So I need you to repeat after me.
We are here.
We are here!
Women have used their music
as a form of resistance for decades.
Taking risks.
Singing the truth, even when the world
is telling you to shut up.
I think music is one of the most powerful ways
to put a message out there.
♪ This girl is on fire ♪
♪ We're walking on fire ♪
Music has the ability to bypass...
this, this brain.
Music goes straight here.
And when something says the things
that you may not be able to articulate yourself,
it becomes like part of you.
Music is more powerful now than ever
because it's an example where people come together.
We have an opportunity today
that a lot of women before us
paved the way to do,
and that's to be as loud and proud as possible.
On three.
One, two, three.
Fuck the Supreme Court!
Silence is sometimes its own protest,
but it's born of not believing that your words matter.
And that's where protest music, where the songs
and the lyricism becomes so important.
God put you here
because you have something to offer.
Whether they like it or not, you owe it.
If you're passionate about something,
show up. It's important.
...that silence is our enemy, but sound is our weapon.
Chill!
When everything is so desperate,
when every day is a matter of survival,
I don't think you can help but be involved.
State by state, with a growing number
pushing near-total bans.
We will shape and mold this country.
I will not be molded and shaped at all anymore.
So I don't think you have a choice.
How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?
Okay.
♪ I shall not ♪
♪ I shall not be moved ♪
♪ I shall not ♪
♪ I shall not be moved ♪
♪ Like a tree Planted by the water ♪
♪ I shall not be moved ♪
Music itself is a great way
to broach this topic
of what is the story we've been told about America
in a way that people can hear.
When I first started thinking about doing music as a career,
I didn't start out thinking, "I'm going to be an activist."
I went to school for classical music
and learned how to be a soprano,
and I felt a little hollow.
I was like, "What am I doing?"
What am I doing in this
that a million other sopranos can't do?
So I went back home to North Carolina,
and then I started to hear the banjo,
the big discovery which set me off on this-this thing
of how these activism, history, and music kind of combine.
I was finding out that the banjo was invented by people
of the African diaspora.
And I was like, "What?"
That was the moment where I was like,
"If I don't know this massive thing,
what else don't I know?"
I'm of a long line of women who starts somewhere there.
I'm sitting here having had a pretty darn good life.
And what do I owe my ancestors?
What do I owe the women who came before me?
I think we have a responsibility.
We can't write the laws,
but maybe we can inspire the people who do.
Not the church, not the state!
Women must decide their fate!
A sweeping, deeply consequential decision
from the nation's highest court,
ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade.
I don't think anyone thought that could happen.
I don't think we still have fully processed
that it can happen, and that it's happening.
And I think the reason we had so many big artists
being willing to talk about reproductive rights
was because it was such a shocking moment.
Now y'all know it wouldn't be me
if I ain't take a second
to call out these stupid ass men.
I need everybody in the audience right now to say,
"My body, my motherfucking choice!"
My body, my motherfucking choice!
One more time! My body, my motherfucking choice!
My body, my motherfucking choice!
Drop that shit, Jay Bone.
I am so...
sick and tired
of old men.
It's been really heartening to see a lot of Gen Z pop stars
be so outspoken...
So many women and so many girls
are going to die because of this.
...against this really regressive wave
of patriarchy.
It's never giving a man policing my body.
It's just crazy to me.
I-I can't imagine anyone
making a decision for a woman that's not her.
I-- That's like we've gone back in time.
I don't think that's something I can sit back and just go,
"Oh, well, hmm, I won't say anything."
I had to find my ways to-to be a part of it
while not having people
down my throat saying, "What do you know?"
And it's like, "Actually, I'm a woman.
I know a lot more than you think."
Selena!
I think I started to recognize my platform meant something
when I was around 16.
I had a single mother come up to me.
They were Latin, and she was in tears saying,
"Thank you so much for being someone
my daughter can look up to that looks like her."
That kind of put a little bit of responsibility on me.
And then in 2020,
I felt like I should get politically involved.
It was around election year,
and I remember I wanted to give my platform
to other people.
And then I ended up interviewing Stacey.
Stacey.
Hello.
I instantly felt like she was a friend for life.
And I believe that we, you know, believe in the same things.
Please grab some friends and vote early.
Go to StaceyAbrams.com to learn more.
My mission, my work is to amplify voices
that are marginalized
and empower people to organize around their beliefs.
Music can do the same thing.
The fights that we're in,
they can be overwhelming
and we lose the thread.
Music lets us find it again.
If we work, if we fight,
if we resist, we can have more.
And this music reminds women that we have been here before,
we have pushed through, and we will do so again.
Free our sisters, free ourselves!
The status quo is being challenged
by the women's liberation movement.
Today, it's still a man's world.
And just look at it.
Women were paid an average of 59 cents
for every dollar a man earned.
In some states, women
cannot own property in their own name.
Most women are raised to believe
their true role is that of wife and mother.
But some women are questioning whether this is so.
Loretta Lynn was this well-loved popular musician.
She had won multiple awards, had number one hits,
and I mean, at the time,
country music was largely known
to be a little more conservative.
