I’m counting down my 100 favourite songs of all time. To keep this from becoming a Bob Dylan / Tom Waits love-in, only one track per artist is allowed.
Go to 87: Blue Moon by Kendal Johansson
Go to 89: Know How by Young MC
Your father and mother split up when you are just three months old. Your father is a songwriter and soon writes a song about you called Pretty Little Martha.
Let’s forgot for now that the opening line—“I wrote a song for your big brother and I’m going to write one for you”—makes it sound like he wrote it more out of obligation than overwhelming love. It’s a lovely song and he laments his absence from your life:
Five Years Old celebrates your birthday and is again apologetic: “Sorry I can’t be there for that party birthday girl”, but it’s ok, he sent….roses (“I know you can not play with flowers”).
Just over a decade later, your father releases his breakthrough record History—a collection of deeply personal songs that deal with his own father’s death alongside more songs about you and your brother. The one about you—Hitting You—charts the decline of your relationship, beginning with a too-hard smack in the car to more recent times where “all we do is argue like people who are through”.
When you were 14 you had spent time living with your estranged father in New York. You will later acknowledge that this was a disastrous period: those arguments were real and Hitting You is his mostly sincere expression of regret. However, many years later you will come to realize—when your father announces it to the crowd during a live performance—that there is second song on History about you.
It is called I’d Rather Be Lonely and is a much more mean-spirited view of your, admittedly, bad time together:
How do you react to such a revelation? If you’re Martha Wainwright—daughter of highly regarded American singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III—you retaliate in kind with a fierce, swear-filled outburst of filial fury called Bloody Motherfucking Asshole.
Having initially attempted to divert herself from the same path as her famously musical family by becoming a drama student in her hometown of Montreal, Martha eventually relented and joined her indie darling brother Rufus Wainwright on tour as a backing singer. By 2005, she was ready to release her first major label solo record with a song that suggested studying dramatics wasn’t actually much of a diversion from a career as a musical Wainwright.
Following a brief acoustic guitar intro, Bloody Motherfucking Asshole gets its excuses in early with the brutal opening line: “poetry has no place for a heart that’s a whore”. Right off you know this will not be a song for the faint-hearted. There will be no obfuscation of truth through lyrical artifice—herein lies the whole and nothing but the.
Martha’s voice creaks and screeches as she describes her volatile emotional state, letting all the rough edges cut straight to the bone. She admits her “desire for you”, but immediately follows with the callously petulant “whoever you are”. She craves her father’s love but is bitterly forced to acknowledge that his willing estrangement makes a good relationship impossible.
Any meaningful interactions only fuel her resentment as he denigrates her decisions—“You say my time here is some sort of joke”—and leaves her home alone “with the fucking phone”. This first curse is a wonderful moment—she almost spits the word as if those recalled tears have become real once more.
The power of Bloody Motherfucking Asshole obviously stems from Wainwright’s raw delivery, but her performance also demonstrates an extraordinary ability to tell stories of acute emotional complexity. In one line she swings from fiery teenager raging against paternal authority to needy daughter just wanting to please:
And then it comes: that explosion of expletives promised by the title. But once again, she doesn’t play it simple, adding an affectation as she sings “You bloody motherfucking asshole”, a dramatic staging that suggests she doesn’t actually mean those words as much as she would like to. She is the child finding it impossible to truly hate her parent, or at least give up the hope that things might be different in the future.
For all the fuss about this swear-jar retaliation against her father, there is a line in the song that's not about Loudon Wainwright III and is perhaps far more significant to the life and career of Martha Wainwright. The aforementioned “fucking phone” is accompanied by “the mother of gloom / in your bedroom / standing over your head”.
That melancholy maternal figure is Kate McGarrigle, folk singer and ex-wife of Loudon with whom Martha had an often-tempestuous relationship. As is the Wainwright way, this drama was occasionally played out in song. McGarrigle’s haunting Proserpina references classical mythology to lament a lost daughter. In the Roman legend, Pluto, god of the underworld, kidnaps the titular goddess (perhaps more famous is her Greek equivalent Persephone), though McGarrigle’s song is more a barb at her daughter for leaving home.
Following McGarrigle’s death from cancer in 2010, Martha covered Proserpina for her 2012 album, Come Home to Mama—a title that borrows a lyric from the song, but also reflects the recent birth of her first child.
In the decade since Bloody Motherfucking Asshole, Martha has matured as a person and performer. The confused petulance of that song no longer fires Wainwright’s writing, though she continues to deal in the intricate emotions that made it such a wonder to behold.
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If you like this, try:
Factory
Proserpina
Everything Wrong
Go to 87: Blue Moon by Kendal Johansson
Go to 89: Know How by Young MC
Go to 87: Blue Moon by Kendal Johansson
Go to 89: Know How by Young MC
Your father and mother split up when you are just three months old. Your father is a songwriter and soon writes a song about you called Pretty Little Martha.
Let’s forgot for now that the opening line—“I wrote a song for your big brother and I’m going to write one for you”—makes it sound like he wrote it more out of obligation than overwhelming love. It’s a lovely song and he laments his absence from your life:
“You’re in Quebec with your mother / I’m down here in New York State
The world is cruel / And so is fate”
The world is cruel / And so is fate”
Five Years Old celebrates your birthday and is again apologetic: “Sorry I can’t be there for that party birthday girl”, but it’s ok, he sent….roses (“I know you can not play with flowers”).
Just over a decade later, your father releases his breakthrough record History—a collection of deeply personal songs that deal with his own father’s death alongside more songs about you and your brother. The one about you—Hitting You—charts the decline of your relationship, beginning with a too-hard smack in the car to more recent times where “all we do is argue like people who are through”.
When you were 14 you had spent time living with your estranged father in New York. You will later acknowledge that this was a disastrous period: those arguments were real and Hitting You is his mostly sincere expression of regret. However, many years later you will come to realize—when your father announces it to the crowd during a live performance—that there is second song on History about you.
It is called I’d Rather Be Lonely and is a much more mean-spirited view of your, admittedly, bad time together:
“I think I need some space / Every day you’re in my face”
“All the time I look around / For excuses to leave town”
“You’re still living here with me / I’d rather be lonely”
Having initially attempted to divert herself from the same path as her famously musical family by becoming a drama student in her hometown of Montreal, Martha eventually relented and joined her indie darling brother Rufus Wainwright on tour as a backing singer. By 2005, she was ready to release her first major label solo record with a song that suggested studying dramatics wasn’t actually much of a diversion from a career as a musical Wainwright.
Following a brief acoustic guitar intro, Bloody Motherfucking Asshole gets its excuses in early with the brutal opening line: “poetry has no place for a heart that’s a whore”. Right off you know this will not be a song for the faint-hearted. There will be no obfuscation of truth through lyrical artifice—herein lies the whole and nothing but the.
Martha’s voice creaks and screeches as she describes her volatile emotional state, letting all the rough edges cut straight to the bone. She admits her “desire for you”, but immediately follows with the callously petulant “whoever you are”. She craves her father’s love but is bitterly forced to acknowledge that his willing estrangement makes a good relationship impossible.
Any meaningful interactions only fuel her resentment as he denigrates her decisions—“You say my time here is some sort of joke”—and leaves her home alone “with the fucking phone”. This first curse is a wonderful moment—she almost spits the word as if those recalled tears have become real once more.
The power of Bloody Motherfucking Asshole obviously stems from Wainwright’s raw delivery, but her performance also demonstrates an extraordinary ability to tell stories of acute emotional complexity. In one line she swings from fiery teenager raging against paternal authority to needy daughter just wanting to please:
“I will not pretend / I will not put on a smile / I will not say I’m alright for you / When all I wanted was to be good”
For all the fuss about this swear-jar retaliation against her father, there is a line in the song that's not about Loudon Wainwright III and is perhaps far more significant to the life and career of Martha Wainwright. The aforementioned “fucking phone” is accompanied by “the mother of gloom / in your bedroom / standing over your head”.
That melancholy maternal figure is Kate McGarrigle, folk singer and ex-wife of Loudon with whom Martha had an often-tempestuous relationship. As is the Wainwright way, this drama was occasionally played out in song. McGarrigle’s haunting Proserpina references classical mythology to lament a lost daughter. In the Roman legend, Pluto, god of the underworld, kidnaps the titular goddess (perhaps more famous is her Greek equivalent Persephone), though McGarrigle’s song is more a barb at her daughter for leaving home.
Following McGarrigle’s death from cancer in 2010, Martha covered Proserpina for her 2012 album, Come Home to Mama—a title that borrows a lyric from the song, but also reflects the recent birth of her first child.
In the decade since Bloody Motherfucking Asshole, Martha has matured as a person and performer. The confused petulance of that song no longer fires Wainwright’s writing, though she continues to deal in the intricate emotions that made it such a wonder to behold.
Follow me on Twitter
If you like this, try:
Factory
Proserpina
Everything Wrong
Go to 87: Blue Moon by Kendal Johansson
Go to 89: Know How by Young MC
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