This is the first installment of what I’m choosing to call the next chapter of my column, “Stella”. Every other week, I will be highlighting a new incredible woman, genderqueer, or non-binary artist. “Stella” became my goal when I noticed these voices weren’t showing up on my playlists; neither the playlists I’ve created for myself or those made for me by Spotify every day.

As a die hard feminist this was upsetting, but it was even more embarrassing. Men were the default, even for someone who finds a deeply rooted connection with women. The more I put effort into choosing female artists, the more I realized just how much I’d been missing out on. This was empowering. I have to make this stretch further than just me.

“Music does a lot of things for a lot of people. It’s transporting, for sure. It can take you right back, years back, to the very moment certain things happened in your life. It’s uplifting, it’s encouraging, it’s strengthening.” – Aretha Franklin

Equality on the airwaves doesn’t come with just choosing cis women. This is why I’m also going to be highlighting transgender women and genderqueer or non-binary people. These groups are far too often ignored, and while cis women aren’t the default, we have the privilege of always being a part of the conversation.

Every other week, “Stella” will be published on krui.fm. Each week there is a “Stella” published, I will be hosting a radio show on KRUI 89.7fm from 7pm-8pm highlighting the artist I have written about. If there wasn’t an article that week, I’ll still be on their air playing only music women, genderqueer, and non-binary folks. Please tune in or listen by streaming on our website!

Today’s article will be about one of the all-time most influential women in the entire music industry: Aretha Franklin. She redefined R&B, jazz and gospel music throughout her life.

Born in 1942, Franklin was born in Memphis, but relocated to Detroit by the time she was five. Though her mother died when she was young, her father was supportive of her singing career, acting as her manager.

Franklin released her first album, “Songs of Faith”, when she was 14 years old. She signed with Columbia Records when she was 18, and released her single “Today I Sing the Blues”. It got her to the top ten of the Billboard Hot Rhythm & Blues Sellers chart.

One year later, in 1961, she peaked at number seven on the Billboard R&B chart with “Won’t Be Long” and was in the Top 40 with “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody”. Through the mid-60s, Franklin was quickly gaining momentum, releasing seven more albums and regularly appearing on Billboard charts before 1967. Then she would skyrocket.

After signing to Atlantic Records, Franklin recorded her first top ten single on the Billboard Hot 100, “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)”. Shortly afterward, she recorded her signature song, an upbeat cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect”. This song was later deemed a feminist and civil rights anthem.

She recorded one of my favorite songs, covered by many artists, “(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman”, on her debut album with Atlantic, “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You”. This album was her first to go gold and also had another one of my favorite songs of hers, “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man”.

During the early 70s, she released the single “Spanish Harlem” and one of her most famous albums, “Young, Gifted & Black”. “Day Dreaming” and her cover of “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” were featured on this album. She also went back to her roots in gospel with the album“Amazing Grace” and recorded the most lovely rendition of the titular track.

Throughout the 70s, Franklin’s albums started to dip in sales and on the charts. Even with this bad luck, she still topped the R&B chart with “Something He Can Feel”.

In the later years of her career there was a clear stylistic shift in Franklin’s music. She released her first platinum album “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?” and recorded “I Knew You Were Waiting for Me” with George Michael. She also released a song produced by the incredible Lauryn Hill titled “A Rose is Still a Rose”.

“Being the Queen is not all about singing, and being a diva is not all about singing. It has much to do with your service to people. And your social contributions to your community and your civic contributions as well.” – Aretha Franklin

Franklin has performed at the Royal Albert Hall for Queen Elizabeth, at a gala for Elton John’s AIDS Foundation, and at the Super Bowl. She was also the first woman and woman of color to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 by Keith Richards (after 13 men had already been inducted).

She was also a teen mom giving birth to two sons by the time she was 14. She had two more song later in her life. Two of her sisters, Erma and Carolyn, sang backup for Franklin in her recordings. She escaped a violent marriage. She was given an honorary Doctorate of Arts from Harvard. She was Whitney Houston’s honorary aunt after becoming close with her mother, Cissy.

