Sophie B. Hawkins isn’t gay.
She’s omnisexual.
It’s my understanding she suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. It’s more sad than anything else, though I feel bad for people who bought tickets expecting to hear her old songs not listen to a self loathing anti gay rant.
I was first surprised that she still had a career, then that she wasn’t at the very least bi. If it is mental illness, I feel bad for her, because that’s an awful way to fuck your remaining career over.
Maybe she’s in her version of **It’s a Wonderful Life, ** whre she has to experience what how world would be if she hadn’t been lesbian, and instead of Martini’s she stumbles into Yoshi’s, saying “Look, I-I’ve got some bad pussy or something.”
I’m really quite, yes… shocked! 
I’ve seen her perform most times she’s played Scotland, except for last year, when she played a couple of house concerts instead of gigs I might actually have heard about before they sold out.
She’s got very devoted fans, gay and straight, who go for the fun atmosphere and the rambling stories between songs, as well as the music. She’s generally very vocal about her left-ish views.
But I guess she’s shot her career in the foot, or maybe even the head, now.
Wow that sucks. I used to be a huge fan, and saw her live several times before she did her born-again thing. Very sorry to hear that she’s gone batshit crazy.
Agreed, now I’m going to feel weird if I listen to the one album of hers that I own and like. It’s not logical, but there you have it.
Never heard of her before. Now I wouldn’t mind if I never did again.
Maybe she’s a lesbian in denial and is overcompensating by being a homophobe.
If so, we should expect her to run for political office and become a televangelist.
Maybe she can go on tour with Victoria Jackson.
The first song I heard her sing was When I Grow Up on college alternative station KXLU. Anchorage gets a lot of play in the mainstream, but I always associate her with WIGU. I have most of her '90s stuff, and I like her music.
Actually, I think she was cute.
I was a taken a little aback at her album Arkansas Traveller. She explained in the liner notes that it was in the tradition of minstrelsy, and that anything that seemed racist should be taken in that context. For example, Jump Jim Crow contains racial stereotypes and the word ‘jigaboo’. The point of that particular line was that the Black man is ‘genuine’, while Whites who emulate them are poseurs. But on the surface the song seem racist, and it’s always made me uncomfortable.
What I find so ‘shocking’ is that her outburst is so completely opposite (<== redundant, I know) from her image. In Memories Of East Texas (from ‘Short Sharp Shocked’) she sang:
Looking back and asking myself
What the hell’d you let them break your spirit for?
Their lives ran in circles so small
They thought they’d seen it all
And they couldn’t make a place for
A girl who’d seen the ocean
Surely, this is an indictment of the closed-minded, small-Texas town attitudes she encountered? She seems to have turned into one of Them.
I’ve seen this transformation before. Former smokers often HATE smokers. Recovered alcoholics often HATE drinkers. And particularly, born-again Christians often seem to have little tolerance for people who don’t toe the biblical line.
It looks like all of the US dates are getting cancelled. Her last tweet on Sunday said “Truth is leading to painful confrontation #shortsharpshocked”.
I just love that the retribution is so swift to this kind of behavior.
I still picture her as misguided and led astray rather than evil, but I’m not sure how long I can keep that image intact. Her words are pretty awful.
Symptom of mental illness/substance abuse or coldly calculated pitch to a whole new audience? Barring an apologetic press release that mentions “exhaustion”, my money’s on the latter.
How many slightly butch folk-pop musicians market themselves to the Christian right? There’s got to be more money in convincing a bunch of people who’ve never heard of you to buy your entire catalog based on what amounts to a blatant identity politcs publicity stunt, rather than try to get your established fanbase to pay for yet another album. The now-alienated people have been more or less milked out; time to find a new cow.
Either way, I’m thrilled, because my wife likes Ms. Shocked’s older music as much as I detest it. It is now unlikely that I will have to sit through another spin of this insomnia-curing stuff when it’s her turn to work the stereo on future road trips.
I can imagine the conversation withe her manager.
Jesus, Michelle, your career couldn’t be any further in the toilet.
I’ll take that bet!
Seeing the mention of her album and hashtag (do I have that right?) that refers to “short sharp shocked”, I wonder how many people, including her, know where that comes from?
[QUOTE=W.S. Gilbert]
To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a lifelong lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block
[/QUOTE]
From the Mikado.
Pointless, I know. Can’t help myself.
Roddy
The swift cancellations make me think that A) the shows weren’t selling very many tickets to begin with, and B) the venues didn’t want the shows to suddenly sell-out to the types of audiences that might want to come rally around this crazy bitch.
I used to be a fan back in the 90’s. She had a lot of good songs, even if most of them didn’t have much mainstream appeal. And I’m not surprised that she was still getting gigs. She was big enough to have videos on MTV and VH1. I’m sure that translated to a core of serious fans who were still be willing to pay to see her play at smaller venues.
I don’t think this is an effort to court the Christian music crowd. Her politics are very left-wing and there’s no way she’s going to find an audience with a demographic that skews heavily to the right. I think she’s picked up some very toxic ideas from her church, and they’re not a good mix with her “I’m gonna say what I think no matter what the consequences” attitude.
She’s finished as a performer. She was part of a wave of girl folk in the 90’s. The fans of that scene were almost universally left-leaning and gay-friendly. They’re not going to forgive her for this.
Actually, one of them was sold-out prior to the cancellation. So that was cool to see that they put principle over profit.