Female Singers - Halp?

[beccatoria]

Hey guys
First off I'm really, really sorry I've been so crap about posting here lately and stuff. It's been a bit of a grind-you-down kind of couple of weeks. But I still love you all!

In other news, HALP ME.

For reasons that are far to long and boring to be of interest to many of you, I find that I need some suggestions for female singers, or bands with female lead singers, that I might like. My music taste tends to be somewhere in the vicinity of indie rock with various odd jaunts toward both singer-songwriter and rap artist. I like complicated lyrics. I like when not all the songs are about being in love. Or if they are, the lyrics are complicated and interesting. I like drumming. I like "strong" voices rather than "pretty" voices.

Here are some female artists I already like:

Florence and the Machine
Joan Baez
Tracy Chapman
Pat Benatar (shut up!)
Jefferson Airplane
Regina Spektor
Tori Amos (during her early years)

Any recs welcome!

Thanks guys!

Comments

[frolicndetour.livejournal.com]

And it's not a coincidence that I'm only talking about this here in a super-sekrit corner in the comments of a post about something else with people I know and not in a place likely to get linked on metafandom or linkspam as "part of the wank." *waves to Becka*

*also waves sheepishly* And yeah. It's also not a coincidence I'm replying here to you instead of, like, anywhere else.

As soon as it's something that's going to get a "Fail" appended to the end of its name, it's like there are rules to follow in how it should be talked about which I'm not sure is a good thing?

Yesss. It becomes all about consciousness-raising, as opposed to analysis. And I'm certainly not opposed to consciousness-raising in general, and there have been times when I've been all for that method of discourse. But ... fanfic warnings, misogyny in slash, and this particular "fail" all strike me as issues with, well, nuance. And nuance gets lost when the discussion is framed in terms of good vs. evil.

Plus, I like analysis, dammit. It's who I am. It's what I do. :P Even when I consider myself part of the offended group, so I live in hope that I'm not completely hypocritical here.

and I am uncomfortable with how the discussion starts to trend away from how stupid, superficial, offensively flawed in execution, whatever-you-think-about-the-project it is and her right to make it or her right to call it art, because those two things are not the same and fandom conflates them in ways I don't love

*nod nod* I'll just point to what nicole_anell said about the project herself. When I first heard of it I thought 'ew, tacky,' but, admittedly did not envision it as an attack on every disability ever precisely because: differently gendered. conjoined. twins. from the child porn industry. Maybe Borat would be a better comparison than All in the Family, because it did seem that the intent was at least as much to be wacky than to save the world by subverting stereotypes. But now that I've heard more about it, I am more interested in the potentially subversive aspects of the project and, if done well, I think it could potentially be more effective than an entirely unproblematic homily about the Struggles the Disabled Face that would offend no one.

And for something that's meant to be deliberately offensive for artistic purposes, she seems awfully surprised that people were...offended.

To psychoanalyze someone I don't know (while I'm up), I tend to think that where people like Amanda Palmer - particularly artists - run into trouble is that they eagerly anticipate offense coming from one side -the cultural right - but not from the side they consider themselves aligned with?

[nicole-anell.livejournal.com]

they eagerly anticipate offense coming from one side -the cultural right - but not from the side they consider themselves aligned with?
YES. I think that generalization is extremely accurate for her. Especially because people like that who are directing their 'shock' artistry at people who are anti-gay, anti-sex, etc. feel like they've earned too much "cred" to be attacked by the left or underprivileged, and can't imagine where that came from. At worst they fall back on all-my-critics-are-fascists.

That's how you get people who are simultaneously like "frak you, I make art to provoke!!" and then desperately defending their pure intentions.