Helen Reddy – I Am Woman
Even though I write about music and give my opinion about it, I don’t consider myself a critic, mostly because an enormous percentage of music critics appear to be massive tools. I cite as exhibit “A” one asshat of a writer named Paul Cooper, who, in giving her album (they call it an EP, but it really isn’t) “Kelly’s Locker” a 2.4 on Pitchfork, seemed to believe that Sarah Cracknell owed him a personal apology for simply daring to exist and create. Cooper wrote 120 reviews for the site between March 1999 and December 2002, and consistent with Pitchfork’s place in the musical ecosystem at that time, I’ve heard of maybe 10 of the artists and listened to none of the records. I can’t find any clear trace of Cooper after 2002, so presumably he went back under the snarky rock he had crawled out from three years earlier.
I mention this because I have concluded that I don’t much like “I Am Woman” by Helen Reddy, and I want to make clear it is not personal. No one owes me an apology.
I came to write this because I was thinking about my mother, who is dealing with some medical issues right now, and how I’ve never really written about her except in connection with my dad, who’s had one write up so far and has another one coming down the pipe. This reminded me of Tolstoy’s justifiably famous opening line to “Anna Karenina”: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” For a writer, unhappiness means conflict, and that is inherently more interesting to both the writer and their potential audience than people who love each other talking about how nicely everything is going. I write about my dad because I’m working through almost 43 years spent at loggerheads. I have no such issues with my Mom, who was the single most important person in shaping whatever bit of good I have in me.
The one song I always associate with my mother is “I Am Woman”, and I truthfully have no idea if she even likes the song. I know she owned it, and she definitely played it in our home, but was it for aesthetic reasons or for empowerment? The latter doesn’t actually require that you like something: my workout mixes have some tunes that I think are objectively awful, but they get me pumped up and ready to push for a new personal best on the leg press machine. In that mix, I found a home for “You Give Love A Bad Name” (which I must sheepishly admit to having owned on 45 at one point).
I usually listen to the songs I write about under this series 10 or more times to really get a feel for the song and to see how it holds up as a listening experience as compared to my memory of it. I just couldn’t do that with “I Am Woman”, breaking down at around the sixth or seventh play. My quibble isn’t with the message, which is no less necessary now than it was over 50 years ago when it was first released. But the song is an example of everything that was wrong with pop music at the time: a wall of mushy sound (other than some weirdly misplaced pseudo southern rock-lite guitar) surrounds lyrics that are all surface, no subtext. And I don’t much care for her singing: it feels like she’s yelling at me (and maybe she is – I am so not the demographic being targeted here). And yet, yes, I do feel a bit strong, maybe even invincible, as Reddy sings the chorus. It’s very easy to understand why the song was embraced by many (though not all) in the women’s liberation movement, and I am more than a bit surprised that it never really had a second life on the charts (and even then only in her home country Australia) until after Reddy’s passing in September 2020.
I’m not completely anti-Reddy. I remembered liking the song “Angie Baby” (written by future “Undercover Angel” hitmaker Alan O’Day), and while it has many of the same production tics that dogged much of 1970s soft pop/easy listening – space age keyboards, soulful female backup singers, barely a wisp of backbeat – it holds up much better to my ears than “I Am Woman”. It has a very spooky feel, almost like a slowed down take on Eagles’ “Witchy Woman”. The vocal is more understated, and the compelling tale of a mentally ill young woman draws you in.
So, Mom – and everyone else out there who once loved or still does love “I Am Woman” – I see you, and I respect your taste. Because I appreciate that not all music is made for my ears, and because I’m not a jackass. You know – like Paul Cooper was.
PopNotes 