Switched on Pop - We Won’t Go Back: Pop Music and the Fight For Reproductive Rights (w MILCK and Ann Powers)

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

On June 24th 2022 the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v Wade and asserting that the Constitution of the United States does not confer a right to abortion. The decision marked a seismic moment in politics and culture that has affected everyone’s lives, and the world of pop music is no exception. Musicians started responding immediately, from Cher to Olivia Rodrigo: on social media, at their shows, and in their music. Critic Ann Powers has been chronicling the reactions in a running list at NPR, and she joins in the second half of the episode to talk about the long history of artists speaking out—and singing—about reproductive rights.  One artist who wasted no time responding to the Dobbs decision is the singer and songwriter Connie Lim, aka MILCK. Her song “We Won’t Go Back,” composed with Biianco, Autumn Rowe, and Ani DeFranco, came about after Politico published an article in May with the leaked draft of the Dobbs decision, telling the world in no uncertain terms that the Supreme Court was considering striking down Roe. MILCK found herself protesting in D.C., this time with her camera ready. The chants she heard there became the first sonic element of “We Won’t Go Back.” Songs Discussed MILCK, Biianco, Autumn Rowe, Ani DeFranco - We Won’t Go Back MILCK - Quiet Ani DeFranco - Play God  Poison Girls - Mandy Is Having a Baby Cyndi Lauper - Sally’s Pigeons Leslie Gore - You Don’t Own Me Robyn - Giving You Back Joni Mitchell - Little Green L7 - Pretend We’re Dead Everlast - What It’s Like Madonna - Papa Don’t Preach Lauryn Hill - To Zion Megan Thee Stallion - Plan B We need your help. We are conducting a short audience survey to help plan for our future and hear from you. To participate, head to vox.com/podsurvey, and thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched-on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm producer Rianna Cruz. And on this episode, we're discussing how musicians are responding to Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The landmark decision by the Supreme Court on June 24, 2022, that overruled Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court held that the Constitution of the United States does not confer a right to abortion, returning the power to define abortion rights or restrictions to the states.

Rihanna, this is a seismic moment in politics and culture that has affected everyone's lives, and our world of pop music is no exception. Yeah, I mean, ever since the decision was released, I've noticed a lot of musicians that I follow and respect responding, whether it be on social media or in concert at their shows. And I've seen everyone from Cher to Bad Bunny to Megan the Stallion, and share their opinions on the matter. And even though this is a new decision with new reactions,

there's of course been a historical precedent of voicing opinions through music about reproductive rights. So in the second half of today's episode, I talked to NPR Music Critic and Powers, an expert on the subject, learning more about this historic connection. And artists aren't just speaking out about Dobbs. They are singing about it too.

In the first half of today's episode, I speak to the singer and songwriter, Connie Lim, aka Milk, that's M-I-L-C-K, about her song, We Won't Go Back, which she started working on after Politico published an article on May 2, 2022, with the leaked draft of the Dobbs decision, telling the world to know in certain terms that the Supreme Court was considering striking down row. Milk is no stranger to political music. Her song, Quiet, became a feminist anthem in 2017,

sung by a choir at the Women's March in Washington, D.C. And when the Dobbs decision was leaked in May, she found herself again protesting in D.C. And this time, she had her camera ready. What is the very first thing that we hear in this song? We hear the chance of the people on the ground in front of the Supreme Court. in Washington, D.C. The day after the Politico article was published

about the Roe v. Wade potential overturn, and I happened to be in D.C. So I was there with the people chanting, and that is the chant that we sampled in the song. Was it at that moment that you knew this had to be part of a song, or was it later that you thought that moment needs to be incorporated into this piece? There's some chance at protest that sometimes I'm like, I'm not really feeling that one, but this one we won't go back.

It felt really true. And the shout just hurled out of my own lungs. So I was just being present. And then I went back to my hotel room and just looked at the footage again. And then I saw the video that I took when we were shouting, we won't go back. And immediately the idea came to me of, oh, this could be a song. And so that's when the song just kind of just zoomed through me. It was one of those things where I was like fumbling really quickly to set up my recording gear,

put down the drum samples and then sample the audio of the protest. It was one of those visceral quick berths of a song. You know, some songs take a long time. This song just flew out of me. What was the next step in the creative evolution of this track? I loved the voices of all the people in front of Supreme Court. The emotion was so visceral. I stripped the audio from the video and put it into my recording software.

