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I don’t know, I just feel like there were some female musicians in the 90s that never really went anywhere. They may have rode the airwaves for a couple of years, but now they’re mostly lost to time, with the exception of an occasional resurfacing at 90s throwback parties. The songs made these women temporarily famous, but most of us don’t think of them as having dominated 90s music.
I’m not talking about the women we all know: the pop princesses (Christina, Britney, Brandy), the Lilith Fair headliners (Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow, Jewel), the somber, angry singer-songwriters (Tori Amos,[1] Ani DiFranco, Fiona Apple), and, of course, Alanis, who doesn’t fit perfectly into any of these categories but was one of the most-played artists on Top 40 radio.
I’m talking about a whole different crew: Donna, Natalie, Paula, Jennifer, and Meredith. Many of them entered and left the 90s as one-hit wonders. There were arguably many explanations for their appeal, but today I want to focus on their words and, in particular, the messages they sent about love and sense of self. At the time these artists were popular, I was too distracted by my own angst and awkwardness to think twice about what they were saying. But today, as an adult woman who emerged from the fog of teenage-hood decades ago, I see things differently. Let’s unpack the lessons from these ladies.
Lesson the First: Love will carry you every day, from morning until night until morning, and you don’t even need the object of your affection to return the sentiment. Just be thankful that he exists on this earth.
This lesson is brought to us by Donna Lewis and her hit single, “I love you always forever.” One of the best things about this song is that, because it only topped the charts for a very limited time and then disappeared, it is truly nostalgia-triggering. It transports me to chilly autumn mornings in my High School courtyard, where I’d be breathing the crisp air, watching my peers meander into school, and feeling butterflies in my stomach. But that’s my life. Donna was singing about something else – an ode to the object of her desire.
And the ode is . . . intense. When we look at the lyrics, it seems this person’s very existence brought the narrator to her knees. She declares, “You’ve got me almost melting way.” She seeks constant assurance: “Say you’ll love, love me forever/Never stop, never whatever.” And she is prepared to go more than the distance for her love: “Everywhere I will be with you/Everything I will do for you.”[2]
This woman had it bad. This doesn’t seem very healthy, and the portrayal of Lewis in the music video backs me up: she appears to be trapped alone in small spaces, her hair falling in her face as she smiles, looking entranced. She puts her shoes on her hands, slumps over the piano keyboard, and sprawls across the floor in some kind of rapture as she croons away about this love. I guess it’s totally fine to forget ourselves when we’re lusting after the Greatest Person on Earth.
Lesson the Second: It turns out that, actually, crushing isn’t enough to sustain you. If your love goes unrequited, forget about gently melting—you’ll be picking pieces of yourself off the floor.
Says who? Natalie Imbruglia. In the video for her hit, “Torn,” she stares wide-eyed into the camera, donning a cropped hairstyle that flaunted her near-perfect features. I remember thinking, “Why is this gorgeous woman pining over anyone?” Apparently, that’s what love does to you. The song’s narrator sings about being duped by a man she thought was a good catch. Unlike Lewis, she is well past the point of adoration and veneration. She’s no longer reveling in her devotion—instead, she’s destroyed:
I’m all out of faith
This is how I feel
I’m cold and I am shamed
Lying naked on the floor.
She invokes the title throughout the song, reminding the listener, “Nothing’s right/I’m torn.” By the end, she tells us that “there’s nothing where he used to lie” and her “inspiration has run dry.” She’s no longer lying naked but is now “bound and broken on the floor.”
Damn! It can’t be that bad, can it? So you exercised some questionable judgment about a guy. Haven’t we all been there? Hold that pretty head high because most profiles cannot pull off that cut! [3]
While Donna Lewis was a little too love-happy, Natalie Imbruglia was exasperated and a bit of a hot mess. I’d hope today’s artists would advise these women to pick themselves off the floor, put on shoes, and get on with life.
Lesson the Third: Thankfully, some 90s songwriters got a grip and issued a PSA to tell us all to think about what we really wanted. Even before Shania showed up with “That Don’t Impress Me Much,” Paula Cole taught us that he’s gotta do better. She reminded us of the cowboys, subtly (?) suggesting we hold out for them.
Cole sings from the perspective of a woman who is less than smitten with her man. Sure, she’ll engage in the exchange of taking care of the home if her man pays the bills, and at first, she seems eager to please:
Why don’t you stay the evening?
Kick back and watch the TV
And I’ll fix a little something to eat
Oh, I know your back hurts from working on the tractor
How do you take your coffee my sweet?
But then he stops paying attention to her, too busy at the bar every night to notice her new dress. There’s nothing left for her to do but lament, “Where have all the cowboys gone?” The song forces women to assess their relationships honestly: Your man may play the part of the hero, but his actions make him who he really is.
A couple of years later, Jennifer Paige took things further. In “Crush,” she is dismissive and patronizing, telling her beau not to get too excited over her (“Don’t go too deep with it, baby”) and that she isn’t in it for the long term (“You say the word forevermore/That’s not what I’m looking for”). She shuns the thought of commitment, and uses the chorus as an opportunity to remind her boy toy that he is not the center of her universe:
It’s just . . . a little crush
Not like I faint every time we touch
It’s just . . . some little thing
Not like everything I do depends on you.
The Final Lesson: Paige seemed to have the right idea, but there’s one song that stands out as perfectly summarizing what was really going on. I found it somewhat shocking at the time, but it was what we needed after all the pining and wishing and crumbling and crushing. This guy needs to accept you for all the things you are, even when one of those things is – can you guess? – a b*tch.
The gorgeous force of Meredith Brooks arrived to show us what it meant to own our multiple facets and idiosyncrasies. She literally told us we can be many things, and it was ok if some of those things were not pretty and sweet:
I’m a little bit of everything
All rolled into one . . .
I’m a bitch
I’m a lover
I’m a child
I’m a mother
I’m a sinner
I’m a saint
And I do not feel ashamed
Yes, girl!!! Whether it be alone, with other girls, on the street, or in the cafeteria, singing along with this song felt invigorating and empowering. As a former 90s teen who absorbed Brooks’s tutelage, it’s almost impossible to hear this song today and not belt it out.
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If you were anything like me when these tunes were pumping through the airwaves, you loved them without deciphering them. These ladies all had different thoughts on love, but I didn’t try to work out who had it right. And even though I may disagree with some of the messaging today, I still look back on these tunes fondly.
That said, among the 90s queens, Meredith Brooks stands out for hitting on something worth repeating: We really are many things at once. Every moment we get to choose the version of ourselves we want to be. And as Brooks so wisely noted, “You know you wouldn’t want it any other way.”
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Postscript: Craving some of these tunes? Don’t remember ’em but want to check ’em out? Here’s a special playlist I compiled, complete with the above artists and other favorites, including Alanna Myles, Mandy Moore, All Saints, and (couldn’t leave her out) Lisa Loeb:
The complete playlist expands beyond the topic of love. Tune in to see what other lessons come to light.
[1] At the risk of totally alienating myself from my college classmates and possibly the majority of my peers, I am wholeheartedly not a Tori Amos fan. Get in touch if you want to yell at me.
[2] It’s no coincidence that the narrator seems willing to bend over backwards: the song was apparently inspired by H. E. Bates’s novel, Love for Lydia, in which a young man is pushed to the limits by his love for his pupil. I Love You Always Forever – Wikipedia; Love for Lydia – Wikipedia.
[3] It’s worth noting that Nat got a bit more brazen in “Wishing I Was There,” but she still fell pray to the same old tricks, “wishing [she] was there” as soon as he left.