Songs about women murdering men
January 12th, 2009 by Lorna Bracewell in Lorna Bracewell, News
The idea for this post was born of my accidental experiment with decaffeinated coffee a week or so ago. (You can read more about that here.) One of the completely random and wholly undeveloped thoughts that “seeped in and out of my foggy, throbbing brain” during the course of that experiment was the following: There are a lot of really good songs about women murdering men. I’ve decided to explore and defend this claim. Here’s a list of the songs I was attempting to think about and some speculation as to why I/we enjoy them so much.
As always, if you know of other songs or can think of other reasons this premise is so engaging, post them at the bottom for me.
Aerosmith, Janie’s Got A Gun: Aerosmith, a band not exactly known for its radical feminist consciousness, broke major rock n’ roll ground in 1989 with this catchy little ditty. It tells the story of a girl (Janie) who takes revenge on her sexually abusive father by putting “a bullet in his brain.” It is the only song on the list to break the elusive Top 10. (It peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1990.) It is also the only song on the list performed by a male vocalist.
Martina McBride, Independence Day: A song as beautiful, empowering and redemptive as this one comes along once in a generation. It tells the story of a mother who immolates her abusive husband and herself on the 4th of July in a final act of what her surviving daughter, the song’s narrator, calls “revolution.” Many country radio programmers were initially reluctant to spin the tune. It took Martina herself working the phones and personally pleading with station managers to get the song on the air. Today, it’s a country music staple.
The Dixie Chicks, Goodbye Earl: Each of the songs on this list sparked a bit of controversy in their day, but the gleefully irreverent tone with which the gleefully irreverent Dixie Chicks recount this tale of premeditated murder singled it out for particularly intense criticism. The song tells the story of two best friends, Mary Ann and Wanda, plotting, executing and deftly concealing the murder by poisoning of the eponymous Earl, Wanda’s abusive husband. Its chorus features a series of darkly comic lines such as my personal favorite “Ain’t it dark wrapped up in that tarp, Earl?”
Miranda Lambert, Gunpowder and Lead: This guitar driven toe-tapper is the most recently released song on the list. It can be heard on Lambert’s 2007 album, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The plot is short and simple: The narrator’s boyfriend was arrested (presumably for domestic violence) and has just been released on bail. She races home where she intends to load her shot gun and await his inevitable return when she will “show him what a little girl’s made of: gunpowder and lead.” While the version of the song edited for radio does not include the actual murder, the album version ends with what is unmistakably a gunshot blast.
While compiling this list, I’ve thought long and hard about why I (along with hundreds of thousands of other consumers of popular music) find these songs about women murdering men so compelling. Before I can answer this question, I need to cite a few statistics: In a survey conducted by the American Bar Association in 1995-1996, nearly 25% of women were raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse. This same study found that only half of 65 abused women who applied and qualified for a protection order actually received one.
Most of us don’t need statistics like these to tell us about the prevalence of domestic violence in our communities or how inadequately its overwhelmingly female victims are served by our criminal justice system. We all know that the laws of the state, the traditional structure of the family and the cultural expectations of gender are arrayed against women in particularly harsh ways, but we don’t all know how to verbalize that knowledge. These songs do that for us. Their candor is an important part of their appeal.
Another dimension of these songs’ appeal has nothing to do with their veracity or their ability to objectify our experiences. In fact, it has to do with just the opposite. We like these songs because the universes their characters inhabit are, in some respects, very different from our own. Janie overcomes her shame and her socialization to passivity. The battered mother of Independence Day transforms herself from victim to hero in one final act of revolutionary self-sacrificial defiance. Wanda, Mary Ann and the nameless narrator from Gunpowder and Lead defend themselves when the laws of their state prove inadequate. These songs have, if not happy endings, at least just outcomes. Such moral satisfaction is rarely found amongst the narratives of real battered women. To find it in a song provides at least some consolation.
The final, and I would argue, most intriguing part of the appeal of these songs is that their heroines are just that. Although they transgress innumerable fundamental social, cultural and moral boundaries, the women in these songs are not punished or vilified. They are not branded murderers, victims or hysterics. (The title of Miranda Lambert’s album even pokes a little fun at the way women are so often dismissed as “crazy.”) Instead, their praises are literally sung. Just like those of a soldier, a traditionally male vocation that is often extolled in song, the suffering and horrific deeds of these battered women are woven into a narrative that imbues them with righteousness. Consciously or not, these songs all simultaneously invert and reclaim the traditional heroic narrative, arguably the oldest and most ubiquitous literary form. No wonder we can’t seem to get enough of them.
January 12th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
I have to ask, conspicuous by its absence on this list is Garth Brooks hit, “Thunder Rolls”. Is this accidental or just because you don’t like it?
For myself, I’m not fond of it, but I will admit to liking Tanya Tucker’s non-hit version.
January 12th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
You can’t forget April March’s Chick Habit: http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/deathproof/chickhabit.htm. Interestingly enough, there’s a list of songs of the exact opposite, Men killing Women: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/27/124356.php
January 12th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Leave it to Steven Tyler! Wonderful blog, Lorna!
January 12th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
I completely forgot about “The Thunder Rolls.” Thanks for correcting this glaring oversight. I also just remembered another classic: “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.” Both of these may require my theory to be expanded.
January 13th, 2009 at 1:30 am
“Just like those of a soldier, a traditionally male vocation that is often extolled in song, the suffering and horrific deeds of these battered women are woven into a narrative that imbues them with righteousness.” - great comparison…
January 13th, 2009 at 2:01 am
Loved your blog. Keep them coming.
January 13th, 2009 at 2:08 am
I’m showing my age but you have to include “Frankie and Johnny” You can’t deny such great lyrics as this, “rooty toot toot three times she’d shoot right through those swingin doors. Yeah, he was her man but he was doin her wrong”
Men, you got to listen. You just can’t get away with doin your lady wrong. This just might have been the first song about a woman murdering a man.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:50 am
From Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads album, the duet with PJ Harvey has an unnamed woman stabbing Henry Lee and throwing him down a deep deep well. The song is a trad, arr - for example it was recorded in 1932 by Dick Justice (on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music) - and is a variant of a Scottish folk song, Young Hunting, which has a similar plot.
Meanwhile, on the same album, there’s a Nick Cave original, The Curse of Milhaven, which has a young girl on a killing spree in her hometown. Oh, and the song Crow Jane has a woman killing a few people, too.
So if you want songs about women killing men, you could do worse than Murder Ballads!
January 13th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
How about the Ballad of Lizzie Borden. Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 wacks. When she saw what she had done she gave her father 41.
“Oh Lizzie she kept busy that sunny afternoon both up and downstairs choppin as she sung an old time tune.”
January 13th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Dad, it makes me nervous how into this post you’ve gotten. Take a step back. :)
January 13th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Lorna
We write and sing about killing men because a lot of us have had that fantasy once in awhile. For battered women, sometimes we feel we must kill or be killed. Interestingly, since the domestic violence shelters opened in the mid to late 70’s, the percentage of women killing men has declined precipitously, presumably because the shelters and domestic violence centers offered them another better alternative. While we may believe that women killing violent men is just, the courts rarely rule in favor of these women. There are thousands of women languishing in US prisons with life sentences for defending their own lives. That is why, in FL CASA and other programs worked to help women get clemency and out of prison who killed their abusers. To date we have managed to free over 30 FL women.
January 13th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Interesting post. When I first saw the title I immediately thought of Jim White’s ‘The Wound That Never Heals’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFskdl_gTE4
This is quite an atmospheric & cinematic song and its main protagonist seems to be a female serial killer. It’s even humorous, in a darkly comic way
January 13th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Lorna, I think you should record another CD, covers of all the songs above. I can provide back up. We would sell millions of copies. Nicole and Lorna sing the hits.
January 14th, 2009 at 10:09 am
“Murder In The First Degree” by Jenny Flory.
January 15th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
I dug this post. Tim Walker sent me the link. Great topic.
myspace.com/jennyflory
you can hear the song.
Murder In The First Degree is one of my favorite songs to perform, it is a crowd favorite and it has to be because the message is one of empowerment for women.
I think its easy to identify with the desperation of the women in these songs. Thats why audiences enjoy them.
They can feel her power… And in a world where women are being degraded and abused, this power is important. It’s a symbol. Of hope, I think. For equality.
(The funny thing is… When men hear this song most of them just think Im crazy) go figure.
xoxo
jf
January 16th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Lorna, thank you for ANYTHING you can do to help desperate and hurting women know there is a better alternative than murder (even if it may be “justified”): CASA and other such groups. And thank you for ANYTHING to help raise support for such organizations that are so strapped for funds.
January 18th, 2009 at 8:00 am
Love the list. I have a couple additions. Tanya Tucker did a song in 1974 called No Man’s Land. In the end, the woman murders the man who raped her. You can get the tune on I-tunes. Well worth the 99 cents. The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia reminded me of another song. This one is a murder of a man and woman committed by a woman. Cher’s Dark Lady.
January 21st, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Very interesting article