And then I immediately heard really, like, triumphant and kind of rageful drums. And I had these samples that I really loved from the TS Organic packs. And so I put those in. I started to, like, loop the chant with the drums and the guitar. And then started putting just really like chunky piano chords. And then I loop that and then I allowed myself to just channel lyrics. I knew I didn't have all the lyrics yet. And I also knew that I wanted to hear from my audience,

the people who follow me on social media, because I was so heartbroken. I could see what was happening, the cracks in the sky. And the only thing I know to do is to create. at that point. When we feel so stripped of our agency, creativity is this really immediate way where we can feel like we have control over our environment. And I wanted my fans and I to feel some sort of agency amidst a time where rights are getting taken away. So I was like, let me get my fans to like submit lyrics and sing with me. And so the lyrics actually, my body as a revolution is written by an Instagram fan.

Mal Mug is her Instagram handle. And she messaged me saying she's been considering giving up her dream of music. And it just so happened that she and I then started co-writing a little bit for this song. And then you also brought in a number of collaborators, Bianco, Autumn Row and Ani DeFranco. What was the reasoning behind bringing these other voices in? and how did you go about that collaboration? I knew right away that I wanted this song to be communal. When I sent this to Ani DeFranco, she was like, oh, yeah, absolutely.

And I was kind of working through my own personal growth too because I struggle with asking people I look up to collaborate on things. But something about the urgency of this matter kind of brought it beyond me. and my career, so it gave me this little opening to be like, why not ask Bonnie to join in on this? And she has so many songs that address this issue too. Bianco is someone that I've been like trying to find ways of collaborating. And I knew they had production chops that could supplement. lament mine. Using their dance production and then my kind of organic style, I knew we could fuse something. So I went over to Bianca's house and then I worked on the song and actually birthed the whole new section of,

We are the voices, we are the truth. And then in the room, we were like, we are the future. But I was like, actually, we make the future. We actually make up the future and we literally birthed the future as well. So I really loved that lyric. And then having Ani be there, Working remotely with us was a big honor. And it was just us three. And I felt like, okay, I know all the sections are done, but it feels like something, some energy is missing. And I don't know why.

I just feel like there needs to be another voice. Then I walked into a writing session that I had scheduled months ago with this incredible woman, Autumn Rowe. As she was leaving, it all made sense. I was like, oh, I think she's supposed to sing this with me. Once Autumn joined the song, the whole song started moving really quickly. And this is where I saw the beauty of being an independent artist, is that I had scheduled a release for the 30th. And then the hearings that came out, the ruins came out like the week before.

And so I immediately went into first responder mode. And then we just slapped it onto YouTube. We're like, whatever, let's just put it up. And my whole team was like with me. All the artists were with me on it. It was such a beautiful moment of first responder art. It's been the silver lining to a really, really hard time. Yeah.

You described the drums on this track as rageful. And when I hear your voice enter the song at the very beginning, it maybe even has an effect on it as sort of overdrive to make it sound a little grittier and tenser. Are there other ways that the musical Are there other ways that the musical elements in this song, the melodies, harmonies, or rhythms support the lyrical message you're sending? Thanks for noticing the choice of the distortion and the overdrive of the vocals. I pictured someone shouting on their megaphone, those lyrics.

The grittiness and the, chunkiness of the instrumentation is almost like an unapologetic way of taking up space, right? It's like, boom, gong, gong, gong, you know, it's not, it's not very like finessed or delicate or nuanced. It's cathartic because I tell my friends that I've been trained out of my relationship with rage and I'm really trying to reengage with it. I think the status quo really benefits from women and non-binary people being disassociated from their rage. And I am a product of that. Like when things happen that are infuriating, I don't feel the rage like other people do. I'm like, oh, I have my, I have years and probably centuries of conditioning in my genetics that like

make me like figure out how to be a first responder. And that's such a good skill of mine, but I also struggle with it at times because I watch other people be able to be angry. And I think it's really healthy. The music helps me tap into it. So I make these chunky hits. So, I make these chunky hits. that I can like get into and hypnotize myself into feeling what I'm actually feeling deep down inside. Because if I don't address my rage, it becomes a toxin. And so if I can tap into my rage, I can acknowledge it, then I can move forward and like go towards pleasurable things. And music is kind of rage and pleasure at the same time, which I think is really healthy because it will keep me energized in this fight. I mean, after the overturn was announced, I was so depressed. And so many of my

friends were and I was really grateful I had this song that I could play so I actually like drove around L.A. blasting it really loud just to like get my energy up because I think there was a part of me that wanted to like just sink into I don't know like a more defeated energy and I like admitting that out loud you know I almost felt defeated but then I like thought about some people are born into the Great Depression or into World Wars like this is our fight I tell myself. that a lot. This is our fight. The opportunity to show who we are is now. Milk, thank you so much for joining us on Switchin-Pop. Thank you for having me. I'm so stoked.

