The Women Singers Who Made Me Who I Am
B-Side Collection's Summer of Distractions
When I was more active in online spaces, a common thing I’d hear from internet friends when we’d meet in real life is that my voice is surprisingly deep. When I would appear on a podcast or in a video, or when I’d meet people I knew from Twitter at shows, I would hear this all the time. And it is true: my voice is very deep. I remember this slow realization through puberty, as I grew taller and taller while my feet grew to size thirteen, wondering with a small amount of dread just how deep my voice would go. I took pride in my singing ability in middle school, and as my voice began to crack and betray me, it felt like losing some important piece of myself, the person I wanted to be.
What has drawn me most to my favorite music over the years is the way a singer can convey emotion. Most of my favorite songs contain some identifiable and precise moment of emotional release and catharsis that drew me in and continues to give me something I cannot get anywhere else. The way Frances Quinlan’s voice cracks through the second Louisiana in Hop Along’s “Well-Dressed,” the anguish in Future’s voice when he sings “You would never see what I go through” in “Inside The Mattress.” It is the singer’s voice that cuts right to the emotional bone (though I want to give credit to Brian Eno for “1/1,” the first movement of Ambient 1: Music for Airports, the song that has most often brought me to tears in my life, the swelling waves of sustained piano keys and the way that each new note cuts the tension).
I recently finished Zachary Pace’s memoir-in-essays I Sing to Use The Waiting: A Collection of Essays about the Women Singers Who've Made Me Who I Am. While the book didn’t quite work for me as a whole, I loved the premise and the musicians that Pace wrote about. I loved how Pace wrote about the voices of the women singers who made them and gave them a reference point and origin story for their own voice. In honor of that book, and in honor of a voice I am trying to love, and in order to further put off writing my own book, today’s edition of B-Side Collection's Summer of Distractions is a deep dive on the women singers who made me who I am.
Against Me!
I don’t think there is a singer alive who can conjure the same power and presence as Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace. “Black Me Out” is maybe the song that best showcases her voice, a song that continues to build and top itself as it goes. Listen to the way that Laura hits the high notes in the second verse of “Black Me Out,” the apex of the song, a high note so high that her pulling it off feels like a minor miracle. Capitalization for emphasis: As if you were my FUCKing pimp, as if I was your fuckING whore, black me out.
Crying
I love Beyond the Fleeting Gales, chiptune prog-rock band Crying’s single LP. I can’t think of another band that sounds exactly like Crying, or comes even remotely close to pulling off their blend of exceptionally tight instrumentals and surreal vocals. The band’s singer, Elaiza Santos, effectively mumbles from a distance over the band’s video-game-soundtrack music, which sounds like a Sega Dreamcast-rendered translation of Sum 41 covering Rush. Something I love about old 8- and 16-bit video game pixel art is how the artists had to get creative with technological restrictions to convey images that would only translate when seen through the blurry, blended screen of a CRT television set. The goal is to evoke rather than illustrate, and Santos’ voice likewise is primarily evocative; it’s never clear exactly what she’s singing, but the possibility of what she could be singing over what sounds like Sonic the Hedgehog boss fight music is far more interesting.
Fergie
I had The Dutchess on CD in middle school long before I knew or cared about the running music critic’s joke that was The Black Eyed Peas, and I remember being proud of myself when I had finally memorized all of the lyrics to “Fergalicious,” and liked that the CD version of “London Bridge” had Oh shit instead of Oh snap in the radio version, and I don’t think I can give you a better example of a song that has stayed with me longer than “Big Girls Don’t Cry (Personal),” which was one of the first songs I put on my first iPod and which I have played loudly in the car during long drives around New Jersey at night and which still gets at my most emotional self if I let it, and “Glamorous” is my karaoke song, and “MILF$” is funny until you realize it is an avant garde work of art, and I am not interested in the politics of cool. I still love how Fergie sings “we’ll play jacks and Uno cards,” painting a picture of a childhood innocence that, for lack of a better term, hurts my feelings. If I ever get my eyebrow pierced, you will know why.
G.L.O.S.S.
