Women of the Year

They dominated my listening in 2021: Joni Mitchell, Allison Russell, Brandi Carlile, Diana Krall, Sandy Denny, and Gillian Welch, among others.

For some reason—for whatever reason—about 80 percent of the music I listened to this year, new or more likely from years back, was written and sung by female artists/musicians. Even when males appeared they were often supported by or in duets with women (e.g. Jason Isbell, Robert Plant, David Rawlings). So, after the usual political cartoon, here are a few highlights from my 2021 listening in random order. Feel free to subscribe, it’s still free.

We’ll kick if off with Gillian Welch (joined by David Rawlings, Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell) with “Miss Ohio.”

It was the Year of Joni Mitchell, with several re-issues or excavations of her 1960s and 1970s material, and then the recent Kennedy Center hoopla. But for me the highlight was my discovery of her live version of one of her greatest (though not best-known) songs, “Amelia,” here when she was really developing her own guitar stylings.

Many singers took a shot at perhaps Joni’s greatest composition, “A Case of You,” but none in my view topped Diana Krall’s live version a few years back.

Brandi Carlile even presented a pair of concerts covering Joni’s entire Blue album. Here on the Colbert show with the title song.

Certainly, a Joni contemporary, Sandy Denny was not new to me but (just as happened with another tragic figure, Gene Clark, a couple of years back) I finally became obsessed with her entire musical career, in her case just ten years. For a couple of years, before her sad decline, she sometimes matched Joni as a writer and usually topped her—and everyone else— as a singer. She didn’t leave many live performances (solo or with Fairport) on tape, but here is one from 1971.

As noted this week, the record of the year for many belonged to Allison Russell—practically a concept album on enduring and surviving child sexual abuse—so here are a couple additional selections, live.

Brandi Carlile, besides her Joni tributes and aiding Allison Russell, emerged with another fine album (maybe her best) near the end of this year. Here she rocked out on SNL in gold suit (hello, Phil Ochs).

After re-discovering Natalie Merchant a couple of years back (after catching her live at Mohonk), I kept listening in 2021. So take a trip down memory lane when we were all quite a bit younger and Covid was not even on the horizon….

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss finally followed up their smash of a dozen years ago, and the top cut might have been a song once covered (more) memorably by the great Lucinda Williams.

And, finally, what I consider the greatest song of the 19th century (and with deep meaning still today), Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times” figures prominently on the soundtrack of my new film. So naturally I returned to the stellar version by the McGarrigles and Emmylou Harris and Mary Black (plus young Rufus Wainwright).