# Female singer/songwriters **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 6, 2019, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126 "2019-04-06T12:55:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![HyacinthBucket](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hyacinthbucket/32/3063_2.png) [@HyacinthBucket](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HyacinthBucket)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/21 "2019-04-08T17:02:11Z")
Carole King ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/22 "2019-04-08T18:38:56Z")
Songwriter: Suzanne Vega or Tonya Donelly Singer: Johnette Napolitano or Debbie Harry Performer: Shirley Manson or Gwen Stefani All heavily 80s/90s biased given my prime music coming of age years. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/23 "2019-04-08T18:53:52Z")
> [@Cuckoorex](#): > > OK, deviating from the OP; > > Best songwriter; ani difranco. Incredibly deep lyrics, very prolific artist. Voice works for her style of um, prog-folk-rock? > > Best singer; maybe Floor Jansen of Nightwish. > > Best overall performer; Anneke van Giersbergen. Excellent songwriting, proficient guitarist, and an enrapturing voice with excellent timbre. Ninja’d - I was coming in to nominate ani. There are other singers whose voices I prefer, but no one, male or female, compares to her as a lyricist or songwriter. And of course she’s a pretty incredible person overall. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/24 "2019-04-08T20:26:45Z")
Florence Welch. > [@blondebear](#): > > Or KT Tunstall? Whatever happened to her, anyway? She had two really good hits, then a third song that got airplay but didn’t do so well, then she dropped out of sight. I really expected her to have a Sheryl Crow sort of career. Speaking of which, she should be on this list. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/25 "2019-04-08T20:50:29Z")
No love for Taylor Swift? ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/26 "2019-04-08T22:01:05Z")
I don’t quite understand the OP, but I try to give my two cents: My favorite singer/songwriter combinations are Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Sandy Denny. All three excelled in writing and recording their own songs (and interpreting songs from others sometimes). I can’t judge them as performers as I’ve never seen none of them in person. I remember that Carole King never toured much because of her extreme stage fright. As for singers (who sometimes, but only exceptionally, wrote), my favorites are Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield and Emmylou Harris. Best performer maybe (and one of the best singers): Tina Turner. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/27 "2019-04-08T22:29:39Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > I don’t quite understand the OP, but I try to give my two cents: > > My favorite singer/songwriter combinations are Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Sandy Denny. All three excelled in writing and recording their own songs (and interpreting songs from others sometimes). I can’t judge them as performers as I’ve never seen none of them in person. I remember that Carole King never toured much because of her extreme stage fright. > > As for singers (who sometimes, but only exceptionally, wrote), my favorites are Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield and Emmylou Harris. > > Best performer maybe (and one of the best singers): Tina Turner. Carole King had stage fright? Hunh. I saw her once in an intimate amphitheater, where she seemed perfectly comfortable on stage (and rocked pretty damned hard for a woman then in her mid-forties.) ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/28 "2019-04-08T22:43:54Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > Carole King had stage fright? Hunh. I saw her once in an intimate amphitheater, where she seemed perfectly comfortable on stage (and rocked pretty damned hard for a woman then in her mid-forties.) I couldn’t remember where I first heard about her stage fright, but a simply googling brought up these quotes: > [@](#): > > King had stage fright, which is why one of her bands, The City (with guitarist Danny Kortchmar), never toured. That probably explains why their 1968 album flopped. [Carole King Artistfacts](https://www.songfacts.com/facts/carole-king) > [@](#): > > Forty-five years after becoming a global sensation with her album Tapestry, Carole King is finally ready to sing it in public. > > The 1971 work by the New York-born singer soared to number one in the US and several other countries and won the prestigious Grammy for Album Of The Year but King, paralysed by stage fright, did not tour to support it. [https://www.star2.com/entertainment/2016/03/11/carole-king-will-finally-sing-tapestry-in-public/](https://www.star2.com/entertainment/2016/03/11/carole-king-will-finally-sing-tapestry-in-public/) > [@](#): > > Carole King “didn’t want to be a solo artist” in her early years, her producer Lou Adler has told Uncut. > > As a successful publisher, Adler had serviced King and her husband Gerry Goffin’s demos through much of the ‘60s, and later produced her Tapestry album. > > Adler was confident that she could have been a solo artist and set about signing her to Ode record label in the late 1960s – but King insisted that she would only sign as part of a band (The City, featuring Danny Kortchmar, Charley Larkey and drummer Jim Gordon). “She wanted to record but she didn’t want to be a solo artist.” He said. > > According to Adler, this trepidation stemmed from the fact that King had bad stage fright – she had a minor hit single in 1962 with the Goffin-King song “It Might As Well Rain Until September”, but didn’t enjoy even the relatively small amount of exposure it brought. > > He said: “She was shy and she didn’t want to go on the road and perform. So she put herself in the middle of this group. That was her cover so to speak.” > > Even in the group, she was known to shy away from and even cancel gigs – that is until James Taylor invited her to accompany him on stage and she found a way into being a performer. [Carole King “didn’t want to be a solo artist” - UNCUT](https://www.uncut.co.uk/news/carole-king-didnt-want-solo-artist-77227) ETA: so it seems she maybe had overcome her stage fright when you saw her perform, which must have been sometimes in the mid-eighties if she was in her mid-forties. ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2019, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/29 "2019-04-09T00:14:00Z")
