When I'm Cleaning Windows: Last Angry Woman: A Lyrical Exploration of '90s Pop's Girliest Maverick Storytellers

Pete Seeger - folk singer, harbinger of 1960s activism, and banjo fancier - took inspiration for his 1955 song 'Where Have All the Flowers Gone?', a smash for that band of troubadours Peter, Paul and Mary, from the lines of a traditional Cossack folk tune. During the time he penned the hit he was travelling to one of the only venues that would still allow him to perform during the McCarthy era.

I'm pretty certain that if Pete, Peter, Paul and Mary were still performing today (*) they might see a musical landscape overrun by one specific floral species. I am, of course, talking about the shrink-wrapped violet.

There's no doubt that our current top 40 charts have seen the rise and rise of autotune-abusing plastic fantastic mass produced female archetypes, pre-packaged and ready to be consumed by the masses - the kind of empty-headed, male marketed visions of womanhood that you'd be forgiven for thinking went the way of the dinosaur with the first wave of feminism. That's no secret and it's no surprise. But what is strange is that this wasn't always the case. If Peter, Paul and Mary were still active on the music circuit today, they might not be asking where the flowers have gone, but rather where are the alternative role models for young women?

Well, time might have served to erase any remnants of this once chart-domineering force of nature from the collective consciousness, but I certainly haven't forgotten her. She's not ready to make nice, she's not ready to back down - she's still mad as hell, and she don't have time to go round and round and round.

Today I'm saluting the disaffected '90s pop/rock chick.

In the '90s we saw the "don't call me a chick" chicks come of age on the airwaves. They crashed onto the charts without fanfare - uninvited, unpredicted, and seemingly out of nowhere - and immediately announced themselves as a force to be reckoned with. Suddenly, girl power was everywhere. And I'm not talking about the watered-down version that I lived through as a pre-pubescent in the tiny world of Wellington when the Spice Girls hit the scene later that decade; this was the real thing, as organic and spontaneously occurring as the bands that came to jump on pop's new wave feminist bandwagon were tired and played-out at their inception.

These heroines of the new world order cut their teeth in the art pop/ alt-rock scene so beloved by college kids (back before the world-weary "indie" poseur hijacked the airwaves). And they are pure nostalgia fodder for every 30-something female who grew up as these ladies burned up the top 40.

Looking back, the signs were there: when Annie Lennox bestowed the title of 'Diva' upon herself with the release of her 1992 album of the same name, her career manifestly reflected every sense of that word. Here she is performing 'Why' from the same album. It's not a young girl playing mum's dress ups - this is a real woman who has run the gamut of emotions and is reflecting at the midpoint of an already illustrious career - looking through her back pages, if you will, determining in her own mind where to from here. The semi-spoken run on lyrics at the end of the song tell of a life of adult choices made, of regret and a genuine sense of loss of time that can never be recaptured. The lyrics resonate with the same kind of storytelling of British poets like Thomas Hardy, and a sense of all that remains unfinished in our life:

"This is the book I never read/ These are the words I never said/ This is the path I'll never tread/ These are the dreams I'll dream instead."

This refrain of unexpressed emotion and repressed desires is echoed in earlier examples of the female singer-songwriter canon. Kate Bush, one of its greatest exponents, wrote in her song 'This Woman's Work:'

"I should be crying, but I just can't let it show.

I should be hoping, but I can't stop thinking

Of all the things I should've said, that I never said

All the things we should've done, that we never did.

All the things I should've given,

But I didn't."

There's a lot of other significant female singer songwriters of the time who wanted to find an outlet to express their feelings of powerlessness against the vast canvas of life, in varying and strikingly poetic ways. Tasmin Archer, a seamstress from Leeds UK and as unlikely a pop superstar as any of the artists who seemingly fluked the alt radio to mainstream success sweepstakes in the '90s, struck gold with the wonderfully offbeat 'Sleeping Satellite' in 92. Archer is an unnaturally occurring phenomenon, a genuine bonafide hit making aberrance that could have only been spawned at one time, in one place. What is remarkable is that this song - a song which can be read not just figuratively as using metaphors about moons and stars and our place in it all, but which was also literally inspired by the Apollo 11 moon landing - was a massive chart success.

Before you dismiss Tasmin Archer as a one hit wonder, or misplace her in the same eco-friendly company as the Captain Planet inspired acts Deep Forest and Enigma due to her hippy-drippy aura and "ethno/ambient electronica" early '90s production values, take a second listen to this song. Tasmin asked the same kind of deeply existential, rhetorical questions as her musical peers Bush and Lennox (and to a lesser extent Joni Mitchell, but I won't discuss her here as I consider her voice in popular music from a different era) but she dared to ask them on a greater scale, and I think by placing her lyrical content on an even higher plain she achieved this admirably: "Why are the seas still dry?" is a fantastic metaphorical-rhetorical construct, easily on par with Bob Dylan's "how many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?" Other lines are no less impressive, with half-rhymes and Tasmin's unusual cadence taking you off guard and transforming what could have been predictable and clunky through masterful use of literary devices such as assonance and personification ("If the world is so green/ Then why does it scream under a blue moon?")

