Stevie previews new song and speaks out for reproductive freedom

[David]

No one thinks she’s Joan Baez, certainly, but Stevie still has a right to publicly address political topics that she’s genuinely concerned about. I can’t begrudge her that, even if her batch of political songs (from, say, “Desert Angel” to “Soldier’s Angel” to the Kennedy thing and now this and the Buffalo Springfield cover) aren’t great — essentially they’re diary-speak interspersed with cliches and a few trendy slogans. I don’t doubt that Stevie is concerned about these few political issues, and she’s trying to comment on them in song as a 60s-generation pop stateswoman. The role doesn’t quite fit her because of her lifelong apolitical past, but she’s definitely feeling it now. She probably desperately wishes she could wave a Stevie wand over everything and make the fascists go away — she’s an unusually simple thinker on that plane — but when she says she’s afraid, she is. She’s afraid enough to start writing songs again, which is something we thought she’d never do.