton singing Hound Dog? Well, you know, Rob, when I was a young kid, Elvis Presley was still alive. And certainly Elvis Presley kind of defined the dawn of rock and roll, right? Like we associated, and for most of the history of rock and roll.

And actually, it was Willie May Thornton, Big Mama Thornton, who recorded Hound Dog in 1952 before Elvis Ever got his hands on it. And that's why this is a great example of how history was skewed, you know. History was erased these founders. And I'm happy to say that in How Women Made Music, there's a great essay about Willie May Thornton by Holly George Warren that declares her the architect of rock and roll. And now I think that's recognized. But even as late as when we started this project, I don't think everyone thought about Willie May Thornton as one of the rock and roll's founders.

That also makes me think about the amazing guitarist and singer and gospel singer, Sister Rosetta Tharp, who is also considered kind of one of these early architects of rock and roll. I'm actually wearing a Sister Rosetta Tharp t-shirt today because working on this project made me fall in love with her music so much. And her style of playing guitar was so revolutionary. And I feel like it's really in the past 10 or so years that she has been considered, like, such an crucial architect of rock and roll by kind of more mainstream conceptions of rock and roll. We could do an entire show on just about any one of these individual songs.

But I want to try to get to as much music as possible. So let's go ahead and go to another pick. Marissa, what do you got? Okay, well, I think a very important place for us to go is to the number one. album on our list of the greatest album by women, which was Joni Mitchell's Blue. Let's listen to the amazing song All I Want.

I am on a love traveling, traveling, traveling, looking for something. What can it be? Oh, I hate you some. I hate you some. I love you some. Oh, I love you. When I forget about it.

I want to be strong. I want to be strong. I want to. I feel like Joni is kind of the paradigm of, even if you were looking at the most traditional greatest of all time list, if they're going to have a token woman, it is often someone like Joni. I mean, like completely undeniable. She had the skill of the voice, songwriting, the centrality to the culture, her long career. Like, she is a totally undeniable artist. But Anne, I was curious how you felt when this emerged as our number one album for the list of the greatest albums by women.

And also how you feel now having written a book about Joni. if it still feels like, undeniable, number one album. I was in the thick of writing, traveling as we were doing this project. And I guess one thing I'd say in relation to turning the tables and how women made music is that blue as the number one record. I think that is something worth questioning. Do you mean as opposed to another... Yeah, as opposed to another...

As a different Joni record? Exactly, exactly. And I think that's what happens when you only focus on women. And suddenly there's room to say, hey, you know what, there might be more than one great Joni Mitchell album out there. Well, if people want to know more about why this record was your number one album on the list, they'll just have to read the book. But maybe just real quickly in a nutshell, just tell us, how did it end up at the number one spot? And if you had it to do all over again, you know, this list is from a number of years ago. Would you still put it at number one?

I think that, if I recall correctly, it was a pretty overwhelming choice by the large number of contributors from across public radio and other music journalists who we really loved, who I think it was like a pretty. People voted on it. Yeah. It was a long involved process of voting in conversation. And yeah, I think it was like kind of overwhelming number one, to be honest. It was. But think about our top five, though, because it was like Joni, Lauren Hill, Neda Simone, Aretha Franklin and Missy Elliott. I remember how excited we were that it wasn't just classic rock and soul era people, you know? Totally. I mean, respect to Carol King. She's in the top ten.

But that top five, that shows you the breadth of the project because it's going all the way up to people who are the architects of sound in the 21st century, like Missy Elliott. Well, Ann, you mentioned Aretha Franklin. She's someone who's on this list multiple times. Yeah, the only one who's on the list three times, actually. But you brought a song from her that actually didn't make the list, but is one that you think is important and worth mentioning. Oh, yeah. Well, I thought it would be great to show Aretha's incredible skill in a live setting. And this is Aretha Franklin doing Dr. Feel Good live at the Fillmore West. I'm so glad you picked this because it is such an incredible performance and recording.