She released a song praising the birth control pill.
This was a really scandalous thing to do.
♪ There's a-gonna be Some changes made ♪
♪ Right here on Nursery Hill ♪
♪ You set this chicken Your last time ♪
♪ 'Cause now I've got The pill ♪
It was this anthem of a woman taking control
not only of her body, but her future too.
And the song started getting banned from country radio.
What about women, Loretta? Have they said,
"Boy, it's about time somebody said something"?
On radio stations, on television,
"The Pill" was a huge hit.
It's still shocking to me that she was able to do that.
With that one song, Loretta just blew up
what was acceptable for women to sing about.
And she did it so unapologetically
that she opened doors for other women in music.
Thank you.
Liberation is here.
No area of male-dominated American culture is spared.
Women wanted to equally participate in society.
Not gonna sit quietly any longer!
And a big part of that meant changing
what a woman's role was and how she was perceived.
A coalition of liberation groups
invaded the offices of the Ladies' Home Journal.
We demand that the magazine ceased publishing advertisements
that degrade women.
- Here's one! - Here's one!
"Made for a woman's extra feelings."
Secret deodorant.
Oh!
♪ I am woman, hear me roar ♪
♪ In numbers too big To ignore ♪
♪ And I know too much To go back and pretend ♪
Women are told so much,
and it gets thrown at them
in the form of advertising and just the general attitudes
of family and friends and society.
In general, you are weak. You are inferior.
What are the main things you want equality in?
Probably the basic underlying things.
Just a general change of attitude toward women
in general, and on the part of women themselves.
Hmm. Well, your song, "I Am Woman,"
it suggests a toughness, almost an aggressiveness.
Uh, "I am strong, I am invincible..."
It's a positive statement, okay? Positive.
- ♪ I am strong ♪ - ♪ Strong ♪
- ♪ I am invincible ♪ - ♪ Invincible ♪
♪ I am woman ♪
Songs like "I Am Woman" resonate
because they're simply celebrating being female.
And it's this moment where she's inviting
other women to own their power.
This idea gets carried forward
into the next generation of women artists,
who are bigger and bolder
about saying who they are and what they want.
The music industry is designed to be reductive.
And so women have to work really hard
to kind of break out of that.
And part of that is eagerness
to kind of express that women have-- contain multitudes.
It took some effort and some revolution
and radical thinking
to present this reality, or truth,
that we are not one thing
and we're not even like two things.
We're like a million things.
I am very... meticulous
about my self-expression and my art.
I'll go to great lengths to make sure
that everything turns out pure for me.
I was living in New York. This is in the '80s.
And Valerie Simpson and Nick Ashford said,
"We're gonna write songs for you." So they did.
And I think probably the first song they wrote for me
was "I'm Every Woman."
♪ I'm every woman ♪
♪ It's all in me ♪
♪ Anything you want done, baby, I'll do it naturally ♪
When I... I listened to the lyrics,
I said, "Oh dear."
I was all self-conscious and shit, and I was like,
"I'm not every woman.
How dare I say I'm every freaking woman.
I'm not."
I felt uncomfortable for many, many years singing that song,
but I had a feeling that it was something bigger than me.
Chaka Khan, she set the scene.
She was... she was the blueprint.
And you saw that confidence,
not just in the music,
but in the performances from that era.
So, like Tina Turner with "You Better Be Good to Me."
♪ Oh, you better be good To me ♪
Diana Ross, "I'm Coming Out."
♪ I'm coming out ♪
♪ I want the world... ♪
And Donna Summer.
She really moved the needle
with videos like "She Works Hard for the Money."
♪ She works hard For the money ♪
♪ So you better Treat her right ♪
I really believe that music is the purest form
of identity expression that exists.
And these self-ownership anthems were celebrating
what had been won by women
while also demanding so much more.
A lot of that fight for more was happening in the workplace.
♪ Tumble out of bed And stumble to the kitchen ♪
♪ Pour myself A cup of ambition ♪
♪ And yawn and stretch And try to come to life ♪
Dolly wrote "9 to 5"
as a theme song for a movie by the same name,
which was this satire about these three secretaries
who plotted revenge on their super sexist boss.
...Rhodes, she's gonna try and rope this--
She's already got him down.
If I wasn't in the scene, I was there every day
and I would just be like, you know,
'cause I couldn't get a guitar out on the set.
So I would just kind of...
You gotta have acrylic nails
to make that real percussive sound.
But I would just-- I thought it sounded like a typewriter.
Can you hear that?
- Yeah. - ♪ Working 9 to 5 ♪
♪ What a way to make a living ♪
♪ Working 9 to 5 ♪
♪ What a way to make a living ♪
♪ Barely gettin' by ♪
♪ It's all takin' And no givin' ♪
♪ They just use your mind... ♪
With "9 to 5," what Dolly did was take
a very real subject
and make it light and approachable and fun,
which is kind of how she approached a lot of things.
I'd like to know. Do you sing in the shower?
Do I sing in the shower?
No, but I don't wash on stage either.
Dolly Parton is herself an act of revolution.
