In Harmony: Women’s History Month Vignettes

Spring has sprung, and it’s Women’s History Month. As we (and the flowers) turn our faces towards the sun, what better to do than listen to music made by powerful, talented, beautiful women? Here’s how The Crimson’s Arts Board celebrates the symphony of female voices that makes this month all the more special.

“Girls Against God” by Florence & The Machine

This month, I’ve been thinking about being a girl. How much I love it. How I love to giggle and to cry. How I love to howl along to music while I fix my hair or do my makeup or lie on the ground and stare at the ceiling. I’ve been thinking about how I was a girl once — how I’ll always be a girl.

So naturally, this month, I’ve been thinking about “Girls Against God” by Florence + The Machine. “Oh, it’s good to be alive, crying into cereal at midnight,” Florence Welch wails over a lonely guitar. Later in the song, she declares: “Oh, God, you’re gonna get it, you’ll be sorry that you messed with us.” In just under five minutes, Welch turns anger into beauty, pain into love. She yells at the world and thanks it for its beauty. Because who could do that if not a girl?

To all the girls who read this, I urge you to give “Girls Against God” a chance. Let the music fill you with power, grace, ambition. Let it take over your body, and in turn, let yourself do all the things you thought you couldn’t. In a world that expects silence, make them listen. Be a girl against God.

—Staff writer Najya S. Gause can be reached at najya.gause@thecrimson.com.

“Best Friend” by Laufey

My sister is three years younger than me, five inches taller than me, and — as of right now — halfway across the world, back home in Singapore. We are incredibly different people, and we take pride in that, which is why when Spotify told us that we had 99% music compatibility, we were both pretty shocked. But that’s also why all her music recommendations tend to resonate with me. When she sent me a link to “Best Friend” with the accompanying text “thought of u,” I had high hopes.

I suppose it makes sense that Laufey wrote this about her twin sister, Junia, because she perfectly captures the exasperation and affection that exists between my sister and me. The lyrics are so prescient it’s creepy. “I promise that I love you / Even with that hairdo,” Laufey sings, as if she was there to watch my sister cackle at me when I shaved all my hair off at 17. You can almost hear the smile in Laufey’s voice as she croons along to the smooth, jazzy tune, one that belies the palpable exasperation that exists in the lyrics — “You drive me half insane,” Laufey admits, even as she concedes that “a universe without you would be thoroughly mundane.” It’s such a precious song to me because it is exactly how female friendships are, be it with my sister, or even with my other “Best Friends” — a lot of fighting, a lot of making fun of each other, but ultimately, a begrudging and all-consuming love and affection.

Alicia, if you’re reading this, you piss me off more than anyone else I’ve ever known — I miss you!

—Staff writer Angelina X. Ng can be reached at angelina.ng@thecrimson.com.

“mad woman” by Taylor Swift

A track diving into the experiences and perception of feminine rage, this song is full of sharp lyrics set to a melancholy piano instrumental and soft, electronic beat. Swift doesn’t shy away from acknowledging a tendency towards anger, singing, “Do you see my face in the neighbor’s lawn? / Does she smile? / Or does she mouth, ‘Fuck you forever’?” in the first verse. Her vocals are breathy yet clear, and her lyrics pack a punch. She shines a light onto countless common experiences of managing your reactions, being painted as a monster, and feeling the pain of being attacked by other women. The repeating lines, “What a shame she went mad / No one likes a mad woman / You made her like that” convey the frustration of not being allowed to have feelings and of how women get villainized when they do. She highlights internalized misogyny when she sings, “And women like hunting witches too / Doing your dirtiest work for you,” portraying the role of women in upholding reductive, patriarchal views. The track’s mellow tempo and Swift’s delicate background vocals contrast with the pointed lyrics, mirroring the seething anger that women often have to repress at risk of being called crazy, or mad.

—Staff writer Anna Moiseieva can be reached at anna.moiseieva@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @AMoiseieva.