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who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesday. on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly Democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration

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Milk is the latest in a long lineage of musicians who have addressed the right to choose in music. Anne Powers is a critic and correspondent for NPR music. She's been looking into the history of the relationship between reproductive rights and pop. Pregnancy and birth have always been the subject of songs in folk music and blues music and in popular music, although sometimes it was shrouded in metaphor. So I asked her to bring us some examples, and I started by asking one specifically, the correlation between abortion and music started to reach the public consciousness. Abortion is taken up as a topic, really around the time Roe v. Wade happens in 1973, and mostly among people involved in the Women's Liberation Movement.

You start to see anthems. Some of them were actually even funded by the Women's Liberation Movement. It's not like these songs were making it to the top of the charts, but protest was in the air, anthems were necessary, and people rose. to that challenge. In the late 70s and early 80s, punk happened and protests took a kind of different turn, often just the spirit of insurrection and rebellion. But you also see feminist punk bands like The Poison Girls taking up people's right to choose in songs at that time. Really choice coalesces.

is a cause for popular musicians, I think, in the 90s. There was a lot of activism around choice at that time, particularly among alternative rock bands. You think about bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and the great all-woman punk band L7, who co-founded an activist group called Rock for Choice. So this debate is happening in popular music, although it's always kind of underground. Just as in life, honestly, it's something that people, often feel uncomfortable talking about. But one thing that the realm of pop has to offer is the ability to hone in on very personal stories.

So we've selected a few songs that are sort of significant, whether it be in the subject matter or what they mean in terms of where the movement stands. So I would like to look at Sally's Pigeons by Cindy Lopper, which I think is a very interesting choice. When I hear Sally's pigeons, I think about stories that in one way are kind of got of gothic, you know. They're very dark, they're violent. But in another way, really speak to the harsh realities of young women who don't have that much control over their situation and who are making choices that imperil them.

I think the tone of loss in this song is important for us to take in. We go to music to feel sensual and to feel joy, but we have to understand that this is part of that reality. So I'm grateful to every songwriter who's taken it on, honestly, no matter what their stance. Yeah, I also kind of loop in songs about defiance into that, particularly Fem angles of defiance. Like I'm thinking specifically of Leslie Gors, you don't own me. Looking back to the girl groups and the ingenues of the early 60s, one thing that I found is that those songs, many of which were written by men,

but many others of which were written by young women songwriters, often in teams with men, they address these essential issues in ways that are sometimes, quote unquote, universal. They don't necessarily say out loud what they mean. And they can mean a lot of things. Leslie Gore's song, You Don't Own Me. I've always considered a song that can be applied to many realities young women, especially teenagers face in their first relationships,

whether it's abuse, controlling men, the very burden of femininity that women feel and must bear and must try to work through that asks them to be more submissive to maybe be emotionally beholden to their men. And my body, my choice, another way to say that is you don't own me. Yeah, well, I thought another interesting suggestion was Robbins giving you back, which came out in 99. And when I was listening to that, that wasn't a song that I immediately would think was about being pro-choice. or getting an abortion of that, it sounds very similar to pop love ballads of the time, you know. And I think that sort of universality of application applies to a lot of these songs that may or may not be about the topic at hand.

You know, there's probably so many other songs out there that we don't really know the true meaning of that sound like they're about a breakup or a wistful relationship and, you know, letting someone go in the case of Robin. and it sort of falls into this topic barrel, which I think is interesting. Robin's giving you back makes me think of a Joni Mitchell's song, Little Green, which is about her entrusting her daughter to adoption. So you write him a letter and say, Her eyes are blue, he sends you a poem, and she's lost to you.

