10 Songs on Power

As different ideological stances tend toward different, and at times contradictory, constructions of “power,” feminist theorists have never really been able to land on a single consistent definition of the term. Traditionally, the concept is figured into four modes: power over, power with, power to, and power within. It can look like coercion and control, solidarity and support, potential and production, or affirmation and actualization. But, as an intersectional approach recognizes that each woman occupies a unique space within “interlocking systems of oppression,” it’s important to conceptualize power as something dynamic, and as something fundamentally relative to every individual. And, while the need to understand what power looks like in the hands of oppressors is both urgent and crucial, it is just as necessary to envision what power can be as a weapon in the hands of women.

“NAMELESS, FACELESS”: COURTNEY BARNETT (2018)

With a chorus intertextually indebted to Margaret Atwood, this single recounts the all-too-familiar story of a woman who can’t even “walk through the park at night” for fear of physical harm. Barnett, with her characteristic causticity, assumes a position of superiority as she looks down upon the male aggressor with pity for his own fragility. Though she recognizes the anger and loneliness that shape modern masculinity, she by no means prioritizes the male experience. Rather, Barnett contextualizes the cycles of gendered violence to better humanize the countless “nameless, faceless” women.

“FOUR WOMEN”: NINA SIMONE (1966)

Although Simone’s characterizations of the titular four women are only six-lines brief, they span generations of violence and resilience. Each description begins with physical appearance, but Simone humanizes the various identities as she makes space for their intergenerational traumas, fetishized bodies, and legacies of sexual exploitation and ownership. In lending her voice to these oft-suppressed narratives of Black women, Simone’s eruption of righteous fury that concludes the track is the result of centuries of suffering and the anticipation of centuries more of power.

“YOUR BEST AMERICAN GIRL”: MITSKI (2016)

What begins as a conventional ballad of starcrossed love ends as a scathing criticism of America’s melting-pot myth. In her attempted romance with an “All-American boy,” Mitski finds herself trying to whitewash, and thus erase, herself to meet standards of Americanness. In the accompanying music video, we see two love affairs—one between white culture with its own culturally-appropriating double and one between Mitski and the body she’s learned to embrace. The ultimate tragedy does not come in any lament for lost love, but rather from a society that both demands assimilation and yet will always define American identity as a quality skin-deep.

“I KICKED A BOY”: THE SUNDAYS (1990)

With her relentlessly playful cynicism, Harriet Wheeler could easily be likened to Morrissey; and yet, for all their shared sensibilities, Wheeler seems to have been largely forgotten in the shadow he cast over the UK’s indie scene. Here, however, we witness her discovery of a female strength and resilience that does not flounder in deference to self-doubt. Though it sounds like a schoolyard scuffle, the time when Wheeler “kicked a boy ‘til he cried” resonates as an act of rightful self-defense against not a boy, but a man. She’s branded with the gendered epithet “hysterical,” but she cheerily accepts responsibility with a childlike sense of wonder at her own power.

“LIMP”: FIONA APPLE (1999)

Though Apple was only 22 years old when she released When The Pawn…, she delivers this single with the momentum of lifetimes of exhaustion. Delivered over instrumentation that itself sounds like simmering rage and anxiety is Apple’s refusal to be the damsel in distress against which her abusive partner constructs his own identity. Though Apple’s “fingers turn to fists,” the ultimate violence enacted here that of a toxic masculinity against itself. We see here a subverted notion of gendered power in which, on her urgent quest for independence, Apple reclaims control of her narrative and her partner collapses into an impotence of his own doing.

“EVERY WOMAN”: VAGABON (2019)

Vagabon writes her lyrics, plays her multiple instruments, and produces her own songs—and she taught herself to do it all. This particularly ethereal track serves as an ode to the women who are equal parts “tired” and “fired up.” Vagabon recognizes that every morning her personal battles begin, another woman’s are coming to a close after a long night. Tapping into this endless cycle of labor and relentless strength, she creates space for the experience of truly “every woman.”

“U.N.I.T.Y.”: QUEEN LATIFAH (1993)

With three studio albums out at 23 years old, Queen Latifah represented a dynamic and necessary voice in the male-dominated rap scene. Though it gained mainstream momentum that culminated in a Grammy win, this song denounces the same mainstream that institutionalizes mistreatment of women. Latifah describes the various expressions of misogyny from normalized terms “bitch” or “ho,” sexual harassment of women on the street, and domestic abuse. She rejects a masculinity, or subsequent notions of being “hard,” built on rhetorical degradation and physical exploitation, instead demanding a unity within the Black community.

“WE THE COMMON (FOR VALERIE BOLDEN)”: THAO & THE GET DOWN STAY DOWN (2013)

Disguised as a catchy folk tune, this song harnesses a powerful collective ethos that rallies against institutions of oppression and injustice. Singer Thao Nguyen dedicates the track to Valerie Bolden, a woman sentenced to life without parole for killing her abuser, after meeting her during advocacy work with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. Nguyen here literally gives a voice to the voiceless—Bolden and the countless others wrongfully incarcerated—and transforms her craft into a cry for social justice. Behind the youthful energy and urgency that drives the song is the masses, the “common” people,” for and with whom Nguyen stands.

“50 FT. QUEENIE”: PJ HARVEY (1993)

Aggressive and defiant, this single seeks to redefine conventional notions of womanhood and what it means to dominate a space. Harvey weaponizes typical metrics of power —physical size and strength—and wields it against the “Casanova” prototype of male sexual conquest. She barrels through the track with the intensity of a “force ten hurricane” and leaves us with a wonderfully frenetic celebration of female sexuality, spirit, and “glory.”

“PAPER PLANES”: M.I.A. (2007)

This song launched M.I.A. to international fame, and yet its meaning is anything but straightforward. With a complicated legacy intertwining a sample of The Clash’s anti-colonial “Straight To Hell” and M.I.A.’s own personal history as a refugee of the Sri Lankan Civil War, the track was initially meant to satirize Western stereotypes of immigrants as dangerous free-loaders. In a twist of truly capitalist irony, however, the song transformed into a legitimate anthem of uplift for the exploited classes. Under oppressive institutions that perpetuate and profit off of systemic inequalities, M.I.A.’s vision of a militant repossession of wealth remains a vision of hope and radical resilience.