And I don't think it's what people immediately think of when they think of Aretha, right? They think respect or the song Think or something like that. Right, right. Well, that's why we ended up with three Aretha albums on the list, because the breadth of her discography, even in the brief period of the late 60s to the late 70s, is so great. It encompasses gospel. It encompasses live music. It encompasses, you know, all the interesting things that were happening in the 70s when she was collaborating with Curtis Mayfield,

as well as those, you know, kind of classic hits that we think of her, like performing in the Blues Brothers movie. or something like that. But, you know, the thing about Aretha Franklin is that she is not only one of the world's great artists, but her art, especially when she first emerged, is so associated with civil rights movement, you know, with changes that are happening in the culture. And I think that's a message that we've always wanted to get across in this project, too, is that this music is a soundtrack to history. And I love how that's illustrated by an artist like Aretha, but also by someone like Laura Jane Grace in the 21st century. Yeah, I really wanted to talk about the Against Me album, Transgender Dysphoria Blues. I can't tell you how awesome it was to go back and revisit all this music in leading up to this taping.

Yeah, it's crazy. It turns out women have made a lot of great music. Who knew? I know. I know. It's amazing. I just, I had no idea. Well, I wanted, I specifically wanted to include this song because this was the first record that Laura Jane Grace made after coming out as a trans woman. She had a long career with against me before this, but you know, she came out publicly as trans in 2012, I believe. And she sings super directly about that experience on this record. And yeah, I mean, I think for me and probably for a lot of people, Laura Jane Grace was the first out trans mainstream musician that I was aware of. It was like a, I just can't even. express how huge of a deal it was at the time when she came out. And yeah, just to me, I feel like that means her story is such an important one to tell

when we're talking about the history of women in popular music. And, you know, like a lot has changed in terms of mainstream conversations about trans identity between when she first came out and when we started the series and then certainly like between when we started the series and now. But also this record is so great. It's nice to listen to it with you guys. We did struggle a bit, as you remember, Missa, with, you know, trying to figure out how to even kind of like employ the category of woman by the time we got even to our second season,

right? I mean, I think, I will say, I think it was pretty obvious for us from the get-go that we should include transgender women in the project. Like that was kind of- Yeah, 10 non-binary artists as well. But I think that when we were thinking about the 21st century, especially, and what it means to make a list about women that inherently is a project about being marginalized because of your gender, like, that's actually just so much.

that's really multifaceted. It's so much more complicated than just this binary, like, men are doing this and are treated this way, and women are doing this and are treated this way. And that conversation has to include trans people in a certain way. It really has to include non-binary people in a certain way, you know, we did include some non-binary artists in season two in the 21st century list. But I think if we were doing the project today, we just would have had way more conversations from a way earlier point with more people about how to think more holistically about the category of gender, you know, and how to be more nuanced, how to be more sensitive, what it means to do women's history and also celebrate gender diversity and how those goals, you know, can sometimes feel like they're pointing in different directions, but ultimately they're serving the same ends. And something we thought about a lot, too, is there are some trans and non-binary artists who would see this project that is like mostly woman focused and think, oh, that is also my story. I'm also part of this history. And there are certain trans and non-binary artists. artists who would see that category and think that's not my history, that's not my story,

I don't want to be included in that. And yeah, it's just really important to have those conversations and be sensitive to that. And then the other other thing it makes me think about is, you know, our lists that we published are static. Like this book is done and is out in the world. But people's identities are not static. And there are artists, for example, who when we initially published this stuff identified as women, they do not identify as women. They do not identify as women anymore, they are in this book. You know, that adds like another layer of complexity to all of these conversations, I think. Well, hindsight is 2020. And there are definitely choices that we made or that our advisory boards made, the people who voted on these lists and

helped us make these projects that we might not make today. So transgender dysphoria blues, that's the title cut to the record from Against Me that came out in 2014. And that was number 31 on the list of the two intergradest songs by 21st Century Women. And when you think about how you might reconsider this list, hindsight being 2020, I want to talk a little bit about the number one song on this list. Yeah. So Paper Plains by MIA is the number one song on this list. And I stand by that.

I mean, it was voted by the number one song by many people. Certainly, MIA as an artist, as a public figure, her reputation has changed, her politics have changed a lot, or at least emerged in the past decade. And I don't know, it's interesting when you think about would this have been voted number one. But I stand by this song as number one on this list because it contains and communicates so many things that are central to popular music in the 21st century. It is addressing the subject of colonialism and imperialism. It's made by an English woman of Sri Lankan descent. It takes from hip-hop as well as like a little bit of punk rock energy.

