Paula Irmschler’s column is about Lily Allen, Madeline & why Unity is more important than ever.
The hundredth breakup album in recent years is out, this time by Lily Allen (WEST END GIRL). I don’t want to talk about it too much because it’s too uncomfortable. Not the album – that’s great – but the obvious story behind it. One man’s hundred millionth mess. I can’t do this anymore. Get your shit together, guys, and learn to love! So much for that.
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Instead, I think of the women behind and before them – Lily and Madeline, Dolly and Jolene, Beyoncé and Becky, and you and me. Because before everyone swears again that you can only move forward alone (wherever you go) and that you should feel less and behave like an asshole like many men: STOP, STOP! We’ve been alone enough. We allow ourselves to be separated and isolated too much.
We are all together
Madeline, come on! You’re joining us now. You are complex, and I am complex – and we are all together.
For as long as I can remember, we were encouraged to split up. In the beginning it affected everyone: favorite colors, class a, b or c, football clubs. But for girls, once things got serious, it was always about what version of yourself you could be to please boys – and unfortunately men too. And it was always about much more than “Madonna” or “Whore,” like on Lily Allen’s album.
Who are you?
You could be the smart one, the cool one, the popular one, the sporty one, the chick, the slut, the fat one, the buddy, the wild one, the bitch, the dream girl and a few other things. In the BRAVO tests you could find out what type you are and then spend money at H&M – until you were or should be something else again. And it didn’t stop: Which GIRL are you? What can they sell you, how can they control you? Take a look and get in line: Which are you in Sailor Moon, in the Spice Girls, in “Sex and the City”, which porn category? Be a genre. And on social media – in addition to diagnoses and star signs – it is increasingly about identification: which singer do you identify with? Which is the most authentic? Who represents you? Are you more Taylor or Charli? Aaaaah. Stop stop.
Lilith Fair
In the 90s, women in pop no longer wanted to put up with being sold like flavors. This resulted in something fantastic, created by Sarah McLachlan: Lilith Fair, a three-year festival tour through the USA with exclusively female artists. The background: Many organizers didn’t want to book more than one woman because “there can only be one” (Heidi Klum Voice). So McLachlan booked THEM ALL: Fiona Apple, Tracy Chapman, Paula Cole, Sheryl Crow, the Indigo Girls, Morcheeba, Dido, Liz Phair, Missy Elliott, Erykah Badu, Queen Latifah, the Dixie Chicks, Christina Aguilera, Nelly Furtado and on and on.
There is now a great documentary about these concerts and everything surrounding them (on Disney+):
And she is so wholesome: You see countless women from all kinds of genres – artists who stand up for each other, discuss, look after their children together and take on stupid journalists and “life advocates”. UNITY.
At the same time, at Woodstock ’99 – the men’s festival with Limp Bizkit and their ilk – women were harassed and raped, and the grounds were senselessly vandalized.
Despite their diversity, the women of Lilith Fair were of course pigeonholed with a crowbar: soft, lesbian, man-hating, abortion fans. But where’s the diss?!
Brandi Carlile was also there – at the new edition of the festival in 2010. Since I’ve only been involved with her for a short time, I only now came across a song in which she was involved, by the “Highwomen”. A song that has recently been lighting my way.
“Let us take on the world while we’re young and able / And bring us back together when the day is done.”
As a collective
Yes, everyone! Not just as a complement, as different components of a bouquet of flowers, but as a collective that creates something together – and on stage. Not individualistic, not for the success of individuals, not for money, but for art, for women, for everyone.
We don’t want to be like Róisín Murphy and learn nothing from David Harbour. We are each other’s Red Bandana Girl at the Billie Eilish concert.
What happened so far? Here is an overview of all the pop column texts.
