I think I'm convinced by Eric and Bill's posts that we were right to conjecture that folk music would be more interesting, set to electric guitar, than any of these "dude music" forms being written today. The two samples are different, though: Eric's are genuine folk tunes being set to electric guitar (the "All Around My Hat" piece really was good); Bill's shows a band trying to write music with a foundation of serious poetic and eternal themes. That's half the conjecture.
The other half is that -- while there is nothing wrong with writing a song that is about a man's perspective, or a woman's perspective -- achieving a balance might actually improve the quality of the song. Curiously, the next piece of evidence in favor of that comes from the example that the ladies at TigerBeatdown chose as an example of anti-"dude music."
They praise this as an example of female rebellion, and "a venue for angry or self-obsessed or confrontational expression." Probably it's all of those things, and it may be (I take them at their word that, for them, it is) successful in that regard.
However, they also wanted to "talk about these women musically," so let's do that. Musically, this is a terrible song! It's grating; the electric guitar is merely repetitive; and however powerful the protest lyrics are, you'll have to look them up in order to realize it. You can barely make out a word she sings.
Now, P.J. Harvey is not a terrible musician! She has a voice that has a tremendous power and fascinating range: it's just not on display there. But try this:
That's a remarkable piece. I have a feeling that you could remove the electronics and improve it, by removing the distortion that the electronics so often produce (especially live). It's got a simple blues feel, but there's a lot going on with the lyrics: it touches a deep tradition we have on how love, even honest and real love, can destroy as well as save.
Now, how does that meet our test? Could a man sing that song? I think so, if it were the right man: he would need a powerful voice to handle what she's set down here. Putting a man in the role of the singer of this song would change the meaning of the song somewhat: how should a woman react to a lover who curses God and makes deals with the devil in order to be with her? With alarm, one would think! After all, if he will defy God 'to bring her his love,' how ready is he apt to be to accept her "no" if she offers it? If he's ready to accept hell to assert his love, how much will he fear prison if she refuses him?
Yet the song is universal enough that there's room for that change; it doesn't render the song absurd. So we might say that this is a balanced song. (Is it important that a male or female singer be optional? I don't think so, personally; a song that needed to be sung by a man, or a woman, would qualify as 'balanced' if it told the truth about both men and woman. However, in their first post, these ladies had mentioned songs being written around male vocals; so it's worth examining that issue to see if it matters.)
Is it stronger than the rage-filled song, as music? I think it is; but the question is, does that strength come from the fact of it being more balanced, or is it accidental? It seems right to say that songs that represent something honest about the condition of men and women ought to be more powerful than songs that are honest about one sex only, in just the way that the truth is more powerful than a half-truth. The latter may deceive for a time, and therefore seem powerful; but deception is only human, and can therefore only persist for a time.
The truth is a force of nature. Capturing that in music ought to produce true power, the kind that raises mountains or grinds them down.
Are there more examples? What is the strongest half-truth song you can think of for us to examine? I don't think it would even be fair to compare it with the strongest songs of Truth: the fourth movement of the 9th symphony, for example. We might try to take the strongest half-truth songs, and compare them to ordinary songs of truth. My thesis is that the songs of truth will win; but let's see what we come up with.
I'd like to tap some of our lady readers to offer some of their favorites as well. I know one of Cassandra's, at least, that may qualify as a song of truth:
That's a very powerful song, and it's powerful just because of the truth it tells. The music is pleasant, but you can compare versions of the song recorded by a younger lady with a different vocal quality, and see how very well it stands up. She doesn't have the breath to hold the notes anymore; and it doesn't matter.
UPDATE: Here is a post by a writer who differs on P. J. Harvey, and thinks her whole power is that she scares him:
Harvey’s music feels dangerous, harsh, and epic—everything rock music is supposed to be—and it’s this sense of danger that ultimately elevates Rid of Me... [she] goes so far beyond traditional models of decorum and taste that every note becomes a bold gesture, an affront to society at large.Perhaps I just find gestures designed to cause affront more boring than bold; certainly, I find that I'm as unmoved by the alleged scariness as the authors of the first piece were by "dude music's" focus. It's fine for someone to write music that's about that, but it lacks the power to move me. That was their original point in the first article: this kind of music doesn't make me feel anything. As a half-truth, it is meaningful only to those invested in the half-truth; for those outside it, it's empty.
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