And it is also a song about like kind of claiming your power, reclaiming your power, even in a kind of rebel way. So I stand by the song, even if I don't know how I feel about MIA these days. And the album that's from that came out in February of 2008 was also on the album's list. I think that was the album Kala in at number 43 on the list. as well. I think it's interesting, Robin, how MIA is mining her own experience as, you know, part of a Sri Lankan family to take us to a part of a world I'd never really thought about that much before. I listened to her music. And then jumping back to one of my favorite albums of all time,

which I wrote about in the book, Kate Bush, now she was doing this in a different way, but it's complicated, right, because she is a white woman. She was traveling to places like that. on her album, The Dreaming. And you're referring specifically to all the sort of global sounds that she worked into her recordings. Yeah. And this album, The Dreaming, came out in September of 1982. I knew that we would not be able to get through an episode because Anne and I are both such big fans. I especially wanted to talk about Kay Bush for two reasons.

One of them is that she was such an innovator, especially through you, Anne. I've learned about how much she was so curious about early synthesizers, have she was so dedicated to building this sonic world that was kind of unlike what anyone else was doing at the time. And I just think it's really important in talking about women's place in popular music

to talk about the way that women are innovators, that they have these technical skills, women who are in the studio, women who are instrumentalists. I mean, we could talk about women about the York this way too. We could talk about the late producer Sophie. St. Vincent.

Totally. But then also, Ann, you wrote this really amazing essay about this record and how it kind of factored into your coming of age and understanding yourself. Well, yeah. I mean, so the essay is called How Kay Bush Help Me Make My Monsters My Own. And this album, man, I heard this, you know, I heard this record first when I was just a young, we college student living in a really crappy little rental.

with two of my girlfriends, you know, fighting over the stereo. And I put this on the stereo, this record when it came out, and I tried to glue it to the stereo. Yes, my roommates were always trying to pull it off and put on the cure or Bauhaus or whatever. But I'm like, no, we have to keep listening to this record. And for me, it was all about all the characters she plays on it and all the voices she has, you know, she just,

and the wildness of it. What I didn't know at the time was, that this was a metaphor for what she was going through as a very young woman who had been made into a pop star by through, you know, within the music industry and was very uncomfortable with that. So this record was her like cry of rebellion against what the role she was being shoved into as a pop star. And I recognize now the connection between my attempts at self-definition as a very young woman and her insistence on self-definition.

And you wrote about the album The Dreaming as a separate essay. This isn't the album from Kate Bush that's actually on one of the lists. No, that was Hounds of Love because, you know, that's her big breakthrough record, which I have to say,

like we're talking a little bit today about how we're constantly revisiting our opinions. And I was such a Kate Bush snob as a young person. I was like, hounds of love, whatever. That's like the music of Cape Bush. You know, that's like the Kenny G. Version of Kate Bush or something like that.

You're out of your mind. That album. But I'm sorry. I've revised my opinion. I now recognize it as the great work it is. And it's still bad shit crazy. I mean, no matter what she does, like she's just like traffic in these realms of fantasy and imagination,

even if the sound isn't quite as like in your face. I can't imagine my life. life without her music, especially Hounds of Love, which is kind of amazing when I, you know, you think about it, she wasn't a big top 40 singer or anything like that at the time. But her music managed to find its way to me in rural middle of nowhere, Kansas. Yeah. Right. And I had a girlfriend who had a cool aunt who was always turning her on.

And she'd go and visit her in the big city and come back with whatever, you know, great record. Shout out to the aunties. Yeah. Shout out to cool aunts. When you look at this list of the 150 greatest albums made by women, again, that you published in 2017, I was going over the top five. And you mentioned these already, but I'll just say again, Joni Mitchell's Blue at number one. The Miseducation of Lauren Hill, from Lauren Hill at number two. I'm totally with you.

Nina Simone, I put a spell on you, Nina Simone at number three. Aretha Franklin's, I never loved a man the way I love you at four. And Missy Elliott's Super Dupa Fly at number five. When I looked at this list, my first thought was, Where's Beyonce? What of Beyonce's Lemonade? Which, I will say, came in a number six. Robin, I got to say, we bent the rules for lemonade, though.