I don't want to meet a lot of famous people.
I'm not interested.
She's one I would want to meet.
Just to say, "Good God, you go."
The way that she came from nothing.
And the way that she has written
so many incredible songs.
♪ And if you don't love me, Leave me ♪
♪ And don't let it trouble Your mind ♪
"Don't let it trouble your mind."
When I'm out the door, don't let it trouble your mind.
I'm gonna be fine.
She stood up for herself.
And she looks the way she looks
'cause that's the way she wants to look.
And she's very clear about that.
I enjoy the big hair and the gaudy clothes.
And it's-it's a costume.
It's part of what people have come to know me as.
And I don't like to be ordinary. I don't like to be stylish.
It's far too easy to be stylish.
I just loved her as a businesswoman.
She had big boobs. Everybody talked about it.
They looked down on her for it, and she was just like,
"This is me, and I'm gonna love myself."
I'm sure of myself as a person.
I'm sure of my talent.
I like the kind of person that I am.
Dolly had plenty of reason
to be sure of herself and her talent.
She was part of a league of female musicians
that were breaking new ground
and shattering expectations left and right.
My whole life, I've only done the stuff that I admired,
and if I admired it, I tried to emulate it.
And I admired Dolly Parton,
and I admired Emmylou Harris tremendously.
One day Emmy called me up and said,
"Dolly Parton's at my house. Why don't you come over?"
It was a 45-minute drive, but I got there in about 20.
We did a Carter song, "Bury Me Beneath the Willow,"
and we went, "Wow."
♪ So bury me Beneath the willow ♪
♪ Under the weeping Willow tree ♪
I jam with other singers all the time, you know.
But this sounded different.
If you're singing a song or listening to a song,
and you suddenly have a feeling you didn't realize you had,
that's when music is doing its job.
And it was very musically satisfying
to sing with those two girls.
The trio was this powerhouse supergroup of women
who had really taken control over their music and careers.
And Linda Ronstadt was not someone
who was gonna be defined
by the conventions of the industry.
♪ I'm going back someday ♪
♪ Come what may ♪
♪ To Blue Bayou ♪
And I remember hearing "Blue Bayou."
I think I was probably 17.
My mom told me that I looked like Linda Ronstadt,
and she goes, "You should listen to her music."
She has an incredible voice, like, "You're No Good."
♪ You're no good, You're no good ♪
♪ You're no good ♪
♪ Baby, you're no good ♪
Completely fell in love.
Those songs to me are so...
They're like, um, the Taylor Swift of that time,
you know, that-that powerful, like,
"Oh, yes, I deserve the best.
And I know exactly where I want to stand and who I am."
And that's vulnerability and strength.
And I think that every girl can relate.
"When Will I Be Loved,"
it's kind of an upbeat song, but it makes me emotional.
♪ When will I be loved? ♪
She was powerful.
She was a huge part of music.
She was with the Stones, Dolly Parton,
and she was the first woman to headline full arena tours.
She was her own trailblazer,
and she knew deep down that it was important for her
to get in touch with her roots
and to do something that was daring.
I think everybody did not want her doing a Spanish album.
She ended up winning a Grammy,
and the album is still the biggest selling
non-English-language record in American history.
Women like Linda Ronstadt,
who pushed to embody their heritage, set the stage
for non-English-speaking artists of today.
There is a direct line to Gloria Estefan,
Selena Quintanilla, J.Lo,
and full circle with artists like Rosalia and Karol G today
who are dominating the charts
without making albums in English.
There's a lot to be said about women taking
what is considered normal and turning it on its head.
When did you decide to be larger than life?
When did I decide to be myself, really?
I think that's what it comes down to.
You have to fearlessly go into this madness,
and you have to find your walk
and you stick to it.
If you stick to it
and are true to that and yourself...
I can't think of much else that really matters.
The '90s are gonna make the '60s look like the '50s.
It was awesome to be a little girl in the '90s
in a time when so many powerful women were coming up.
We had the first female attorney general,
secretary of state,
and the number of women in the Senate
had gone from two to twelve.
I can be anything I want to be. It's the '90s.
Women were given these platforms
that they may not have had before.
But, you know, at the same time,
you would see like Girls Gone Wild ads on
late at night.
We saw this dichotomy in popular culture
and outright hostility in the media towards women.
Monica also said that, uh, President Clinton
would often compliment her on her figure.
If you didn't think this guy
was the biggest liar in the world before...
You know, the last time I saw you,
were you this weight or a different weight?
I was a little skinnier then.
- What's your name? - Heather.
Well, buddy. Heather, she's got a fresh little crumpet.
Are you guys ready for your foxy boxers?
If I don't get you to show your breasts, I will get fired.
Bands like Bikini Kill
were not here for that.
This is for all those fuckers!
Well, it was really hard in the '90s
to be a woman in a feminist band.
There were always feminists in punk. Always.
From the very beginning.
But it had changed.
Punk started as the soundtrack to class warfare,
and then it became about guys who were, like, mad
their mom wouldn't make them a sandwich.