Little Green, he's anong. When she was only 21, she had a child. and that child was adopted and Joni didn't reunite with her daughter until her daughter was an adult. And it's funny because when you read reviews of the album Blue, people are so confused by that song. I can't believe no one didn't get it, you know, at first. And I feel the same way about the Robin song. Like I knew having read her account, that that was what it's meant to convey. But people hear what they can bear.

and people hear what they need to hear. So we talked earlier about how there was a lot of activism around choice from alternative and punk bands specifically in the 90s. Was there something going on then specifically that spawned this musical dialogue? 1992, Planned Parenthood versus Casey upholds the right to access abortion, but scales back the constitutional protections that Roe v. Wade provided. This has an electrifying effect on young people, young activists, and particularly among people on the rock scene.

An interesting thing that was happening in the 90s is that within rock music and particularly Indian punk music, there was also a feminist activism happening about that scene itself, right? So you have the beginnings of Riot Girl, you have a band like L7, who was on sub-pop,

organizing pro-choice events in Los Angeles. They were really feeling empowered to tell their stories and to, you know, to make this a primary source of inspiration for them. I mean, every moment, every era and every music community finds its cause, meets its moment. And in the 90s, the struggle around choice was the inspiring political cause for so many musicians in the mainstream. Even an artist like Everlast, who is white rapper from Boston, when he had his biggest solo hit what it's like, one of the stories he tells is a story of a young woman walking into a clinic to have an abortion. You know, this is not necessarily the kind of artist you would think would take up this cause, but that's how much in the foreground the fight for choice was.

in the 1990s. So I guess there's sort of precedent with songs like this getting chart success. I mean, Papa Don't Preach by Madonna reached number one in several countries, including the U.S. when it came out in 1986. But even going to this year, 2022, the song Plan B by Megan the Stallion hit 29 on the Billboard Hot 100. So do you see any parallels between songs reaching chart success now versus in the 80s and in the 90s? Women expressing their right to choose whatever that choice is is powerful to people. And interestingly, two of the most beloved songs in which women do that are women deciding to bear a child.

One is Papa Don't Preach by Madonna. Huge hit. Definitely is a song about choosing to have a baby as an act of standing up to a patriarch, a literal patriarch, your own father. and then Lauren Hill's beautiful ballad to Zion, in which she openly shares that when she became pregnant with her first son, she was pressured by certain people to have an abortion in order to continue her career. And she refused to do that. Look at your career, they say, Lauren, baby, use your head. But instead, I chose to use my heart.

I see a connection with these songs and a song like Plan B because they're all about preserving that choice. It's about living in the moment of choice. Again, that's pop music. It brings us to a moment, an absolute spotlight shown on a turning point in someone's life. So based on all of this and based on. on the current political moment that we find themselves in, do you think that we will be seeing more direct statements

in music to come, more explicit statements, more direct calls to action in pop music, you know, mainstream top 40 pop music at that. I was really surprised on the day that the Dobbs decision was issued at how many musicians instantly responded on social media

and later that weekend from stages all over the world, particularly the Glastonbury Festival in England and later the BET Awards broadcasts on television. I hadn't seen such engagement since the murder of George Floyd. I felt like it was a real benchmark of where we're at in terms of political speech in this country. Musicians always supposedly the great rebels, right, of our culture, but oftentimes constrained by the music industry or by what they think, is going to affect their commercial prospects, their relationship with their audiences, all of those

things. Attitudes do seem to be changing in terms of people feeling like they can and should make a statement, whatever their stance may be. And I can't imagine these artists not carrying the feeling that they expressed in these forums into the recording studio onto the stages where they're performing into their songwriting sessions. So I'm always really interested to see when political speech turns into music. It's a fascinating history and a fascinating thing to follow. And I will be listening to hear what new stories we have to add to our playlists about bodies and choices. Switched on Pop is produced by Rihanna Cruz, edited by Jolie Myers, engineered by Brandon McFarland,

illustrations by Iris Gottlieb and community management by Abby Barr. Our executive producers are Nashat Kerwa and Hana Rosen, and we're a member of Vulture and the Vox Media Podcast Network. You can find more episodes of Switched On Pop anywhere you get podcasts, or, alternatively, on our website, switchedonpop.com. You can also find this on Twitter and Instagram at Switched On Pop. We'll put a link in our show notes to Ann Powers' ongoing article, cataloging musicians' responses

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