If you still aren't convinced that Tasmin blazed a trail for the ladies of '90s pop, just take a look at this VIDEO! Let me ask you: in what universe today would a woman be able to wear a man's pant suit in a video, while being alternately interposed with images of methuselah-aged witches and Da Vinci doppelgangers, and still be considered a credible chart possibility?

'Sleeping Satellite' sends you sky high with its far-out Space Oddity-esque references and kicking organ solo.

I don't know if it's the wonder of hindsight that makes this song such a delight to me today, or if it's simply a combination of my nerdish leanings, the great retro faux gothic vibe of the video, and my satisfied inner child that have brought me to this conclusion, but I always loved this song from its first listening growing up and it remains one of my favourites from the '90s.

Incidentally, once-great US import Kim Wilde made an inconsequential cover version of this song in 2011, briefly resurrecting it, but sadly missed the point of the wonderful lyrics entirely.

"In the 60s you could be a sex symbol and have bad teeth; it didn't matter!" But in the mid-'90s you could write songs about space missions and still be a smash hit. And apparently, wearing a pantsuit and being in your 30s didn't hurt your chances at all!

So was 'Satellite' a 'Ground Control to Major Tom' for the '90s college set, the kind of granola-eating nouveau space hippies who wanted to major in philosophy and anthropology and ruminate on the meaning of life back when the economy made that a viable choice? I don't know, and I don't know what this says about the Brits and their obsession with lunar landings and other lifeforms. I don't know what paved the way for this kind of insanity, but the charts never saw the like before or after. From my perspective, the charts today are overly populated with new indie pretenders to the throne, but (with apologies to Queen) their beauty and their style go kind of smooth after a while - and none of them will ever hold a candle to the kind of overt kookiness and just generally bonkers musical stylings of Tasmin Archer, one of the most unfairly forgotten stars in the '90s fempop firmament.

Then there was another breed of singer songwriters - ones so obsessed with hammering home our societal limitations as women as to scare us half witless. It was a man's world, and these women were struck with the same sense of fatalism about their patriarchal society as their fellow sisters in song, but felt powerless to do anything more than stand on in shock or dismiss their own thoughts and feelings to the point of outright insignificance.

The story behind this one is almost as strange as the song itself. Then again, remember this was the era when the same artist who wrote about genital mutilation, albeit with virtually indecipherable lyrics, also appeared playing the piano for a jingle advertising breakfast cereal.

'Cornflake Girl' by Tori Amos describes being betrayed by friends in unspeakable ways, as a village girl has unspeakable acts perpetrated upon her. "This is not really happening," Tori intones. "You bet your life it is", comes the cheerless reply. You can almost hear the sneer on the accuser's lips as the words are hurled at the victim. Here the state of powerlessness is extended to such a point that the woman has no control over what is happening to her own body - the "you bet your life it is" line, delivered with repetitious regularity over a swinging, circulating drumbeat, is used to terrifying effect, and the chorus hook packs a punch. Throughout the song it is also difficult to identify who is saying what at which point, the protagonist or the antagonist, which also ups the emotional stakes - is Tori replying to herself? Is she the one delivering the stinging line at a friend? Or is the line spat at her from the sidelines by her betrayer? When she says she "never was a cornflake girl", can we really trust her?

The perspective of the song can really shift meaning, and female singer songwriters played with this concept to great effect in the '90s. Suzanne Vega's 'Luka' is a heartbreaking exploration into domestic violence reimagined as a three-minute pop hit. 'Luka' is about someone who could have done something to stop a violent act being perpetrated but didn't. As the listener, we aren't let in on the whole story - it's never made explicitly clear whether what happened to Luka exactly, or to whom she is talking, but the lyrics indicate that things didn't end well. The perspective shifts throughout the song: while delivered by Luka, the defensive-sounding "it's not your business anyway" line is the sort of justification that adults often employ to avoid getting involved in such incidents, and something the child may be parroting after the abuser's own words: you could easily imagine the abuser reminding Luka to tell "nosy neighbours", suspicious something is awry, to mind their business. Here, as well as in 'Cornflake Girl,' repetition is used to chilling effect on the lines "just don't ask me what it was" and "you just don't argue any more."

Of course, the point of this song is to involve the listener - to prompt, and to remind, that we are all implicated in abuse when we know it is going on. The fact that Luka directs his words at us ( "I live upstairs from you") is not an accident.

