“Hey Jack Kerouac, I think of your mother/ And the tears she cried.” Natalie Merchant was 23 when she sang this. When it comes to Jack Kerouac, which 23-year-old doesn’t first think of “On The Road” and all the adventures, but of the abandoned mother? In an enchantingly understated way, the singer has always been ageless. She didn’t seem really young then and doesn’t seem old now – and that also applies to her music. A special case in the pop business.
The song, “Hey Jack Kerouac,” is featured on the 10,000 Maniacs’ third album, “In My Tribe” (1987). In 1981, at seventeen, Natalie joined the band and soon took over most of the songwriting. Looking for inspiration, she couldn’t find much in Upstate New York and looked further afield. In the liner notes of the excellent compilation Campfire Songs: The Popular, Obscure And Unknown Recordings she writes: “I became a precocious rust-belt poet born of small-town existence, family love, teenage pregnancy, single mothers, alcoholism, child abuse, Illiteracy, greedy corporations and even told about the war.”
There was a discrepancy between the tender folk and the outraged lyrics, she admits, but that’s what made 10,000 Maniacs so special. Especially since there was a gentle purity in Merchant’s haunting voice that she has preserved to this day. She’s appropriated Morrissey’s Everyday Is Like Sunday, John Prine’s Hello In There, and To Sir With Love easily coexisted with Michael Stipe.
In 1993, 10,000 Maniacs performed on MTV Unplugged, their cover version of “Because The Night” went viral – and before the accompanying album was released, Merchant left the band. When she released her solo debut, “Tigerlily,” in 1995, the record company wasn’t pleased: she’d recorded the sparse songs without a producer, she wore no make-up on the cover – who would buy that? Five million people, it turns out. Merchant simply didn’t go along with all the circus about appearances, the fixation on youthful beauty got on her nerves.
With “Keep Your Courage” she has just released her ninth solo album, she sings about “Big Girls” and about Aphrodite: “Goddess of beauty, take my hand.” And then celebrates her mother’s generation with “Sister Tilly”. Joan of Arc can be seen on the cover. Female strength, timeless.
Natalie Merchant will be sixty in October. She stopped dying her hair ten years ago because it didn’t fit her natural lifestyle. “Growing old is no fun, but the loss of beauty is compensated for by wisdom,” she said at the time – and laughed out loud at the objection that she was still beautiful. Anyone who puts themselves in the public eye will be judged. Constant. We can’t help it. But maybe we could hold back a bit when it comes to criticism. Of course, I have my own opinion about Madonna’s face surgery, but I’ll keep it to myself. Because Madonna can do what she wants – she should grow as old as she wants. Just like Natalie Merchant and everyone else. It’s none of our business. Billie Eilish summed it up best: “Your opinion of me: not my responsibility.”
More columns by Birgit Fuss