My original thought was to try something like The Three B’s Thread (Bob, Bruce & Billy), but this works as well. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2019, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/30 "2019-04-09T09:37:32Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Songwriter - Cyndy Lauper Most of her hits were written by Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman, who later did the same for Joan Osborne. ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2019, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/31 "2019-04-09T10:12:13Z")
My lifetime it’s Kate Bush then the crown passed to PJ Harvey. I’d listen to PJ over Kate seven days a week and twice on Sunday, but you have to say Kate Bush is in a league of her own as an artist and the impact she had. I mean where do you start trying to express how good she is? First woman to write every track on a million-selling album and a complete original. Can you imagine the pitch for this on TotP - there’s this 19 year old woman that we’ve never heard of who’d like to perform a piano recital of Wuthering Heights set to music on a national pop music show. OK then. https://www.youtube.com/embed/D51dnx3b-tg?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&list=RDD51dnx3b-tg ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2019, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/32 "2019-04-09T13:19:53Z")
For any Canadian/Francophone members I submit the fabulous Quebecoise artist, **Mara Tremblay**. There are plenty of youtube clips with which to check her out. **Le Printemps des Amants** is a good one to start with. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2019, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/33 "2019-04-09T14:20:18Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > Best performer maybe (and one of the best singers): Tina Turner. Forgot about her. Especially in the 60s and 70s - as a stage performer - an absolutely electrifying stage presence. What? No Shaggs love? Del Rubio Triplets? Runaways? (Ok, I’m getting into groups now) still, though…☹ ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2019, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/34 "2019-04-09T15:34:48Z")
Out of the three listed in the OP, Its a tie for songwriter between Carole King and Joni Mitchell, and for the singing I would give it to Carly Simon, I would not wish to compare performance though. Some noteworthy omissions Stevie Nicks Loretta Lynn Sylvia Moy Jackie Trent and one that few folk will have on their list, but absolutely should be in the Hall of fame and really should be the best known female songwriter of all time Dianne Warren [List of songs written by Diane Warren - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_written_by_Diane_Warren) The number of songs is startling enough, but it is the spread of artists that is even more amazing - look at that list and you’ll find artists from almost every genre - personally I think she should be top of anyone’s list ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2019, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/35 "2019-04-09T15:47:03Z")
OK, Joni Mitchell has written some good songs. Her singing? It’s afflicted. When she really gets going, she sounds like Julia Child stubbed her toe. I really like early Stevie Nicks. 1973 _Buckingham Nicks_ Stevie. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2019, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/36 "2019-04-09T22:16:10Z")
> [@Stephe96](#): > > Sara Bareilles Yeah, I love Sara. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2019, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/37 "2019-04-09T22:17:19Z")
I really love **Lorde**. David Bowie said she is the “future of music.” ---
**Author:** ![Tinker\_Grey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tinker_grey/32/8136_2.png) [@Tinker\_Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tinker_Grey)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2019, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/38 "2019-04-09T23:51:19Z")
Brandi Carlile. I’ve enjoyed every album; she and her team write nearly all their songs. ---
**Author:** ![Steophan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steophan/32/9595_2.png) [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2019, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/39 "2019-04-10T03:29:08Z")
Lucinda Williams is one of the first that comes to mind. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126/40 "2019-04-11T01:15:12Z")
> [@Tinker\_Grey](#): > > Brandi Carlile. I’ve enjoyed every album; she and her team write nearly all their songs. Only time I’ve heard her is as the voice of God on the Old 97s’ “Good With God.” Clearly I should check out her other stuff as well. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-singer-songwriters/832126.md?page=3)