150 Great Albums by Women
In 2017, National Public Radio pulled together a list of the 150 greatest albums by women since 1964, according to 50 women who work in public radio. The list incorporates a range of music, including jazz, pop, rock, folk, bluegrass, Tejano, hip-hop and more, from The Ronettes to Beyoncé. NPR’s intent was to offer the list as “an intervention, a remedy, a correction of the historical record and hopefully the start of a new conversation.”
I recently made my way through the list and was delighted with what I discovered. Of course, there were albums on the list I knew well. For example, I was pleased (though not surprised) to see that Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love was included among these “greatest albums”.
But there were plenty of unfamiliar albums on the list. Sometimes I’d heard of the artist but had never listened to their music, such as Bjork, whose album Post made the list.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeAZ9DQZFz8
Other artists were completely new to me, such as Pauline Oliveros, whose album Deep Listening is now on my wishlist.
And how is that I don’t remember hearing about jazz musician Alice Coltrane earlier in my life? I’m thankful to NPR for including her on the list.
Wisely, the list is not confined to English-speaking countries. It includes women such as Mercedes Sosa, Oumu Sangare and Ofra Haza.
200 Great Songs by Women+
While not everything will be your cup of tea, those 150 albums alone will give you many hours of listening pleasure and musical discoveries. But NPR decided to follow up the list the following year with a new Turning the Tables project: a list of the 200 best songs of the 21st century by women and non-binary artists.
Again, the list includes well-known songs, perhaps none more well-known than Idina Menzel’s “Let It Go.” (I confess I skipped listening to that. I could never hear it again for the rest of my life and be just fine.) And, because the “greatest albums” list issued in 2017 would naturally include some of the greatest songs of this century, there was some duplication between the lists. Norah Jones, Solange, and Against Me! are just a few of the artists who have songs on the top 200 list from albums on the top 150 list.
Again, the list is broad, spanning a variety of genres from artists around the world. If anything, the list is broader, including several classical tracks, such as “Flowers” from Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields.
There’s even “kawaii metal” (please stay with me… it’s much better than it sounds), represented by Babymetal’s “Gimme Chocolate!!”
There’s plenty of room for arguing with both of these lists. (No Amanda Palmer among the top 200 songs of this century? What were they thinking?) But if you are a music lover and have not yet explored NPR’s Turning the Tables project, especially these two lists, you owe it yourself to dive in. You almost certainly will discover some new favorite artists, albums, and songs.