Female Rage: The Musical

Can you maintain femininity through anger?

As a child who was never allowed to express my anger, this question fascinates me. Don’t get me wrong- my childhood was great in so many ways, but expressing my anger freely was something I never learned how to do. I was uncomfortable feeling the emotion, and to this day I don’t know how to sit in it.

Finding female artists who write and sing through their anger is so therapeutic for me because it helps me process my own anger and ultimately change my relationship with the once unsettling emotion. These women have shown me how the emotion can be helpful and that it can be used in a positive way.

MJ Brown said it perfectly in Music, Witchcraft, and the Art of Feminine Rage, “For me, I didn’t even realize I had those pent-up feelings until another woman sang them back to me. … Music critics will still dismiss women in rock as too aggressive; [these women] have still managed to embrace their feelings and live in spite of them. If you ever see Mitski in concert—or Williams, or Bridgers, or Halsey—you’ll find girls dancing, laughing, crying tears of joy.”

It’s the same for me. Listening to women sing about their anger helps me process and understand my own. It gives me permission to feel my anger in a safe way.

Brown expands on this idea beautifully, “This seems to be the most common misconception about turning rage into art—that the art itself has to be angry. From the riot-grrrl movement to the women of Lilith Fair, music that went against the grain was dismissed as “tampon rock” and second-wave feminists were stereotyped as aggressive man-haters. I was afraid that listening to angry music and making angry art would make me an angry person, the worst thing for a girl to be. Sometimes I still am. But the truth is nothing beats watching a woman take her life back. If there was anything more exhilarating and cathartic than hundreds of teenage girls screaming lyrics they’d scribbled on their bedroom walls, I had yet to find it.”

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Hayley Williams, the lead singer of Paramore, is such a perfect example of female rage. She has shown a kaleidoscope of what anger looks like throughout her career as a musician. Some of Paramore’s songs are outwardly angry and depict what we generally see as anger as loud, fast, pounding rhythms.

On the other hand, Williams’ solo album, Petals for Armor, is a softer expression of feminine anger. The anger seeps in. It’s not so in your face as say "Ignorance." Upon first listen of her solo album, you may not know that she is angry. "Simmer" has a quieter, errier sound.

Rage is a quiet thing
Well, you think that you've tamed it
But it's just lying in wait
Rage, is it in my veins?
Feel it in my face when
When I least expect it, hmm
- "Simmer"

By the end of the song she says “wrap yourself in petals for armor”- a beautiful solution to rage, and rightfully, this concept became the title of this solo album. In a BBC Radio 1 interview, she spoke about this beautiful line:

“And I think for me it’s somewhat of a mantra to try to stay soft in a really really hard world. And feel pain and feel everything, like let all of it come to you and try to put out something that can redeem it all, even if it’s ugly at first.

The lyric is ‘wrap yourself in petals for armor’ because I kept feeling like the way for me to protect myself best is to be vulnerable and be okay with having a lot of pain at certain times and also feeling a lot of joy at certain times. As long as I’m staying soft to those things and I’m open to letting those things in and out of me. Then I can actually survive the world a lot easier than if I stay hard and stay with my fists up all the time.”

I love the idea of there being vulnerability in expressing your anger in a safe place and how that can be an expression of feminity.

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Another woman who expresses anger in such a beautiful feminine way is Florence and The Machine. I love how Welch manages to maintain her ethereal, divine feminine sound while singing about smiting her enemies. In “Seven Devils” Florence sings:

“Holy water cannot help you now
Thousand armies couldn't keep me out
I don't want your money
I don't want your crown
See, I've come to burn your kingdom down”

The orchestration of the song, and Welch’s music in general, is both soft and powerful. I think at the end of the day, that’s why I’m drawn to feminine rage. Just like divine femininity- it’s authentic. Both Williams and Welch express themselves so authentically.

El Hunt wrote about Petals for Armor calling it a "raw, threatening sort of femininity – where rage is not just valid, but necessary." You can’t bottle up your anger forever. It will come out eventually. Letting it out and not brushing it under the rug and hide how you’re really feeling. It’s soft, but it’s dangerous. It’s raw; it’s real. And that is feminine rage.

The Playlist

The idea of this playlist was birthed after Taylor Swift introduced her Tortured Poets Department’s set at the Eras Tour. She called that section of the set “Female Rage: The Musical” and I took that concept and ran with it. Like any good musical, this playlist is dramatic, theatrical, and tells a story. It’s an ode to women who got fed up and what they did about it.

It starts with Hayley Williams’ “Simmer” and “Monster” by dodie as the feelings of anger sit just under the surface before they come out. When it does emerge it’s a full array of women expressing and processing their unbridled anger. By the end, there’s a resolution of owning and accepting the anger. There is an understanding that anger is not the enemy. It’s an effective tool that we can use to express ourselves and understand our values. And accepting that while staying true to our femininity is powerful.

Are there any songs that help you express your anger? Any songs you would have included on your own angry playlist?

xoxo,

Sadie

Enjoy the playlist! If you liked it and enjoyed this content, please consider buying me a coffee!