For a little light relief, we thought we’d turn to the musical harbour of all things dark – country and western – to showcase some serious ladies doing serious shit, ranging from the badass to the just plain bad.
Shawn Colvin – Sunny Came Home
Summary: Sunny ‘comes home’ and WREAKS FUCKING HAVOC, arsonist-style.
Choice lyrics:
Sunny came home with a list of names
She didn’t believe in transcendence
‘It’s time for a few small repairs,’ she said
Sunny came home with a vengeance.
…
‘I close my eyes and fly out of my mind
Into the fire.’
…
Count the years, you always knew it
Strike the match, go on and do it.
The Dixie Chicks – Goodbye, Earl
Summary: Earl is a small town wife-beater; his wife’s best friend is a willing murderer. In a cheery little tune that features a corpse in a hoedown in the video at the end, best friends Mary-Ann and Wanda pop off Wanda’s psycho husband.
Choice lyrics:
Well, it wasn’t two weeks after she got married
That Wanda started getting abused
She put on dark glasses, long-sleeved blouses, and make-up to cover her bruises.
Well, she finally got the nerve to file for divorce
She let the law take it from there
But Earl walked right through that restraining order and put her in intensive care.
Right away, Mary-Ann flew in from Atlanta
On a red-eye midnight flight
She held Wanda’s hand and they worked out a plan
And it didn’t take them long to decide
That Earl had to die.
Carrie Underwood – Before He Cheats
Summary: Carrie’s boyfriend needs a lesson learning, and Carrie has a garage full of appropriate lesson-learning tools.
Choice lyrics:
I dug my key into the side
Of his pretty little souped-up four wheel drive
Carved my name into his leather seats,
I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights,
Slashed a hole in all four tyres,
And maybe next time he’ll think before he cheats.
Jo Dee Messina – My Give A Damn’s Busted
Summary: Jo Dee’s boyfriend threatens to kill himself, and she really fucking doesn’t care.
Choice lyrics:
[You say] it’s a desperate situation
No telling what you’ll do
If I don’t forgive you, you say your life is through
But come on, give me something I can use
My give a damn’s busted.
…
I really wanna care
I wanna feel something
Let me dig a little deeper -
Nope, still nothing.
One of my favourites…
Stitch in Time
Oh there was a woman and she lived on her own,
She slaved on her own and she skivvied on her own,
She’d two little girls and two little boys –
And she lived all alone with her husband.
For her husband he was a hunk of a man
A chunk of a man and a drunk of a man,
He was a hunk of a drunk and a skunk of a man
Such a boozing, bruising husband.
For he would come home drunk each night,
He thrashed her black, he thrashed her white;
He thrashed her, too, within an inch of her life,
Then he slept like a log, did her husband.
One night she gathered her tears all round her shame
She thought of the bruising and cried with the pain,
Oh, you’ll not do that ever again,
I won’t live with a drunken husband.
But as he lay and snored in bed,
A strange old thought came into her head,
She went for the needle, went for the thread,
And went straight in to her sleeping husband.
And she started to stitch with a girlish thrill
With a woman’s heart and a seamstress’ skill,
She bibbed and tucked with an iron will,
All around her sleeping husband.
Oh, the top sheet, the bottom sheet, too,
The blanket stitched to the mattress through,
She stitched and stitched for the whole night through
Then she waited for the dawn and her husband.
And when her husband woke with a pain in his head,
He found that he could not move in bed,
Sweet Christ, I’ve lost the use of me legs!
But this wife just smiled at her husband.
For in her hand she held the frying pan
With a flutter in her heart she given him a lam;
He could not move but he cried, “God damn!”
“Don’t you swear,” she cried to her husband.
Then she thrashed him black, she thrashed him blue,
With the frying pan and the colander too,
With the rolling pin just a stroke or two
Such a battered and bleeding husband.
She said, “If you ever come home drunk any more,
I’ll stitch you in, I’ll thrash you more,
Then I’ll pack my bag and I’ll be out the door,
I’ll not live with a drunken husband.”
So isn’t it true what small can do
With a thread and a thought and a stitch or two?
He’s wiped his slate and his boozing’s through
It’s goodbye to a drunken husband.
I like it when women murder their rapists, as in Gillian Welch’s ‘Caleb Meyer’
Caleb Meyer, he lived alone
In them hollarin’ pines
Then he made a little whiskey for himself
Said it helped pass the time
Long one evening in back of my house,
Caleb come around
And he called my name ’til I went out
with no one else around
Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin’ chains.
but when I go to sleep at night,
Don’t you call my name
Where’s your husband, Nellie Kane
Where’s your darlin gone?
Did he go down off the mountain side
and leave you all alone?
Yes, my husband’s gone to Bowlin’ Green
to do some business there.
Then Caleb threw that bottle down
and grabbed me by my hair.
Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin’ chains.
but when I go to sleep at night,
Don’t you call my name
He threw me in the needle bed,
across my dress he lay
then he pinned my hands above my head
and I commenced to pray.
I cried My God, I am your child
send your angels down
Then feelin’ with my fingertips,
the bottle neck I found
I drew that glass across his neck
as fine as any blade,
and I felt his blood pour fast and hot
around me where I laid.
Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin’ chains.
But when I go to sleep at night,
Don’t you call my name
Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin’ chains.
But when I go to sleep at night,
Don’t you call my name
Also, Miranda Lambert, who this week waded in on the Chris Brown/Rihanna domestic violence debate. This little ditty:
I’m goin’ home, gonna load my shotgun
Wait by the door and light a cigarette
If he wants a fight well now he’s got one
And he ain’t seen me crazy yet
He slap my face and he shook me like a rag doll
Don’t that sound like a real man
I’m going to show him what a little girls made of
Gunpowder and lead