I am hopeful that we won’t let G.L.O.S.S. be forgotten. For the uninitiated, the band (whose name stands for Girls Living Outside Society’s Shit) put out a demo tape in 2015, which remains among my favorite hardcore releases of all time, sounds as fresh and new and exciting and modern nine years later as it did the day it released. “Outcast Stomp” should be required listening for anyone interested in creating heavy music that retains an accessible sense of rhythm, but I want to give praise to “Masculine Artifice,” the track that best showcases the vocal work of Sadie Switchblade, whose ability to seamlessly transfer between guttural roars and bratty sneer immediately made G.L.O.S.S. the buzziest band in hardcore. The band broke up in 2016 after turning down a lucrative recording contract with Epitaph Records, proving once and for all that we inhabit a world that is not worthy of something so special.
Julien Baker
I discovered Julien Baker at the end of 2015, days before New Years Eve, and my most vivid memory of that winter break during my junior year of college is of listening to Sprained Ankle on repeat, in disbelief that someone my age was capable of making art so emotionally vulnerable, so mature, so close to the bone. I still listen to Sprained Ankle when I am struggling with finding the honesty, the difficult truths in my writing. “Go Home” is a haunting closer, a brave and generous song that still excites me like the first time I heard it, but I would like to give Julien Baker her flowers for singing “Everybody Does” like her voice is pulled directly from her heart, for giving me a lyric like I know I’m a pile of filthy wreckage you will wish you never touched, which I would argue rivals Johnny Cash’s I will let you down, I will make you hurt in regards to how it cuts me open and makes me consider the fine details of my blood.
Lady Gaga
Among the most significant events of my life was the first time I heard “Bad Romance,” a song that is still shocking, contemporary, thrilling. I already loved Gaga from “Paparazzi,” and I was familiar with the other The Fame singles, but “Bad Romance” crashed into me and knocked me out the first time I heard it on the radio. I know that you have heard this song enough times to imagine it perfectly, but listen to the vocalizing that opens “Bad Romance” and imagine hearing it for the first time. It is such a called shot, a singer who knows that this song, which could have easily turned the artist into an object of mockery was it not so perfectly executed, would make her a legend, an icon.
I’d also like to direct your attention to “Monster,” one of her best, a song that you are probably familiar with you are a Gaga fan, which has everything I love about Lady Gaga’s voice within four minutes: wild pronunciations, a sexy attitude, powerhouse belting, and dramatic and campy spoken-word storytelling. This is a singer who understands exactly who she is and is excited to share it with us, an unworthy audience. The astronomical rise of Chappell Roan has me considering the value of a genuinely new point of view once again, and I can’t think of another artist of my generation who embodies that better than Gaga.
Mitski
I love the surreal, dream-like vocalizations of Crying’s Elaiza Santos, but the clarity and intention in Mitski’s voice in “Your Best American Girl” haunts me. How was there a world where this song didn’t exist? The emotion here is so singlular, so deeply felt and relatable that it is hard to imagine there ever existed a time when I couldn’t connect with it through Mitski’s voice. The way her voice lifts during the line I guess I couldn’t help trying in the chorus is so precise, such a mirror to an anguish that I know exists within me. This is a track that I cannot just hear once. I am on the fourth play of this paragraph as I write this. I am certain that I do not approve of how my mother raised me and yet this song makes me believe that I might, and that is the power of a voice.
Rihanna
While reading I Sing To Use The Waiting, I could not believe that Pace did not write about “Bitch Better Have My Money” in the Rihanna chapter. I want to tattoo the way that Rihanna sings don’t act like you forgot on my heart. This song is so driven by, so controlled by Rihanna’s unbelievable vocal talent that I don’t know if I could recognize the instrumental without it.
I could not believe Pace did not write about “Kiss It Better,” a song I have used to make myself cry when I am upset about whatever but too out of touch with the feeling of my body to evoke the calming feeling of tears. The way that her voice moves in and out of the buzzing of a soaring lead guitar. Man, fuck your pride.
And I will say it again, I could not believe Pace did not write about “Same Ol’ Mistakes,” which for my money is the prime example of a cover that far exceeds the original, a song which layers countless tracks of her voice over each other, weaving a blanket structured over a bassline that works its way into your ear and won’t leave long after the song is over. I would cut my fingers off for a new Rihanna album that comes even remotely close to matching the highs on Anti.
Thank you for reading. Who are the women singers who made you? Let me know by leaving a comment, or by telling me on Instagram or Threads. You can also follow me on Letterboxd.
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