It's here I have to pause for a moment and state this song actually came out in '87 but it sneaks onto this list because in my living memory I always considered it to be a '90s song. It just seemed so very much tied to the era. I remember it having very heavy rotation on the radio in the early '90s, and it's still a popular choice for programmers today. The jangly guitars, drum machine pulse and tinkling synths do associate it closely with acts like 10,000 Maniacs, and I can see the late '80s influence. To sum up my feelings about the baffling musical era which made this a hit song, I have to turn to one of the ever dependable commentators on the 'Songfacts' website ("Craig in Wilmington, Massachusetts,") who states: "I can just imagine a record company executive saying: "Morose child abuse ballad? That's it! Get it on the radio! We're all gonna be rich!"'

Such confessional, weighty storytelling, couched in the sunniest of musical terms, was the stuff the '90s charts were made of. Of course not all female singer songwriters were so passive about their circumstances. Some moved on to new horizons of musical exploration.

I'm talking, of course, about pyromania.

Several hit songs of the '90s proved that introspective female songstresses weren't going down without a fight. In 'Sunny Came Home,' Shawn Colvin outlines how the protagonist determines to take a match to the house she has shared with her abuser for years and years. Many claim the song is not literally about arson, but rather the incendiary act of Sunny setting fire to her previous life and moving on. Obviously it can be read in many ways but to my thinking there's not much mistaking the message here, as Colvin outlines in no uncertain terms the methodical way Sunny goes about planning the attack (additionally, she confirmed at a concert in Australia in 2013 that the song was a "murder ballad"). The devil is certainly in the detail with this song as we hear either Sunny's inner monologue or an external voice - or is it a malevolent spirit? - prompt her towards a specific course of action with preternatural clarity:

"Get the kids and bring a sweater

Dry is good and wind is better
Count the years, you always knew it
Strike a match, go on and do it".

The song has a detached feel lyrically, and the listener never gets the sense of another person being present other than "Sunny and her shadow." We hear Sunny crying out in the refrain, speaking either to herself or to the unseen auditory hallucination:

"Days go by, I'm hypnotized

I'm walking on a wire
I close my eyes and fly out of my mind

Into the fire."

This "name song" has a far happier ending than 'Luka', and the listener is let off the hook for any potential wrongdoing by association as we are assured Sunny is "out there on her own, and she's all right." Not to worry about the obvious psychological trauma she's suffered and the fact she's clearly hearing voices prompting her to commit acts of arson then.

'You Oughta Know', the mother of all angry girl '90s anthems, needs no introduction and boasts the kind of lyrics you can still yell out while doing the dishes surrounded by a gaggle of women without even a hint of irony. Women feel a deep and abiding primal connection to this song which is inexplicable at best, and dubious at worst - since it amounts to the aural equivalent of male castration. In a complete 180 from the "somebody done somebody wrong" song, Morissette screeches that she won't let "that man" get away with it (the "it" in this case is transferable to any number of males and their innumerable misdemeanours) and that she's "here to remind you of the mess you left when he went away" (with that level of harping, I can't say I blame him for going.)

In fairness, the song still feels raw and exposed and hasn't lost its potency. Here is feminism in its most unapologetic, most inflammatory, most unrelenting...and yet ultimately most powerless form. in the end, what has Morisette really achieved with 'You Oughta Know'? Outside of the very public "pants down-ing" of the respective everyman boyfriend, I can't help thinking that Sunny with one match in her hand achieved more for feminism than the entire 'Jagged Little Pill' album. Alanis, at the end of the day, that dude is still with his new girlfriend, and you're still the crazy lady yelling outside his bedroom window at 3am that he should feel bad.

Bummer dude - shoulda taken a match to that 'Full House' when you had the chance.

Before I get to final orders for the decade that forgot men, a few honorable mentions that failed to make the cut:

St Teresa - Joan Osborne

Another beautiful storyteller who spins a great yarn using catholic imagery, gorgeous mandolins and masterful word choices. I always found this song more substantial than Osborne's other charting single from 'Relish', the better-known 'One of Us.'

Stay - Lisa Loeb

From the movie 'Reality Bites' (yes, that one time they let Ethan Hawke sing, and yes, I owned the soundtrack on cassette), this hit song was on such high rotation when I was a kid that I would fail as a '90s music historian if I didn't mention it. Everyone loves 'Stay', Lisa Loeb's earnest paean to failed relationships. This one has come to its natural end despite the subjects' best efforts to stick together. But you just know those crazy kids'll make it through somehow - 'cos staying broken up is so hard to do. It's all angst and wide-eyed romantic misadventure until someone loses Winona Ryder.

...And who could forget that quintessentially '90s flick 'Reality Bites'...
No? Anyone?

I've talked about the past, but where's the next wave coming from? Well, the answer is found in the unlikeliest of sources: Australia...and sometimes, Sweden.

I'll let you figure out for yourself where these ladies fit into the equation; whether they are a blip or if they deserve to be included in the hallowed ranks of these proto pop-feminists remains to be seen - but I hold out hope for this wave of the future. I give you the blonde pop bombshell, v2.0.

Reconfigured: the genre-melding, enigmatic, brave, unique Sia