Sweet Honey In The Rock / Bernice Johnson Reagon: Joan Little (aka Joanne Little)
Sweet Honey In The Rock: Fannie Lou Hamer
Loving these. <3
Petra Berger is a Dutch classical crossover lyrical soprano who wrote and sang an entire album of songs about historical women. Eternal Woman came out in 2001. It’s still unknown and unavailable in America; I had to order a copy sent from Europe.
The songs and their referents:
- Marie José, the last Queen of Italy: “Terra Promessa”
- Marie Antoinette: “Close Your Eyes (He’ll Be Just Fine),” based on Fauré’s Pavane
- Boudicca: “Boadicea”
- Mata Hari: “The Girl Looking into Me,” based on Borodin’s “Gliding Dance of the Maidens” from the Polovtsian dances from Prince Igor
- Empress Elisabeth (“Sisi”) of Austria: “If I Had a Wish”
- Mary Magdalene: “When He Spoke My Name,” based on the Adagio movement from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major
- Juana la Loca, 16th-century Queen of Spain: “Eres Todo para Mí”
- Joan of Arc: “I’m Coming Home”
- Catherine the Great: “Now’s the Time”
- Mary, Queen of Scots: “Still a Queen (In My End Is My Beginning),” based on Handel’s Sarabande from the Keyboard Suite in D minor
- Cleopatra: “All for Love”
A whole album’s worth of satisfaction for the intent of this thread! Excellent music too.
Bernard Edwards. I didn’t even realize I made this mistake and I’ve come back to this thread plenty of times.
Frankly, I overlooked it too or autocorrected it in my mind somehow. Anyway, it’s clear that it was the disconnect between finger muscle control and brain we all have from time to time 
Great examples. I actually named my second daughter Sara because of that song “Sara, you’re the poet in my heart, never change, and don’t you ever start.” Love, love, love Nicks. She sings, writes, and FEELS them all.
Just One Of The Guys by Jenny Lewis comes to mind and also Burn Chile by Beth Hart and also A Sorta Fairytale by Tori Amos.
All superb songs.
Petra Berger followed up Eternal Woman with a similar album titled Mistress (2003), about paramours and about women who got cheated on. One song in the latter category is about Hillary Clinton!
Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait” was about Orlando, the Virginia Woolf hero/heroine, born a man but became a woman.
“Louise” by Bonnie Raitt.
“Ruby Red Dress” by Helen Reddy.
“The Prodigal Daughter” by Michelle Shocked.
Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin - “Sisters Are Doin It for Themselves”
Now this is a song to celebrate
The conscious liberation of the female state!
Mothers, daughters, and their daughters too.
Woman to woman, we’re singin’ with you.
I know this thread is a year old, but this is totally false.
Not sure if “Delta Dawn” or “Angie Baby” were mentioned, but I’m pretty sure Fright Wig’s Punk Rock Jailbait wasn’t.
Paula Cole said otherwise in an MTV interview, but she may have been referring specifically to the video.
How about “My Sister” by Juliana Hatfield?
It wasn’t a big hit, but… Phoebe Legere recorded a song called “Marilyn Monroe” and performed it in the film Mondo New York.
I assume you mean she introduced it that way in concert sometime in the past dozen years; after all, she introduced that song in 1995, 13 years before Perry would release her song with the same title.
I wasn’t around here a year ago…
Shania Twain has a song She’s Not Just a Pretty Face which would be good for International Women’s Day
I keep wanting to hit the “Like” button that doesn’t exist here. :o Thanks, all!
I thought I posted this last year but I guess I didn’t. This beautiful song by Happy Rhodes is inspired by her friendship with female friends.
I made a still images “video” years ago for a friend of mine who loved this song, using photos of his wonderful cats.
“Glory”
Here is a longer, album version, with intro and outro. I made the video using pictures of kitties at an animal shelter.
“Glory” (now with 50% more cats!)
Melissa Etheridge also has at least one entire album of love songs to her former partner. I still love “Angels Would Fall:”
*I have crept into your temple
I have slept upon your pew
I have dreamed of the divinity
Inside and out of you
I want it more than truth
I can taste it on my breath
I would give my life just for a little
A little death. *
I loved it when I first heard it, but I loved it even more years later when I learned that the French call orgasm “le petit mort”-- little death.
If we’re including mothers’ odes to their daughters, we have to include Leann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance.”
Well, on a superficial level, that’s what it’s about, but it’s not really what it’s about.
Good time to break out that old classic—Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.”
Those of us of a certain age will remember 1972 when that was all over the radio. Younger generations may be familiar with the famous opening line without having heard the song itself. It’s impossible to overstate the impact of “I Am Woman” on society. It was the first time anyone heard anything like it. It was electrifying. This one song did more for feminism than probably all the issues of Ms. magazine taken together, with a season or two of Maude thrown in.
The title uses a literary device called personification. It isn’t actually saying “I am a woman” slightly ungrammatically. It’s saying “I am Woman” where the capital W signifies all women collectively, personified in the first person singular.