Stevie previews new song and speaks out for reproductive freedom

[aleuzzi]

Originally Posted by 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.

I agree with this. She feels compelled to speak — and although it isn’t not opportunist, it is also a genuine urge to address something that means something to her. The sad thing is she lacks the political head and ingenuity to achieve that kind of big statement/original approach the best political songs invariably possess. Stevie is and always will be a self-absorbed writer, a weaver of words that address her private world in elliptical, semi-riddled language. Her solipsistic masterstrokes (Sara, Gypsy, Gold Dust Woman come to mind) are highly effective because she so clearly FEELS what would otherwise seem incoherent and opaque. And her passionate deliveries of mystical, private mythologies make them meaningful.

But when she’s trying to make a big public statement it doesn’t work. She is not a natural spokesperson for the masses. She is an enchanted and enchanting teller of coded confessions.