Character-Sketch Songs and Gender

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I just said on the name-in-song thread that I've been thinking of starting a thread "about the single-person character-study or love-song about a woman (or actually hahaha 'girl') being such an embedded (androcentric?) pop-music trope that there really are none about men; even when women write them they write them about women."

By which I think I mean that a really big and consistently defining thing about popular music over the past forty years has been songs about female characters: the opposite seemed to fade right around the advent of rock (constituted as a "male" genre to begin with). This type of song might not reflect anything much deeper than the sort of distanced pedestal-slash-Gaze construction of how men look at women in general (make sick note here that this sort of song and this sort of viewing are pretty common to direct at children, too); either way, somewhere along the road of "Julia" and "Maggie Mae" and "Stupid Girl" and "Brown-Eyed Girl" it became such an established form (like the form of the sonnet) that it's also more likely for heterosexual women to write name-in-title "character" songs about other women than about men. (Their songs-about-men go in the big normal pile of just vague-relationship-songs.) The only time you see men being slotted into pedestal-style character studies is when they're being deliberately inserted there to work against the expected form: e.g., via gay male songwriters consciously reversing the construct.

I dunno, discuss. I know we could fill the thread for days citing and discussing counterexamples: my question is more whether the above rings true for you as a general rule, and what you think about that, etc. Should Tom Petty be writing "American Boy" right now? (Or more strikingly "American Man?") (Is it really as simple as it being judged non-masculine to be interested in or captivated by other males?)

― nabisco%%, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

New "Morrissey, anyone?" answers.

― nabisco%%, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Blur wrote a lot of character study songs about men: Tracy Jacks, The Story of a Charmless Man, End of a Century are the only ones I can think of right now, but I'm sure that there are more.

― lyra in seattle, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh yes, this raises the good point that there are character sketches of men that use the men as stand-ins for social-commentary archetypes (and these tend to be either negative or man-as-alienated-everyman). But where are the loving admiring girl-type ones? Or even "Leader of the Pack" or "Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy" type ones?

― nabisco%%, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Bad Bad Leroy Brown.

Candy Says.

Mr Postman.

Gotta Man.

― Sterling Clover, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The first counterexample that comes to mind is actually an answer song: Scrawl's "Charles," which is basically an answer to Kiss's "Beth." But there's also the Bangles' "James," who's not meant to be a "type," but it's not exactly a laudatory song either.

If only Liz Phair's "Supernova" gave her supernova a name...

In general, though, I'd guess that the ratio isn't _that_ far off from the ratio of successful male vs. female hetero-friendly singer- songwriter types.

― Douglas, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

F***ing In Rhythm And Sorrow by the Sugarcubes
My Rival by Alex Chilton
Mr. Malcontent by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions

Yeah, as a general rule, I think the songs are about women, but I don't think using such forms necessarily reflects laziness or lack of talent. Maupassant's stories are like this (right?), but they're still funny and interesting. I think the point is to use a recognizable character or situation to get across some uncommon perception about it.

(make sick note here that this sort of song and this sort of viewing are pretty common to direct at children, too)

I don't agree with this. I mean it seems true in art, but I don't think it's true to life. I mean it's not sick cos women (and probably other men) do it to men, too.

― youn, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

An interesting topic. I always adored Stones' mysoginistic to the extreme Under My Thumb and Stupid Girl partially because it was contradicted in Angie. Somehow they contradicted themselves, fighting their own fears (of *the woman*)? Of course Punk tackled the gender roles very differently than say Cock Rock.

― nathalie, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Youn what I think I meant about children was something like this: both women and children are more likely to be used as these distanced narrative "objects" of observation (one assumes based on the current form of narrative and the arts being mostly shaped by men). Something like "Julia" (woman) "Hey Jude" (child) and even "Martha My Dear" (dog) ... but rarely any sort of equivalently-framed address to a grown man. (Which isn't specific to music in the least.)

― nabisco%%, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

but is it not almost universally male to make grand public gestures for love whether it be art, proposing on the jumbotron, etc...? i mean this in a public sense, sure most of these songs are fictional i bet but still the writers have it in them to stake their claim in public. women are less territorial, although the siddelys give a nice lashing to some fellas it seems more pain-driven.

― keith, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh, and I was trying to think of songs that fit this trope (except with men) and the best example that came to mind was Concrete Blonde's "Joey."

― nabisco%%, Friday, 14 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The Supernova ref. reminded me of The Breeder's "Divine Hammer".

― http://gygax.pitas.com, Friday, 14 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

But the whole point of "Divine Hammer" was that the man-figure was missing: she was looking for him (him/it).

― nabisco%%, Friday, 14 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Of course there is the male agenda, the fact that a masculine form (rock) has become widely accepted as setting the paradigms and criteria for good songwriting. I think Nabisco is, on balance, right, despite lots of counterexamples, but it's not just quantity, it's quality. These songs about women are overwhelmingly love songs (I don't mean paeans, necessarily, but songs where a romantic-sexual relationship to the woman under discussion is at the least implicit) whereas those about men are either talking about generalised types, mostly embodied in song for protest or satirical purposes, or they are little character studies more like short stories (e.g. Stan by Eminem, several Johnny Cash numbers). Males get to be dominant cultural figures (as in the real world), interesting characters, taking action and so on, while women get to be the objects of male gaze.

I think it's analogous with painting some while ago. Women got portraits (to look lovely) and nudes (sexy) while men got portraits (character) and lots of dramatic poses and action scenes (history painting). It's changed some. In music this is less overt, but the old patterns and habits of sexism linger, I think.

― Martin Skidmore, Friday, 14 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I always adored Stones' mysoginistic to the extreme Under My Thumb and Stupid Girl partially because it was contradicted in Angie. Somehow they contradicted themselves, fighting their own fears (of *the woman*)?

Is Under My Thumb ironic at all? I'd really like to think so, as it has a wonderful chord progression and melody. The line in the third verse -- "Under my thumb, a girl who keeps to herself/Under my thumb, while I'm free to love someone else" -- seems to suggest Jagger's at least aware of his own misogynism, even if he isn't doing anything about it.

― Prude, Saturday, 15 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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