As someone who was going to shows, putting on shows,
very involved in the punk community,
and I'm like, "Seriously?"
I worked at a domestic violence and rape relief crisis center
when I was from 19 to about 24,
and that really informed the way I wrote lyrics
and what I wrote about.
I was so full of all of this crisis and rage and pain,
and like, how could I process that without music?
Girls always get pushed to the back, and it's all this, like,
sweaty boy, long hair, beer belly thing in the front.
Girls need to reclaim the scene for themselves, I think.
It did feel radical
and it did feel really dangerous.
Men were standing up and yelling,
"Shut up and play the song. Take it off."
We really needed to create community.
So we started getting names
of girls and women who came to our shows
and then inviting them to come to our next gig.
Eventually, me and my friend Allison Wolfe from Bratmobile,
we were like, "We're gonna have a meeting with girl punks."
But everyone had horror stories.
It started feeling like, "Hey,
you know what people want? They want support."
People started skill-sharing.
"Do you want to start a band?
Do you want to start a press
where we put out a bunch of fan zines?"
Like, "What do you want to do?"
Eventually, the meetings became known as riot grrrl meetings.
Riot grrrl was not just a genre of music.
It was a movement.
If you're a racist, homophobic, sexist,
or just a plain fucking asshole,
you will be asked to leave.
I started saying "girls to the front" at shows
because why were we printing up lyric sheets
with our words on them
to hand them out to dudes?
That's not who I made them for.
So I needed them to see
Kathi's hands on the bass and how easy it was.
How are they gonna start bands if they're stuck in the back
where they can't even see?
We wanted to have that physical connection
because connection is joy.
Their movement was about raising up women,
and "Rebel Girl" is this rallying cry
for what this movement is.
When I wrote "Rebel Girl,"
I was really working with what it was like
when I was a kid,
before I sort of got tamped down
and made to feel less than.
I remember watching my sister ride around on her big wheel,
and I just thought she was the coolest,
and all the girls I had crushes on
in junior high and high school.
I was just thinking about all these amazing women I knew.
And it just sort of came out.
♪ Rebel girl ♪
This whole movement set the tone for what would come.
♪ Rebel girl ♪
♪ I really like you ♪
♪ I really wanna be Your best friend ♪
♪ Be my rebel girl ♪
In the '90s, there was this really angry,
subversive, forceful thing happening with punk rock.
At the same time, there were these parallel waves
of feminism happening in other genres,
and this was especially notable in women's hip hop.
In the '90s, you kind of saw a lot of gangsta rap
being more in the forefront,
and women in gangsta rap
were not multi-dimensional figures.
You had songs like "A Bitch Iz a Bitch."
During my teenage years, I was kinda like bopping along to it.
Kind of like...
this is not quite right.
There had to be, at some point, women breaking through
and challenging the system.
That's where we get women like MC Lyte,
Queen Latifah, Salt-N-Pepa,
sort of pushing back against this dominant archetype.
♪ Who you callin' a bitch? ♪
♪ Yeah, You gotta let them know ♪
♪ U-N-I-T-Y ♪
I was very lucky that I had friends
who turned me on to lots of different kinds of music.
And when I heard "U.N.I.T.Y.,"
I was like, "This is different."
To be talking about street harassment
in a song that's on the radio,
that everyone's listening to,
was absolutely out of control.
♪ I walked past these dudes, When they passed me ♪
♪ One of em' felt my booty, He was nasty ♪
She put on paper an experience
that women could relate to,
and that hadn't been done in that way before,
on a rap song.
It opens the lane for this expression of anti.
You know, I think a great way to spread a message
is for it to come across as authentic.
But it's kind of where the authenticity feels
shocking in a way when we see it.
With the '90s, what we saw
was this reclamation of sex
with artists like Lil' Kim
and Foxy Brown and Missy Elliott.
♪ We got sex appeal, I'ma keep it real ♪
♪ If I didn't have a deal, I'd still be worth a mill' ♪
They were showing that women
and particularly, you know, Black women
can own sexuality.
There's some subversion at play.
And "subversion" actually is the word
that I would most apply to artists like Salt-N-Pepa
who flipped the script a lot of times.
♪ Let's talk about sex, baby ♪
♪ Let's talk about you and me ♪
There's a way that musicians
can, like, sneak a message in,
and "Let's Talk About Sex" is the opposite.
♪ I won't get got, I'm on the pill ♪
♪ Until the sores, spores ♪
♪ And stuff pour Down your drawers ♪
♪ He gave it to you ♪
♪ And now it's all yours ♪
I think that we need to really think about how artists
are not just building their own careers,
but really building out culture.
It's not just about making the music.
It's about engaging with the community
that the music is about.
We come in contact with a lot of people
that we became close with
as far as AIDS, you know, HIV positive.
That's what really made us open our eyes and be like,
"Wow, you know, this can happen to anybody."
- Anybody. - We feel, as rap artists,
we have a responsibility to the teenagers that listen to us,
to let them know it can happen to you too.
Early hip hop movement was really rooted
in poor Black and Brown communities.