She has received both a Grammy Legend Award and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. She also has earned a National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She is first on the Rolling Stone’s list of Greatest Singers of All Time.

When she sings you can feel it. She takes her entire life and puts it into her music. She has mastered R&B, gospel, soul, pop, and jazz genres. She has given them new life over her 62 years of releasing music. There is no one like her.

She was the best. She is the best. She achieved more than any other female musician in the 60s and 70s, though she did have some stellar competition. She has been immortalized through all of her achievements, and she is still performing. She was the perfect person to start off my new “Stella”.

Be sure to catch “Stella” on the air Friday, July 13th from 7pm-8pm to hear Aretha Franklin’s music!

“Stella” is a column dedicated to highlighting women and people who identify as genderqueer or non-binary. It is essential that we begin hearing these voices in our playlists. We will delve into their histories, significance, power, and talents. “Stella” is accompanied by a radio show, airing every Friday from 7pm-8pm on 89.7fm. The shows that fall on weeks a “Stella” article is published will highlight the specific artist I have written about, while each other week will feature a variety of women, genderqueer, or non-binary artists.

The post Stella: Aretha Franklin appeared first on KRUI Radio.

“No other group carried such a weight of expectation – and tradition – as the Smiths,” said the Guardian. “Had they not risen to the occasion, it is not overstating the case to say that the entire trajectory of recent British rock music as we now know it – that’s the line from the Smiths to the Stone Roses to Oasis and on to the Libertines and today’s indie darlings, Arctic Monkeys – would not have been traced.”

The single “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” reached Number 10 on the UK Charts and established The Smiths as both prominent musicians and social activists. Johnny Marr wrote “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” in an hour in a New York City hotel room.

“Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” examined human worth and the concept of time over a whiny guitar, sporadic tambourine, and climbing bass. The 1960 Sandie Shaw single “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” inspired the title.

The single was vital in establishing the relationship with their longtime producer Stephen Street and stood as a prelude to their political-critique album “Meat Is Murder” which debuted less than a year later. The production disappointment of their first self-titled album inspired Johnny Marr and Morrissey to produce “Meat Is Murder” with Stephen Street as their engineer.

The “Meat Is Murder” cover used a photograph entitled “Soldier Rests.” It featured Marine Cpl. Michael Wynn in Da Nang, South Vietnam. The wording on the helmet was changed from, “Make War Not Love” to, “Meat Is Murder.”

The opening song on the album “The Headmaster Ritual” was a critique on corporal-punishment within Manchester schools. Morrissey used unsettling imagery, clattering sounds, and hypnotic onomatopoeias to show the breadth of emotional and physical abuse. Childhood tribulation was also found in the sole single “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” which used a conversational approach to discuss suicide and loneliness.

Morrissey later revealed to Melody Maker that the song was in response to the harsh journalistic attempts to expose him as a fraud. His opposition of the Thatcher Administration and monarchy lead to this tension. A similar discussion of suicide and loneliness was found in their single “Asleep.” It shows the devastation of not wanting to wake up.

Morrissey was a vegetarian from the age of twelve and used his media controversy to express his beliefs for animal rights. Morrissey forbid his band members from being photographed eating meat and insisted that his tour venues serve no meat on the nights he performs. Their pro-vegetarian track concluded the politically strident album.

“The meteoric rise continued with Meat Is Murder debuting at Number One on the British chart; the group also caused a stir with Morrissey’s stage presence, the singer wearing a garland of gladioli in tribute to Oscar Wilde, a hearing aid in homage to Fifties balladeer Johnnie Ray, and a ducktail haircut patterned after English rocker Billy Fury,” said Rolling Stone. “His champions, though, hailed his oblique, angst-driven songs as latter-day examples of Ray Davies-styled social commentary.”

Their single “Shakespeare’s Sister” was released a month after “Meat Is Murder.” Although the single received minimal commercial success, it was vital towards the progression of the band. The title refers to a Virginia Woolf feminist essay that argues if William Shakespeare had a sister of equal ability she would not be as famous.