We bent the rules. It's true. Remember, Marissa? We changed the news. How so? So when we sent out instructions to the huge number of people who helped us with this list, I believe we said that the cutoff for, because we had to pick a period of time, you know, of records. to consider. We couldn't be thinking about things like right up until the day that we published

the list. We needed some parameters. But I think that lemonade came out after the cutoff that we had decided and then we bent the rules to include lemonade. Am I getting that right? Yes, totally right. It came out 2016? Yeah, well, originally. Was 2015 the cut off? So here's the thing. So originally we had this, you know, all lists are arbitrary. All rules are arbitrary. I'm not trying to be an anarchist on you here, but I'm just saying, you know, they're human made, right? So, so, we were trying to define what we considered the golden era of recorded music. And we were kind of starting it with when the Beatles recorded their first album and then trying to end it at a round number several decades later. But then on both ends, we had stuff we wanted to include. So we

wanted to include the Ronnettes. So we moved our initial year, which I think was 65, we moved that back a year to 64. And then we wanted to include lemonade. So we pushed our, our final year, forward a year, to 2016. That's how much we love this record. Y'all haters corny with that Illuminati mess. Baporazzi, catch my fly in my cocky fresh. I'm so reckless when I rock my Jivanshi dress.

I'm so possessive so I rock his rock necklaces. My daddy, Alabama, Mama Louisiana. You mix that Negro with that Creole make a Texas Bama. I mean, it's an impossible task. I honestly, when I look at the top five, I don't know what I would do differently. I maybe swap the Missy with Lemonade. I don't know if it's hard to take the issue. But, you know, even with Beyonce, it's like maybe you'd put Renaissance in now.

Yeah. I don't know, man. The Lemonade to me is a once-in-a-generation record. Well, I hear you on that. But, I mean, we didn't even know when we made this list, or even when we made the 21st century list, we also had a feature that season that was the 25 most influential women artists of the 21st century and Beyonce is not number one and Nor is Taylor Swift. Rihanna is number one.

Yes, she is the most influential woman of the artist of the 21st century, I believe, was the headline. I'll stick with it. I'll stick with that. But, I mean, we had no idea what the pop world would be like in 2024 with Taylor and Beyonce at this Titanic level. And virtually every important pop star now as a woman. It wasn't like that a mere seven years ago. It's true. I think if we opened voting for Songs of the 21st century today,

I think it would be like Taylor and Beyonce buying for number one and number two. It definitely would. I always think, you know, how Beyonce premiered Lemonade on HBO. And I certainly remember tuning in when it came out and just being absolutely blue to it. And I always think about how the next day at NPR Music, we were all talking about it because it was just such a momentous occasion. And somebody said, everyone will remember where they were when they saw it. And then somebody else said, yeah, their living room. Right, exactly.

Watching HBO. Watching HBO, yes. It will not be hard to remember where you were when you saw this premiere of Lemonade. It's true, but think of all the spaces she's taken over since then. She did Homecoming. She did the Lion King. She took over the Louvre. She and Jayzie took over the Louvre.

We're interplanetary domination as far as Beyonce goes. So Lemonade number six on the list. Let's go to the next one on the list right at number seven from Patty Smith, the album Horses. Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine. Milkeny, part of thieves. while called a mass leave you know I mentioned

Joni Mitchell's record blew the way it opens and how it's one of the most memorable openings to any record boy this one too though those piano chords could not land more perfectly I still remember so vividly

hearing it for the first time and it immediately arrested yeah absolutely iconic album and the absolutely iconic track Gloria not to mention the first line, Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine. I mean, that talk about iconic and overused word, but that line might be the most iconic lyric ever written. One thing about this song, I think, why I'm glad you chose it, Marissa, is that this is a very clear example about

women artists making an intervention in music history, because, of course, she's taking on another central text in rock and roll history, the song Gloria by them, the first band that Van Morrison was in. And she's totally claiming it and reshaping it for her voice, for her queer self-expression, you know, which maybe we don't think of Patty Smith as a queer artist. I mean, she is a heterosexual woman, but this song really queers the narrative, I think. And I think she's an artist who's really invested in androgyny. And I almost think she is the kind of woman artist who does not want, I don't know if this is true, but doesn't want to be considered as a woman artist.

She really sees herself as being an artist first and foremost, which, you know, is something that male artists get to claim all the time without question. Yes, absolutely.

And, yeah, there's an amazing quote in the book from an interview with Patty Smith where she talks about how performing rock and roll has made her feel more real as a person.

I just love that concept. Yeah. And then I also love in the book, the former World Cafe host Tali Ash Langer wrote about this album for The List. and she writes about how so, so many artists have been inspiring by Patty Smith and how those artists who are inspired by her don't necessarily sound alike.