And all of these folks that are talking
about really important things that are also in schools,
they're singing verses that young people needed to hear.
♪ Girls, you know You'd better watch out ♪
Being a kid, I fell asleep
to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
And I loved that album.
Her voice was so powerful
and just how she observed the world.
That album is structured through the lens of a classroom.
She's using that framing
as a way to talk about the importance
of talking to kids about the ideas on the album.
She's talking about motherhood,
she's talking about career,
she's talking about an extremely emotional breakup.
But Miss Hill was sort of saying to women,
"Think twice, be careful, protect yourself."
Her album was very much speaking about culture
and the experience as a woman, as a Black woman,
and I feel like it's not really easy to put into words
what that does for you.
But the representation was everything.
Since Miseducation, everybody's been begging you,
"Come on, Lauryn, give us something!"
There's a lot that could force an individual to compromise,
and to me, for me to make music,
it doesn't really make sense for me to make music
if I can't make something that has a purpose.
Lauryn is notorious, obviously,
because she's sort of retreated from the spotlight.
The costs have been really high, like,
this is the toll of this business.
I feel really moved by her unwillingness to compromise.
I'm still impressed by it.
It's not always the exact same contour of fight.
But there's always something more to be done.
We have a common bond that should help us transcend
the next hard thing we do.
No justice, no peace!
There are certain moments of rupture that are important.
Demonstrations erupting today
in the name of George Floyd.
Protestors flooding the streets and calling for justice.
Floyd, an unarmed Black man,
died after being cuffed and pinned to the ground
by an officer's knee.
Stop killing Black people!
Activism, a lot of times, is just like what's going on
in your community that kind of forces you to activate.
The shock and horror of what happened in 2020
was so much for everyone to bear.
A moment that big wakes people up.
It means you have to be present,
you have to be listening,
you have to be learning,
and you have to be speaking about it.
Shut it down!
I can't breathe!
I was in the Bay Area, at my mom's house,
and I was seeing people marching outside and, you know,
on the news and on social media.
I had to turn it off because you're just watching that video
over and over again, and it's really, um, painful.
And I had this old guitar that I've had
since I was like nine years old and I just picked it up.
I started playing those chords and singing that chorus.
♪ I can't breathe ♪
♪ You're taking my life From me ♪
It is a painful thing to tell a dark story.
When a musician is vulnerable,
we have space to process our grief.
All right, I'm not gonna lie, I'm gonna cry.
I was teared up, I got chills.
People were telling me, "This made my 70-year-old dad
think differently." People were telling me that.
I was like, "Wow, that's insane."
Another man was like, "I marched from Harlem
to Brooklyn with a bunch of people to this song."
I think when we create music, it can be more selfish
and then it turns into something else.
I'm not thinking about millions of people
are going to hear this.
Music is a universal language and it-it allows somebody
to help get out what they're feeling.
And that's vulnerability and strength.
You know, people talk about stress.
When you look at what the legacy of that is,
the inheritance of that,
the ancestral bequeathing of that,
I'm living with that stress.
It's in my bones. It's in my DNA.
But singing helps to release some of that.
When I went back home to North Carolina,
I started reading enslaved people's narratives.
It's an amazing experience to sit in a library
looking at somebody's diary
or a letter that they've written.
"Oh, I'm sorry it took me so long to write."
I mean, some things are universal.
"I was sick." You know,
"I'm sorry it took me so long to write you.
And the weather's been really crap.
And the crops are... You know, they're doing okay.
And we sold Sally last week, and I bought a new dress."
It's like that.
I didn't know what to do with these emotions,
thinking about these women
and the lives that they had to lead.
So I started writing songs.
Probably my most well known one of these is called
"At The Purchaser's Option."
So I found an ad,
and it was for a young woman who was for sale.
At the end of the ad, it says she has with her
a nine-month-old baby
who is at the purchaser's option.
She has with her a baby. You can buy it or not.
And I thought about that young woman.
I imagine her lying on the bed,
her little nine-month-old baby next to her.
She opens up her eyes,
not knowing how that day is gonna end.
Is she gonna be with that little baby?
Do you love them the less because you never know
if they're gonna stay with you? Of course you don't.
So all of these questions go into that song.
♪ You can take my body ♪
♪ You can take my bones ♪
♪ You can take my blood ♪
♪ But not my soul ♪
♪ You can take my body ♪
It's heavy.
But I feel like it's what I'm here to do.
Even as music helps us process pain,
it also unites us in joy.
From the beginning of the fight for civil rights,
there was always the music.
From the churches
to the streets
to the nation's capital.
Music has given people the strength to keep going.
Lena.
Odetta.
Mavis. Marian.
They showed us that the more you speak out,
the more you can change the world.
But we've also learned that the louder you are,
the more the forces of oppression
will try to silence you.
Dynamite exploded on a Sunday morning,
killed four little girls in Sunday school.
When the kids got killed in that church,
first you get depressed, and after that, you get mad.
And when these kids got bombed,
I just sat down and wrote this song.
She saw the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing,
and she was fed up with it,
and she wrote "Mississippi Goddam."