“Lena Grove” by Eliza McLamb

“Being alone is freedom to me now / I sit with myself in darkness / And when I can't find where the light is / I look for a beautiful thing / And recognise a piece of it in me” – “Lena Grove” by Eliza McLamb

When I was growing up, I always identified as an extrovert. Honestly, I was probably just scared of being alone.

With my first year of college came the typical wave of isolation that characterizes a first-year in a new place far away from home. I’d spend long September evenings socializing and then burn out, retreating to my dorm in the Yard, shutting off all the lights, and blasting the same four songs on repeat for hours, just clinging onto their consistency. Eliza McLamb’s “Lena Grove” was one of these four lifelines.

I think young women are often taught to be accompanied — whether by a parent, a guardian, a boyfriend, a pack of friends. Not many of us are taught how to be alone. As I stared up at my dorm string lights and McLamb affirmed to me — like a big sister advising me through my JBL Flip — that “it is through love you are sustained / You are self-contained,” her message started to sink in. Slowly, the time I spent with myself grew just as meaningful as the time I spent with others. Slowly, the isolation got easier until one day, I looked around and realized I cherished it after all.

—Staff writer Stella A. Gilbert can be reached at stella.gilbert@thecrimson.com.

“Who Says” by Selena Gomez & The Scene

As an avid Disney Channel fanatic, I admired Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, and Demi Lovato, watching their journeys as actors eventually lead to launching successful musical careers. Although the three of them collectively released songs about the simplistic joys and struggles of young love, one song that was never tethered to a romantic relationship of any kind was “Who Says” by Selena Gomez & The Scene, released in 2011.

In the age of the rapid growth of social media, women are often met with unrealistic beauty standards and twisted bodily perceptions. However, “Who Says” was one of the earliest exposures I had to feeling confident in my own skin — In fact, it is the first song I ever added to my own Spotify playlist titled “childhood.” For me, listening to “Who Says” is an emotionally immersive experience, my own confidence slowly blossoming with the series of rhetorical questions in the lyrics, such as, “Who says you’re not star potential? / Who says you’re not presidential?” These powerful questions comprise the majority of the pop song and are meant to devalue every form of criticism one has received, allowing the listener to feel a sense of empowerment as their insecurities begin to vanish.

As many young women in my generation grew up looking up to Selena Gomez as a role model, the impact of hearing a message of empowerment delivered through a pop song by such a celebrated figure can be profoundly influential. Even since releasing “Who Says,” Gomez has stayed true to the core message of the song, constantly inspiring young women in interviews on body positivity and self-love.

—Staff writer Allison S. Park can be reached at allison.park@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @allisonskypark.

“Boys in the Trees” by Carly Simon

While many know Carly Simon from her landmark 1972 hit, “You’re so Vain,” I first met her through her softer, introspective commentary on the female experience: “Boys in the Trees.”

The track lays bare the unspoken experience of growing up as a girl, already feeling the constraints of her gender. It takes the listener along for an exploration of her own coming-of-age through the lens of later womanhood’s insight.

Cradled by the simple, nostalgic strumming of her guitar and clear, softly impassioned vocals, the lyrics confront listeners with poignantly familiar commentaries on an internalized female experience juxtaposed with the freedom of boyhood. Yet Simon’s dramatic lyrical introspections on themes of guilt, innocence, passion, solitude, and tacit generational understandings of what it is to be a woman each ultimately collapse into the refrain “Let the boys grow in the trees” — a resigned acknowledgement of the unrestricted experience enjoyed by her male peers.

While the song’s protagonist is placed in a bed she’s outgrown, sentenced to watch through the window from inside the confines of her old bedroom, “the boys” are imagined growing unrestrained in the expanse of the outdoors.

The intractable paradoxes of female existence in Simon’s song, inescapable yet often unarticulated, persist for listeners nearly half a century later. Simon’s voice from 1978 cuts straight to a fate shared by generations of daughters to the present day — “Sentenced first to burn and then to freeze / And watch by the window / Where the boys are in the trees.”

—Staff writer Marin E. Gray can be reached at marin.gray@thecrimson.com.