But Talia says it was her unfiltered, fearless singularity that galvanized believers in the Church of Smith not to become more like her, but to become more like themselves. Just such a beautiful image. I'm glad you mentioned that quote because I just want to say that Allison, Fencer Chaco, edited the book, did such a great job of going through the NPR archives and finding excerpts from interviews that resonate across time and sort of point toward the work that our project does and has done. You know, like Liz Pharre talking about how the thing she wanted to do was get out of Guyville when she made Exiling King in Guyville. just people like Madonna and Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn talking about how they fought against stereotypes in their music and also in their self-image. And all of that resonates so well with the work we did.

You know, when I think back about when all those records and artists, you talked about just now when a lot of those records are coming out, the conversation very much was about, can you believe these are women? I know. Or even, you know, like going back to like when Hart was. putting out records like, oh, two women. Dude, I'm from Seattle.

I can testify. And, and Nancy, definitely, especially because when you think about, like, that band, heart. That's such a great example. I'm so glad you brought that up because that band, people used to talk about that band, like, oh, yeah, so there's these two women in it, but the guys, the guys in the band are really, like the power behind it, you know? Which is any, Fleetwood Mac, same thing, right? Like, Lindsay Buckingham is really the beating heart and soul of Fleetwood Meck. I don't think people talk like that anymore.

Again, that's the sea change that's happened, you know. So I had not listened a ton to Hart before starting work on the Turning the Tables Project, and it was the first season, and I had gotten the assignment, as so many people did, to put together a ballot of albums by women to vote on that I thought belonged on the list. And I was asking, like, all the women in my life, okay, what are the albums? I was trying to like really crowdsource, get a lot of ideas. And I asked my mom, who should I vote for? And without a second thought, she was like, oh, you have to vote for Hart.

And I was like, I'm not really familiar, whatever. And my mom looked me in the eye and said, Hart was the band that made me feel as a little girl like I could be a rock star. Wow. And I was like, all right, done. They're on the ballot. And I've totally fallen on with their music since then. Marissa, was your mom like a heshire? Did she like stand outside in the smoking section in high school and like smoke cigarettes and talk about heavy.

metal bands? I don't think so exactly. And that's kind of why I was surprised because she's not like a heavy rock fan in general. She didn't raise us on that. But I think something about Hart just really spoke to her. I love it. Point of clarification is just a little bit of history for people who might not know. High schools used to have smoking sections for the students. They did. They did. Yeah. We had a smoking lounge for the for the students. But you had to show that, you know, you had to bring in a photograph of your heavy metal album collection to be. able to go to the smoking section, at least in Blanchett Catholic High School in Seattle, Washington. Well, okay, so I bring all this up, the idea of how, yeah, I don't think people say that as much now when they hear, you know, women, musicians. Because I'm wondering how much progress you think we've made since this series started.

Like, you had a very clear and incredibly ambitious goal when you started this series. I'm wondering, in general, what kind of progress you think we've seen just in the seven years since you started this series? Well, you know, Rob, and revolution, the word revolution has a few different meanings. One is, you know, absolute, complete paradigm shifting change, but then there's also the turn of the wheel, you know? And I think progress around eradicating isms in general, you know, and creating more equity in general in culture, it is a series of like steps forward and steps back.

So, I mean, it feels very different, I think. And I think there has been a paradigm shift. Now we have women dominating the pop charts. I was recently in someone's house and they had a magazine record where they had a bunch of Rolling Stone magazines on it. And every cover was a woman. That's inconceivable. Even five years ago, I think, you know. So things have really changed.

But you just never know. I don't know. You know, before the Beatles hit, women dominated the pop charts too. I know. I think it's like on the one hand, Taylor Swift and Beyonce are breaking every record every day all the time. It's kind of like you couldn't look at this moment in pop music and not talk about women, not like center women, honestly. But then I think also about the artists who are coming up right now. I think about are there DIY bands playing in tiny little clubs across the country? Are women still being asked, oh, do you need someone to plug your guitar in for you? Or like, do you know how your pedals were? I've heard that story from women musicians. So. much. I would not be surprised if that's still happening. You know, I think about the season of Latter Than Riot, the Amazing MPR Music Podcast, that was all about misogynar in hip hop. And they highlighted how women can just have such an enormous presence in rap, be, you know, critically acclaimed, be all over the charts, and still facing these huge barriers, still facing harassment. So, you know,

I don't think we fixed it in terms of gender, but I feel like there has been. some progress. And I will say too, I think to the point that Anne made earlier about women and non-binary writers being kind of at the center of the conversation about music right now, I think that has only proven to be more and more and more true at the same time that the music journalism industry is kind of getting decimated by layoffs and a lack of funding. And so all of that feels really in flux too. Yeah. I want to do just a little bit more music before we go. So I'm wondering, like, is there a newer artist who, if you had a chance to do this list again, you would most likely include? Yeah, I brought in an example from this year.

