When Anger Sings, It Must Be Heard: On Female Rage and Finding Peace
A still from the music video for Halsey’s ‘Nightmare’ (2019)
By Ayesha Ali
If you type ‘female rage’ into Spotify’s search bar, you will discover an abundance of girls somewhere in the world and their personal playlists: they range from “this song is so good” to “this song is so me.” The playlist covers themselves are of a sombre variety: irate young women broodily sucking on cigarettes, dark and evocative art, famous singers, and even the occasional occult symbol. Already, you are presented with the myriad ways in which female rage is often portrayed.
If you need a clearer idea, the music is there for you to listen to. Some popular songs have obvious narratives, like Paris Paloma’s ‘labour’ which is about the pain of a disillusioned, mistreated housewife toiling away at a failing marriage. Even every queer girl’s lord and saviour Hozier brings the voice of Mavis Staples and a necessary intersectionality into the mix with his underrated song ‘Nina Cried Power’. Others are a little more obscure, but the deafening scream in Mitski’s ‘Drunk Walk Home’ is enough to remind you of that one embarrassingly bad night out that concluded in cold rejection. But a simple Google search of the term ‘female rage’ describes it as a trend and draws similarities between it and the Me Too movement.
The word ‘trend’ assigns itself to things that have fallen out of favour. In other words: it’s cringe. Trends never leave a lasting cultural impact, and the hype surrounding them spreads like wildfire, but burns out fast. However, this dismissive label does a disservice to female rage, especially because its musical history stretches back several decades. Take the underground punk movement Riot Grrrl for example, which flourished in the early nineties, and the artists of the same era, like Fiona Apple and Tori Amos who came shortly after. Even the less renowned Courtney Love’s work with her band Hole became associated with the movement, though she herself had never purposely engaged with it. But conspiracies of being involved in your husband’s death is enough to drive anyone insane, as was witnessed in Love’s erratic and substance abuse-fuelled behaviour in live performances after Cobain took his own life.
Rage has always been an intrinsic part of both the lives and music of the women who create it. It did not start with Taylor Swift being “sad and grossed out” on Tumblr over losing rights to her own music. It’s an ancient grudge that can be traced back to the sonorous chorus singers from Greek tragedies like Antigone and Medea. Women singing in unison and in empathy for the fate of the female lead has been translated into autobiographical albums of the modern age.
Halsey’s concept album If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power is the first example that comes to mind, particularly because its production was spearheaded by Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (to whom people give the most credit). Even though, in Halsey’s own words, it’s “about the horrors of being pregnant,” as well as “gender identity and body horror,” people are forever quick to dismiss the content of a woman’s music when men are involved in its making. The album cover itself represents the exploration of the contradictory dichotomy of the Madonna and the Whore. The divine and the destructive, the pure and the promiscuous, the holy and the hated. Basically: it’s one of my favourite albums ever made by my favourite artist.
Another more recent artist is Spider, alias of Jennifer Irabor, who was raised in a Nigerian Catholic family and whose sound and image has done a complete 180. She was inspired by Halsey’s own debut album Badlands to delve into the alt genre, which still has too few women of colour creating within it. Her own punk-rock-alt bop of an EP, an object of desire, revolves around the range of experiences that are part and parcel of the title. One is the discomfort and anxiety surrounding a first time:
I didn’t like the way he looked at me
Scanning my body like it’s something he’d eat
Is this what it means to feel oh-so-desired?
The last line is drenched in sarcasm, and the verses are delivered in the same exhausted, frustrated drawl, punctuated with explosive choruses in between. Sofia Isella, another new artist, sings of something very similar, in Us and Pigs:
Looking at my body like it’s food
And your breath smells like bacon
You ask, ‘What’s the special occasion?’
Like I dress and dance just for you.
But the song takes on a more disturbing tone:
Our women are cattle, there’s blood on our kids
Are you being paid to not pay attention?
Does it have to happen to your mother
To your sister, to your daughter
For you to take it personal?
Isella’s music is mainly characterised by dissonant piano chords and dramatic violin crescendos. But her lyrical content creates an impact that hits just as hard as any alt anthem.
The theme of your body not belonging to yourself, whether you’re out in public or in the comfort of your own room, is more relevant than ever. In the aftermath of the US election, “your body, my choice” was tossed around online by trolls and Trump supporters alike. The hatred is clear as day, but so is the palpable anger that answers it. Misogyny is political, but music, like any art form, is political too. It is one of the most common mediums through which every human emotion is expressed. It is at once personal and public property, a land where an artist can untangle complicated feelings, mapping rocky emotional terrain with all its uphill battles. Music allows for these to be expressed in any way the artist wishes, whether it is through poetics, personal experience, abrasive instrumentation, or even just screaming into the mic, female rage is an expression in itself.
There’s a famous verse from Anne Carson’s poetry collection Glass and God that reemerges online every now and then. It goes like this:
You remember too much
My mother said to me recently
Why hold onto all that? And I said
Where can I put it down?
She shifted to a question about airports.
It poses several important questions about female rage. Does a collective memory exist where rage is never forgotten? Where can women put down their rage? Where can it go without being ignored, by both ourselves and others? And when we try to do something with it, is the process of turning it into music a distraction or a catharsis?
Female rage itself encompasses so much of womanhood that it is challenging for one person to coherently articulate them in one body of work. Be it a single that catches like wildfire, a brief but powerful EP, a concept album, or even an artist’s whole discography, it will always be difficult to guarantee that a message sent through music will actually stick. A message that will be taken seriously. And if it ends up being labelled as a trend, then the momentum should only intensify.