Dan Bern

Chick Singers

Well this bald headed girl I know sent me a tape of Bjork and Courtney

Love

And PJ Harvey, called it brilliant women

I put it in my car, heard it all the way down to the coast

Normally if left to my own devices I don't hear chich singers much

I guess it's guys I hear the most

Sometimes these days don't it seem like it's enough for

girls to love a girl or

use the f word prominently

masturbate in public or

learn guitar tied up to a post

I thought of all this hearing Bjork and Courtney Love and PJ Harvey

In my car driving to the coast

Tori Amos, Liz Phair, Sinead O'Connor, Suzanne Vega, Jill Sobule,

Melissa Etheridge,

Tracy Chapman, Ani Difranco, Michelle Shocked

Everyone of them has something kind of special that I like

But every now and then while listening to them I feel like when we were

kids

I pulled their hair or stole their bike

These days it seems like there's a lot of girls who sing and some of

them are good and

Some of them are not, but it's always kind of cool that

Moment when they first step to the mike

If I was a girl I could sing real high and also then I'd know what

having

Breasts would be like

Chick singers

I started thinking 'bout

Kate Bush, Patsy Cline, Billy Holiday, Janis Joplin, Bessie Smith, Patti

Smith,

Annie Lennox, Chrissie Hynde, and Bonnie Raitt

Seems like there's an awful lot of women in whose honor I would

Like to raise my glass to in a toast

Some of them are still alive and some I hear their voices like a ghost

Maybe next Thursday I'll throw a party and invite every woman that

Ever sang a song, oh, this would be a party that I think I would like to

be the host

Thanks to the bald headed girl I know whose tape of Bjork and Courtney

Love and PJ Harvey I heard driving to the coast

Chick singers