Dochi, the rapper Dochi has this new mixtape out called Alligator Bites Never Heal. And I just have to say the reaction to this mixtape, it's just been a groundswell of kind of incredulous praise. People are so impressed with her flow. And I think this is a case where we're seeing an artist. being crowned in real time. She's definitely one of the best rappers out here. She's so great at creating characters and telling stories in her raps.

And just like technical skill is off the chart. So that's why I chose this song called Denial is River. And bonus points, it's actually about how she's been treated as a rapper and, you know, dealing with sexism in the world of hip-hop. No time to process. And no, I'm not in that gang, but I'm always on set. Risk watch, drip drop, label want the TikToks.

Now I'm making TikTok music, what me fuck? I need a cleanse, need a detox. But we ain't got time to stop. The charts need us. Fast forward me, 2023. I'm stacking lots of cheese and making Monty. My grass is really green. And honestly, I can't even fucking cap no more.

This is a really dark time for me. Well, if you look across all the artists that you've talked about and written about and included in the list, they're disruptors in one, way or another, and that's certainly what Dochi is. Totally, totally. And, you know, the disruptor in the moment is then the standard bearer in the future. I think that's something that so many artists represented in this book embody. I mean, we used to think Madonna was like this complete rebel upstart. And I go back and watch her performance of Like a Virgin on the MTV Music Video Awards.

And I think, oh, my God, I can't believe people thought that was controversial. back in the day, like rolling around in a wedding dress on the stage, given what's on, you know, watch the MTV Awards this year, and you see so much that's flowed out of that moment. We also, in this project, we're trying to disrupt, and we want people to disagree. We made a list. We want people to fight about it.

We want people to be talking about the amazing artists who they think deserve more shine. Like, if we started people arguing about the greatest music of all time and all of the artists who they're talking about are women, then I feel like we've done our job. Well, let's go out on something that I think that everyone can actually agree on. And it's Tracy Chapman's fast car. You get a fast car. I want a ticket to anywhere. Maybe we make a deal.

Maybe together we can get somewhere. Any place is better. Starting from zero got nothing to do. Maybe we'll make something. Me, myself, I got nothing to prove. A literally a perfect song, a timeless song, but also a timely song. Yeah. Because there was that Luke Combs cover of it last year that was enormously popular, and I think

probably introduced some new generations of listeners to Tracy Chapman's perfect music. Absolutely. And this song exemplifies a key thing about about legacy, you know. We've talked about disruption. We've talked about paradigm shifting, changing things. But, you know, legacy is to state the obvious about continuums, too. It's about creating relationships and connections across time hand to hand, right? Like, especially, this is something I've been thinking a lot about in terms of how women's work forms legacies. And so much of women's work is passed down personally, intimately. You know, mom gives you her recipe, her favorite

recipe, or your best friend teaches you things you didn't know about like dating or relating to people or whatever. I mean, all of it is about intimate connections. And there is nothing more hand-to-hand than the love of Tracy Chapman, I think. You know, this is the kind of song, the kind of music. Yes, it was a huge hit, but this is what you share with a friend. This is what you share with your daughter. And that moment at the Grammys, when Tracy Chapman took the stage with Luke Combs, what I felt wasn't, oh, wow, what an amazing moment where this young dude is acknowledging that he was influenced by a woman. How shocking. And a black woman is that, a white man saying he's influenced by a black woman. No, I was taken back to that moment Luke Combs has talked about when he was sitting in his truck with his dad, in his dad's truck. And his dad played the song for him. That is how this stuff. survives, right? Person to person, voice to voice, hand to hand. Well, so much more music, obviously in the book, in the series for people to listen to. We've got a playlist in Apple Music and Spotify. If you search for How Women Made Music, you'll find it. You can listen to full versions

of these songs and a whole bunch of other cuts. But we'll go out on this from Tracy Chapman, Fast Car, M Powers and Marissa Lou Roosso. Congrats on the new book, How Women Made Music. It is out now. And thanks so much for doing this. Robin. Thank you so much, Robin. And for NPR music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's All Songs Considered.