Staff Picks: 7 of Our Favorite Albums and Songs (That Just Happen to Be By Women)

Yesterday, we published a primer on three significant women songwriters, so today, we’re singing the praises of some of our favorite ladies’ albums and songs. As varied as the material that inspired them, these seven picks showcase the undeniable influence that female musicians have had on seemingly every genre of music.

1) “At Seventeen,” Janis Ian (1975)

Picked by: Erika

It takes a lot of bravery to write about the pain of feeling ugly, unpopular, or just plain “other.” Most people are too ashamed to discuss these things among friends, never mind broadcasting their pain to the entire world. Janis Ian was initially unsure about recording such a personal song, and once she did, the uncomfortable — and very female — subject matter made it difficult to promote to male DJs and record promoters. So she took a different tactic, directly connecting with her target audience through daytime television. It took six months for the song to catch on, but once she got the chance to sing it on The Tonight Show, it became a #1 hit and earned Ian a Grammy for best female pop vocal performance. In our society, where bullying is rampant and severe, Janis Ian’s raw vulnerability and honesty resonates as much as it did 40 years ago.

2) The Kick Inside, Kate Bush (1978)

Picked by: Emma

Kate Bush found her own special spot in the music industry. The Kick Inside, which was released when Bush was only 19, was her debut album, yet it already showed a great deal of musical prowess. Her vocal range was exhibited from the fore, as was her songwriting power. She was a beautiful woman who didn’t mind flaunting it, but didn’t sell herself solely upon it. Her enigmatic lyrics often kept people guessing at exactly how taboo the subject matter really was. Her fear of flying made her overseas appearances limited, thus keeping her audience fairly small, but she created that “Kate Bush sound” that’s been all the rage since, inspiring Tori Amos and Bat For Lashes, along with many more.

3) They Don’t Know, Kirsty MacColl (1979)

Picked by: Sharon

If there was any justice in the world, Kirsty MacColl’s debut single “They Don’t Know” (rather perfectly described by The Guardian as “as if the Byrds had been writing for the Shangri-Las”) would have been a huge #1 hit in 1979. As it was, an ill-timed distributor’s strike meant, despite heavy radio play, the single didn’t make it into the shops and instead it barely made the UK charts. It took Tracy Ullman and a fancy video featuring Macca himself to make it a top 10 hit (#2 in the UK and #8 in the US) a few years later but, to my ears anyway, MacColl’s original remains the superior and definitive version.

The daughter of legendary folk singer Ewan MacColl and most famous for calling Shane MacGowan a “scumbag, you maggot” in maybe the best Christmas song of all, “Fairytale Of New York,” MacColl was tragically killed by a speeding motorboat while on holiday back in 2000. All these years on she remains one of Britain’s most underrated songwriters. Her brief but brilliant career though is celebrated with a park bench plaque in London bearing the lyrics to one of her most famous songs, “Soho Square” — “One day I’ll be waiting there, no empty bench in Soho Square” — by which fans still gather every year on her birthday proving how much she is still missed 15 years on.

4) “Typical Girls,” The Slits (1979)

Picked by: Liam

When I saw the Slits back in the summer of 2007, I didn’t quite know what to make of them. They were opening for Sonic Youth at McCarren Park Pool in Brooklyn where they played their seminal ’80s indie classic Daydream Nation in its entirety. As far as I was concerned, these weird women and their angular, polyrhythmic songs — which they occasionally played when singer Ari Up (R.I.P.) wasn’t rambling on and on about the Earth and dub reggae and a million other ideas — were just taking up valuable Daydream Nation time. But I was intrigued enough to go investigate their debut album, Cut, and from there, the pieces began to fall into place.

If the punks were revolutionaries, then the post-punks were ultra-revolutionaries, which made The Slits ultra-ULTRA-revolutionaries, by the very nature of their gender. Even in such a supposedly forward-thinking scene, women were still subjected to rampant sexism, not taken seriously, and often relegated to the sidelines while the boys got up onstage and made a racket. But the Slits proved they could make just as much of a racket as any art school lad. With a wholly unique sound that blended punk, funk, jazz, krautrock, and yes, dub reggae, the Slits crafted avant-garde, yet danceable, polemics on racism, shoplifting, urban blight, and in the case of their iconic single “Typical Girls,” the fallacy of the media’s portrayal of women. The Slits helped to pave the way for badass chicks who weren’t content with simply watching history unfold around them: they were going to make some history of their own. All other bands could just fucking wait.

5) Any Burt Bacharach/Hal David composition sung by Dionne Warwick during the 1960s

Picked by: Rick

While in terms of composing popular music Burt Bacharach and Hal David may not have quite the panache of Lennon and McCartney, without a doubt they were one of the best songwriting teams of the ’60s, and, for that matter, all time. With that in mind, you could probably make an argument that Dionne Warwick was largely responsible for letting the world see how great they were as songwriters, with her classic smooth vocal delivery that epitomizes adult-oriented rock in the ’60s. “Walk On By,” “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” “Don’t Make Me Over,” and many others resonate with the sometimes painful consequences of love and relationships gone bad. I don’t know why an artist who had almost 70 singles that made the Billboard Hot 100 is so often overlooked when conversations turn to great women in music, but that does seem to be the case with Warwick. I could have chosen almost any of her songs as a favorite, but I don’t know any song ever written that sums up the agony of heartbreak better than “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself.” That whole catalog of Warwick’s ’60s recordings would apply here, though. All classics.

6) Tom Tom Club, Tom Tom Club (1981)

Picked by: Jim

Tina Weymouth would probably get on this list just for her being one of the best bass players to ever pick up her instrument alone; her role as a founding member of the Talking Heads would also justify her inclusions.  When the Heads ended up on an extended break, however, she and husband Chris Frantz formed their own combo, a successful group in their own right that produced “Genius of Love,” a song that got performed on the road on the Heads’ tour for Speaking in Tongues which ends up in the film Stop Making Sense, and became one of the most sampled pieces of music from the 1980s.

7) “Race With the Devil,” Girlschool (1980)

Picked by: Sarah

When people talk about all-female rock bands, the Runaways are usually one of the first that come to mind. Yet even better, in my opinion, was Girlschool, who were a part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement. Although their own material is fantastic, this cover of a Gun song was my introduction to them, and I was blown away by lead guitarist Kelly Johnson. As a young female guitarist with a shortage of female axe-slingers to look up to, Girlschool (and Kelly Johnson in particular) were an incredibly important discovery for me. They toured with Motorhead, who really championed them, and released three albums in the early ’80s before concentrating more on live performances. The band are still touring with original members Kim McAuliffe (vocals/guitar), Enid Williams (bass), and Denise Dufort (drums), but are sadly without Kelly Johnson, who died of cancer in 2007, aged 50.

What would you add to our list? Let us know in the comments!