Song You Need to Know: Cat Power feat. Lana Del Rey, ‘Woman’
In 2012, circa Del Rey’s Ready To Die, this match-up would’ve been head-exploding –- one artist notorious for her supposed fakeness, the other for her occasionally dysfunctional realness. Now, it just seems inevitable and brilliant. Recalling Nancy Sinatra musically, Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” spiritually – with maybe a wisp of Donna Summer/ Barbara Streisand’s “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)” – this atmospheric ballad declares independence, presumably to an ungrateful, gaslighting lover. “The doctor said I was not my past, he said I was finally free,” states Chan Marshall over shimmering electric piano chords and guitar strums. Del Rey chimes in slyly on “not my past,” then echoes a line about money as a weapon. And when the pair announce in unison “I’m a woman of my word/now haven’t you heard?,” the strength is matter-of-fact, and the solidarity, too, both amplified by this cultural moment. And the cool understatement only makes it more powerful.