♪ Alabama's got me so upset ♪
♪ Tennessee made me Lose my rest ♪
♪ And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam ♪
She's just channeling
so much ancestral emotion, grief.
♪ I can't stand the pressure Much longer ♪
♪ Somebody say a prayer ♪
She's performing to largely white audiences,
performing to people who might not want to hear it.
...telling me that it was in bad taste.
And, you know, how could I stoop to this? Et cetera.
They missed the whole point.
I think she saw that all she could do
was make art
and try to speak on behalf of others.
♪ Alabama's got me so upset ♪
♪ And Governor Wallace Has made me lose my rest ♪
♪ Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam ♪
That's it!
And then she's done, and she bows,
you know, gracefully.
And I love that. That just shows everything.
She's a genius.
She was good friends with James Baldwin
and other artists of the time.
They were part of a greater community
of artists, writers, activists
that were coming together for a common cause,
equality.
It's important to know how much power you have
and utilize it in ways that will outlive you.
When I'm finished working, as tired as I am,
when there are kids who come backstage afterwards
who want to talk, or who are moved to the point,
sometimes they're moved to tears,
I find the time to do so as much as I can.
They are our future.
I never intend for my children to look at me and be ashamed
and say, "Mama, why didn't you do something?"
I will have done mine.
We continue to benefit from the stand that Nina took,
though I would imagine she'd still have a lot to say
if she saw the division that's in music today.
Hope y'all feeling good.
Give it up for the Dixie Chicks.
I remember the uproar over Beyoncé
at the Country Music Awards,
performing with the Dixie Chicks.
Dixie Chicks got in a lot of trouble
standing up against the war in Iraq.
♪ Daddy made a soldier Out of me ♪
There were a lot of sour faces in that audience.
What she walked away with was the impression
that she wasn't welcome.
I think that people painting
country music as this, like, white utopia,
it's... pure fabrication.
For Beyoncé, she grew up in Texas.
You know, this is her culture too.
Like, she's gonna claim it.
Global superstar Beyoncé
reveals the cover art
for her next album, Cowboy Carter.
♪ This ain't Texas ♪
- ♪ Woo ♪ - ♪ Ain't no hold 'em ♪
"Texas Hold 'Em," which made her
the first Black female artist to reach the top
of the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.
Her Instagram reading...
Rhiannon Giddens. Her banjo
is the first thing you hear on "Texas Hold 'Em."
The "Stay in your lane,"
the "Well, that's not real country,"
that's just racism.
Americana, country.
All of it comes out of cross-cultural collaboration.
But if you don't know that Black people
were a huge part of that collaboration,
you get a really skewed picture of what America is.
When I first started singing country music,
I was like, scared. I was like,
"There aren't really any Black people in country music."
And I Googled "Black female country singers."
I found a woman named Linda Martell.
Linda Martell's first single in 1969
was a huge hit.
She performed on popular TV shows like Hee Haw
and at venues like the Grand Ole Opry.
And before Beyoncé, Martell was the highest slotting
Black female singer on the country charts.
Martell later revealed a dispiriting story
about that period of her life.
She had originally signed with a label called
SSS International Records
and was totally unaware
that they had decided to release her music
on their sister label
called Plantation.
Feeling rightfully misled and disrespected,
she left the label,
and when she tried to take her music elsewhere,
Plantation threatened to sue any company
that released a song with her.
She ended up leaving the music industry
and ultimately supported herself as a school bus driver.
I think of music as a matter of historical record
and a matter of history keeping,
and that particular example,
I think, was representative
of the state of the country.
I think her story is all too common.
That is actually more of the refrain of women,
and especially Black women in the music industry,
not just like they flamed out or they weren't good enough
or they couldn't hack it.
It's like, actually, they were kind of set up for failure.
When I first started going to record labels,
there was a president.
He was questioning if I was authentic.
He was questioning where I was from and questioning who I was.
And I'm like, I grew up in Crawford, Texas.
It doesn't get any countrier than that.
And then he said,
"Can you take those songs that you're writing
and put a smile on it?"
I needed to downplay everything that I was,
and I lost myself.
♪ When I first saw That bikini top on her ♪
♪ She's popping right out Of the south Georgia water ♪
There was a movement that had happened
when I was first coming up
called the bro-country movement.
Everybody had trap beats in their songs,
and they were all going like this in their songs
and like going like this in their songs,
calling it country.
And then I was turning in songs and they were like,
"Mm, you need to make sure that sounds more country,
because people are gonna think that you're not authentic."
I was watching myself struggling as a Black woman,
and, um, I sat with my husband and I asked him,
"Why do you think country music isn't working for me?"
And he says, "Because you're running away from your Blackness
and you're running away from everything
that makes you different."
And he said, "You know,
country music is three chords and the truth.
So why aren't you writing country music
from your perspective?"
I was like, "Hm, why am I not?"
So I wrote a song called "Black Like Me."
♪ If you think we live ♪
♪ In the land of the free ♪
♪ You should try to be Black like me ♪
It got a lot of hate.
People were pissed.
It was at a time a country artist
got caught saying the N-word.
This is what's happening in this genre.
Like, you think I'm lying? Like, this is what's happening.
And the things people said to me,
"Get your ghetto ass out of country music.
Effing N-Word."
♪ Oh, now ♪
♪ Now I'm all grown up And nothing has changed ♪
♪ Yeah, it's still the same ♪
You can't truly see change until you start helping
other artists that are coming after you.
My God! No!
Are you Mickey? Hello.
I never thought that I would be able to have
these types of possibilities
all because I just stood up and said, "No."
♪ And I'm proud to be Black like me ♪
♪ Proud to be Black like me ♪
The storytelling can cut across genre,
but it carries a through line of refusal
to be crushed by what seems to be a system
that does not care for your existence.
Tracy Chapman was one of those fantastic storytellers.
She talks about working-class challenges
in a way that is universal but so specific.
♪ Don't you know ♪
♪ They're talking About a revolution? ♪
♪ It sounds like a whisper ♪
I wrote the song, "Talkin' 'bout a Revolution,"
when I was 16.
I received a scholarship to go to boarding school,
and it was a really difficult transition for me.
I found that people at the school
really didn't have a sense of where
the scholarship students like myself, where we come from,
and they also really didn't have much interest.
And, uh, I was really angry about that.
♪ Poor people gonna rise up ♪
♪ And get their share ♪
As a teenager, I discovered her music.
And for me, that was this moment
where all of the pent-up and sort of burgeoning,
you know, righteous indignation found a voice.
What was I upset about? What could I do?
Those songs really told me,
"These are the things you should demand."
And today I come to you as a young person,
as a young woman,
as a young Black woman,
to ask you to use us.
Use the young people of the United States of America
to pave a road that will last forever.
Tracy gave words to it
in such lyrical and beautiful fashion
that I carry it with me to this day.
♪ You got a fast car ♪
♪ And I want a ticket To anywhere ♪
♪ Maybe we make a deal ♪
♪ Maybe together We can get somewhere ♪
"Fast Car" is talking about not just poverty,
but the cycles of violence that are more relevant today.
It's a song about someone trying to break
intergenerational patterns,
and I just feel like it's such a classic narrative,
needing to carve out an identity for yourself.
There was something about the small-town angst
and desire to go somewhere else.
♪ You got a fast car ♪
♪ Is it fast enough So you can fly away? ♪
That moment, her at the Grammys,
there was something really remarkable
about how they shared the stage.
Like, we saw Tracy first.
She was glowing.
And Luke's relationship to her on stage
was of such reverence and respect.
Even the way he sings the song. He doesn't change the pronouns.
He doesn't do the things that men in general might do
to feel like, "Oh, I have to de-feminize the song."
♪ I-I had a feeling I could be someone ♪
The power of music
comes from its ability to change its shape over time.
What began as a song about urban poverty
could, four decades later, be transformed
into a modern country anthem.
Any time a marginalized group finds itself alone,
without power, un-listened to,
you can bet it has a song to sing.
And it's only a matter of time until a voice emerges.
My name is Melissa Etheridge.
I am a mother and a wife and a rock star.
When I turned 21,
I knew that Los Angeles was where the record industry was.
This was 1982.
I had just come out of the glorious '70s of folk rock.
The Eagles and Jackson Browne
and-and Fleetwood Mac.
So I travel out to California.
I'm like, "Here I am," you know.
And I realized what's happening in Los Angeles
is a lot of hair
and a lot of spandex,
and there's no acoustic guitars anymore.
As the weeks went by, my money was running out,
and I'm like, "What am I gonna do?"
I was a lesbian
and I went to some bars in Los Angeles
and I met some ladies.
And one of them, I went on a date down in Long Beach.
She took me to a club.
It was called the Executive Suite.
It used to be a steakhouse,
and the Russian mob had bought it,
and it was now a, uh, lesbian bar.
They had a piano in the corner.
I said, "Hey, do you have live music?" And...
I auditioned, got the job.
♪ Yeah, just like a movie ♪
And it put me in an atmosphere
of the lesbian movement of 1982.
These women were coming into the bars that I played at.
They were signing people up, registering them to vote.
So I was slowly being...
taught, really, about politics,
and we were in the midst of a huge backlash.
There is so much hatred and persecution
of gay people in our society.
In the '80s with HIV/AIDS,
there was just rampant homophobia.
Ambulance drivers have refused to take
AIDS patients on occasion.
He asked one of the attendants, he told them I had AIDS.
And the person said, outright, "I'm not touching him."
Just like that.
I am not HIV positive.
But what if I were?
I would be more afraid of how society would treat me
for having the disease than the actual disease itself.
Madonna was extremely vocal during the AIDS crisis.
She turned out to take part in a charity dance marathon
to benefit AIDS victims.
I'm really here for two reasons.
Number one is because I really believe in AIDS Project LA.
And the second reason I'm here is 'cause I love to dance.
When she released Like a Prayer,
the album had an insert
to inform people about HIV/AIDS.
So if you bought a Madonna record,
you were getting an informational booklet,
and it essentially read,
"Here are some basic facts you should know about it,"
and you bought it whether you wanted it or not,
because it was in your Madonna record.
And then, of course, after that we saw
that she went on to become like a huge activist.
I deal with a lot of topical issues,
family issues, and, you know,
what I think to be a big problem
in the United States, and that's homophobia.
If you keep putting something in somebody's face,
eventually, you know,
maybe they can come to terms with it.
She was just, like, so in your face
because it's like, you know, her entire-- her dance crew,
her makeup artists, her hairstylists.
She is flanked by queer people.
And she stood up for them, which is everything.
Her boldness was part of a push
towards more visibility for queer people.
She helped destigmatize people in the community
and encouraged them to come out.
Gays need to have more role models,
people who-who are in powerful positions
coming out and saying, "I'm gay."
I think that would be very helpful.
I had released three records,
and, um, I would do interviews
and I did, you know, Letterman,
and I did one interview where the guy asked me
personal questions about the songs,
and I always gave my answers in very general terms.
They were not gender-specific, ever.
When the article came out, he had changed
every "us," "them," "you," to a boy.
And it made me look like I was, like, totally lying
out of my teeth talking about my boyfriend.
And, um, I said, "I just gotta come out."
I thought I would maybe come out on Arsenio Hall.
But before I ever had that opportunity,
I really got politically involved
with the Clinton and Gore campaign,
helping get him elected.
And so I was invited to the inauguration.
I was up there with all my gay friends,
and I just said, "Ooh, I'm a lesbian."
And I'm proud to say right here,
I'm very proud to have been a lesbian all my life.
I-I could have thought of something much more eloquent,
had I knew that I was going to come out,
but, uh, it just, boom, it just happened like that.
I came out and people start to do interviews with me.
Um, let me just talk about the album a little bit.
Uh, Yes I Am.
Everybody's talked about, well, "Yes, I am..."
Does it have any connotation?
- "Yes, I am what?" - "Yes, I am what?"
Each of them would ask me over and over,
all year long, day after day,
I would answer questions about being gay.
I guess you came out at the inaugural ball?
Yeah, in '92, I-I came out.
It was like they'd never known anyone gay.
And I realized at the time, "You know, I...
I want to be real thoughtful about what I say
'cause I think this is the first time
that they've really ever spoke to someone who was openly gay."
The first time I kissed a girl, it was like...
I've been out to family and friends since I was 17.
I've always been very upfront about my sexuality.
I didn't understand, but I knew that I was on a different path.
Man, I talked a lot about being gay for a long time,
and slowly...
just saying it and then being in the media,
just being on a cover of a magazine,
it was big.
When we made the video for "I'm the Only One,"
I thought it would be scandalous
because it was the first sexy, sexy video
that had two women.
They were dancing with each other, looking at each other,
and I'm like, "Oh my God, I can't wait
till they say they're not gonna play it."
Not a word!
Nothing.
It was a huge video, and I was like...
"Oh, that's gonna be okay. All right."
♪ I'm the only one ♪
The 30 years that I have traveled since I came out
have been amazing...
I'm gay.
...as I have seen the world change and grow.
Same-sex marriage, legal in this country
across every state in this nation.
The first, uh, transgender woman to win this award.
But today, it seems like
things are going backwards.
In the middle of what should be
a joyous month celebrating pride,
the Human Rights Campaign just issued
a first-of-its-kind emergency declaration
for the LGBTQ+ community.
Seventy-five laws in more than a dozen states
specifically targeting LGBTQ+ rights.
We're not doing the pronoun Olympics in Florida.
It's not happening here.
A Tennessee bill that bans
gender-affirming care for anyone under the age of 18
was signed by the state's governor today.
We're in the middle of one of the biggest rollbacks
of rights for everybody.
That is really disturbing.
Movements to ban specific books
are increasing around the country.
The New York Times now reporting
22 states ban abortion or restrict the procedure.
- What do we want? - More rights!
- When do we want it? - Now!
Brennan Center reporting that nearly 100 new restrictions
have impacted voting rights in the last 10 years.
These aren't single issues.
These are things that connect all of us.
These are fucked up times,
which is why I think it's important for us
to stick together.
Bravery is easier when you know what you're fighting for.
You want a world
where we're all treated equally under the law.
When I'm surrounded by my peers,
it makes me feel like I'm a part of a movement.
♪ I will stand for you ♪
♪ Would you stand for me ♪
Young women are like such a vital part
of changing the world.
♪ ...deserves to be free ♪
♪ I would lend A hand to you ♪
♪ Would you lend A hand to me ♪
I was put on this earth to do music,
to inspire and empower little girls to do things
that we're not expected to do.
That fight that we had in us the summer of 2020,
keep that same energy.
Any great things that have come took a great deal of time,
and we still persist.
When women find their voices
and offer those voices to others,
we realize that not being silent,
it's about having the words to tell stories
that you didn't even know you were ready to tell.
Oh, I don't give a damn what people think.
This is what I am.
And this is the truth. My truth.
And I want to hear yours.
♪ Everybody ♪
♪ Deserves to be free ♪