It’s essentially a suicide drama set to a demented rock’n’roll rhythm,” said the Guardian. “Musically the song evokes an older, more raw rock era, with echoes of both Bo Diddley and the early Rolling Stones in its galloping rhythm. Lyrically, though, it draws on an incredible variety of sources, none of which would have impinged on the consciousness of a less erudite, or indeed eccentric, songwriter.”

Their third studio album “The Queen Is Dead” spent twenty-two weeks on the UK charts and went Gold in the United States shortly after. Ex-Aztec guitarist Craig Gannon made his debut on the album. Through Macbeth references, pronounced backbeats, and a hard rock, Morrissey shatters, “the myth that he is a self-pitying sap,” said All Music.

“Morrissey delivers a devastating set of clever, witty satires of British social mores, intellectualism, class, and even himself.” At the forefront of the album their two smash-hits, “The Boy With the Thorn in His Side” and “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.”

“Panic” was their first recording after “The Queen Is Dead.” The song mentions the chaos unraveling within Britain. It condemns disco for ruining pop music. “Panic” was a response to the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster and received heavy criticism. The pinnacle of this criticism was when Journalist Nick Kent called the song a mandate for, “Rock terrorism.”

After a disappointing American tour, a severe car accident hospitalizing Morrissey, the firing of Gannon, a heroin addicted bassist, and an exhausted Marr, The Smiths disbanded. “It was possibly the most fraught, emotional and oft-lamented breakups in musical history,” said Rolling Stone. The Smiths were revered for their politically-charged ideologies, everyman sentiment, and desire to reconcile with their haunting past.

The post Ode To Protest Music: The Smiths appeared first on KRUI Radio.

But early this last summer I rediscovered and fell in love with the 6 song EP they have on Spotify, “She’s Drunk Like the Rest of Us”. The lyrics are relatable and funny and unique. I have never found something that makes me feel like their music does. It’s perfect and blunt and emotional and poppy.

So I already knew that I loved Karen Meat’s music when I showed up at Gabe’s last night, October 20th, for their Witching Hour performance. There weren’t very many people that beat me there.

Maybe only five people were hanging out near the stage or at the large tables that line the sides of the room. The room did slowly fill up to around fifteen or twenty people by the time the set started.

The first thing Arin Eaton and Dana Telsrow did was sing the harmonies of their song “6-12-16” with their faces close, almost nose to nose. “Your eyes open up a sea of possibilities/when I look into them, I see a place I’d rather be.”

Their chemistry on stage was immediate. Watching them perform was like watching to two of them have a conversation, like they were just hanging out making music and not on stage. It really, really works.

When Dana finished a guitar solo, Arin says “good job” before she starts singing again, and he responds with a “thank you”. They came up with choreographic tricks to perform throughout their set. Arin took a sip of beer, waterfalled it into Dana’s mouth which he was hanging upside down below her, and sang the line “I cope with it by drinking/every single day” only for Dana to create the most extreme spit take you would have ever seen in your life.

They were fun with their audience, and their camaraderie didn’t seem closed off. Before they performed “Sad”, Arin told the audience to close their eyes, and she’d tell us when to open them.

When we did, Dana was playing the guitar with Arin between him and the instrument with her arms wrapped around to his back.

The songs are also incredibly relatable in a more realistic way than most music. While they are very much 60’s pop influenced, they also talk about depression and rejection and breakups.

“Remember a few hours ago when you broke up with me/in your sister’s front yard in front of your family/oh my god/that was embarrassing” is the intro lyric to “Drone”. “I want to barf on you” is the first line from “Sad”. They’re comedic and cathartic and happy while also in the pits of a depression.

It’s not like all of these are there to make up for a lack of actual talent either. Arin’s vocals are incredible and her voice is perfect for her music. Dana’s guitar solos are nothing short of musical genius, and are so versatile as well.

This performance did nothing but intensify my love for Karen Meat’s music. I will never listen to their music the same way as I have before. If they’re ever in Iowa City again, as they often are, I will one hundred percent be there.

Listen to Karen Meat’s “She’s Drunk Like the Rest of Us” below!

The post Witching Hour: Karen Meat @ Gabe’s 10/20/17 appeared first on KRUI Radio.