February 17, 2014

10 Awesome Girl-Power Songs—Just Because

<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-103543286/stock-photo-cute-little-girl-enjoying-music-using-headphones-isolated-over-white.html?src=pd-photo-97438034-5IJUEjmypBAniTV-CBYHUg-3">Serhiy Kobyakov </a>Shutterstock

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


From mocking the sexist superficiality of our society to celebrating financial independence, here, for no particular reason other than that they rock, are 10 of the greatest feminist anthems of all times—inspiring, inquiring, and provocative. So plug in your iPod and go conquer the world. It’s yours for the taking.

 

1. “Stupid Girls” by Pink — A fine critique of our image-obssessed culture and its effects on young women.

Best lyric: What happened to the dream of a girl president?/She’s dancing in the video next to 50 Cent.

 

2. “I will survive” by Gloria Gaynor: The iconic representation of women’s (and gay) rights in 1970s.

Best lyric: Do you think I’d crumble?/Did you think I’d lay down and die?/Oh no, not I, I will survive.

 

3. “Man I feel like a Woman” by Shania Twain: In this Grammy-winning single, Twain sings that the “best thing about being a woman is the prerogative to have a little fun.”

Best lyric: We don’t need romance, we only wanna dance/We’re gonna let our hair hang down.

 

4. “RESPECT” by Aretha Franklin: This speaks for itself.

Best lyric: R-E-S-P-E-C-T/Find out what it means to me.

 

5. “Suggestion,” by Fugazi: One of the most powerful anti-rape songs ever written, “Suggestion” blames not just on the rapist, but the culture that looks away.

Best lyric: There lays no reward in what you discover/You spent yourself, boy, watching me suffer (suffer your words, suffer your eyes, suffer your hands)/Suffer your interpretation/of what it is to be a man. 

 

6) “Bad Bitch” by Lupe: Weighing in on the B-word and how young people interpret it.

Best lyric: First he’s relatin’ the word “bitch” with his mama, comma/And because she’s relatin’ to herself, his most important source of help.

 

 

7. “Bloody Ice Cream” by Bikini Kill: In which Riot Grrrl Kathleen Hanna and her iconic band take on sexism in the poetry industry.

Best lyric: The whole damn thing!

 

8. “Independent Woman” by Destiny’s Child: Who needs your money, man?

Best lyric: The shoe on my feet, I’ve bought it/The clothes I’m wearing, I’ve bought it/The rock I’m rockin’, I’ve bought it/’Cause I depend on me.

 

9. “This is our emergency,” by Pretty Girls Make Graves: Slamming a culture that makes us lack fulfillment and feel helpless. 

Best lyric: Baby you don’t have to be a picture in a magazine/Sometimes you’re too blind to see/Anything objectively

 

10. U.N.I.T.Y by Queen Latifah: QL’s response to women being treated as sex objects.  

Best lyric: Every time I hear a brother call a girl a bitch or a ho/Trying to make a sister feel low…

 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate