Music

The feminist musicians of the 1960s created both protest songs and less politically charged, more subtly feminist kinds of music.

Joan Baez was one of the latter kinds of musicians; of the songs that she performed that she also wrote, many dealt with the political issues of the sixties -- civil rights, human rights, and nonviolence -- but none had an overtly feminist message. She became famous in the early 1960s; a single from 1966 is pictured below.



Joni Mitchell and Carole King are two other artists who, though they didn't identify as feminists at the time, also incorporated some subtlely feminist themes into their songwriting.

However, the song that is most often referred to as the "anthem" of the women's rights movement was written not by any of these women, but by Helen Reddy, in 1971. (The most famous version of the song, with an extra verse added, came out in 1972). [|"I Am Woman"] reached #1 on the Billboard charts in December 1972, earned Ms. Reddy millions of dollars, and propelled her towards a (mostly) successful singing career. Because it resonated so strongly with so many women -- women, after all, were responsible for most of the record sales -- it also became part of the women's liberation movement. Below is the album cover from "I Am Woman."