Nora Jones, video cap from the music video for “Miriam”

Hell hath no fury…

Quite some time ago, I shared a three bedroom apartment with three roommates, a man and two women. At some point, rather early in our time in the apartment, one of my roommates, let’s call her “Deb,” broke up with her boyfriend. They had been carrying on a long-distance relationship for several years. As will happen, he eventually decided it was time to see other people. She, in turn, decided it was time to watch Steven Seagal movies. In other words, movies that involved the more or less non-stop depiction of immense bodily harm, inflicted entirely on men.

[Warning, extremely violent and NSFW]

You get the idea.

I’m sure after Deb cooled down a little bit, she probably reached the point that Norah Jones‘s protagonist is in our song this week, “Miriam.”

Jones’s protagonist in “Miriam” is past the boyfriend, she’s moving on to the other woman, Miriam. Also, however sweet she might sound, our storyteller is not looking for a proxy enforcer of her wrath, like Mr. Seagal. She will take care of the matter herself.

Listen to the track on Jones’s Soundcloud page here.

Lyrics*

I first heard of “Miriam” from my friend, Gina (no need to change her name, she’s not a part of the other story). I told her about Murder Ballad Monday after she posted something on Facebook about Led Zeppelin’s “Gallows Pole.” The first song she mentioned in reply was this one, which had captured her attention. She was not a Norah Jones fan, but this song more than met her halfway. “I was so shocked when I found out who sang it. The song is such a far cry from ‘I don’t know why I didn’t call.’ She sings with a haunting voice and I love that it takes most of the song to realize whose perspective it is and what she is going to do.” She added, “It’s a beautiful song, which makes it all the more disturbing.”

As it turns out, at this point, Gina hadn’t yet seen the video…

Victim or Executioner?

The video is even creepier than the song. It also shows that Jones well knows at least a few of the hidden creeks and tributaries of the murder ballad “waters.” If you’ve been with us for a while, viewing the video will put you in mind of any number of songs we’ve listened to over the past few years, from “Omie Wise” to “Down in the Willow Garden” to “Barton Hollow” and more. What the song doesn’t have much of is remorse. Instead, it indulges the hatred. Nate Cavalieri, reviewing Little Broken Hearts in Spin magazine writes:

“The lesson to glean from …Little Broken Hearts — what may well endure as the second essential record of Norah Jones’ career — is that hate can be transformational. And not the mild emotion triggered by a neighbor’s yapping dog or a cubicle-mate’s constant gum-snapping. We’re talking the gush of crude that rose unstoppably from the Deepwater Horizon to humiliate experts on deep- sea tectonics. We’re talking the destructive power of Vesuvius smothering the innocents of Pompeii in blankets of burning ash…”

Cavalieri’s review, and the concluding images of Jones’s video, reminded me of a comment Shaleane received on her post about Nick Cave’s “Little Water Song.” That song, which is from the perspective of the victim, presents for the commenter a purifying hate. Shaleane’s respondent wrote:

“Little Water Song” by Anguarius at Deviant Art

“I actually do not find it difficult to identify with the victim/singer of the song, and think there is a strong element of catharsis (although a perverse one), this time on the part of the victim. Indeed, the last lines of the song turn the drowning into a baptism–“I am made ready…I am washed clean…I glow with the greatness”–with an end result of divine hatred instead of divine love. If Nick Cave and PJ Harvey turned the murder ballad Henry Lee in to a torch song, this is the ultimate anti-torch song, and whatever love the victim may have once had for the man who took her breath away, it is fully repented of by the end of the song.”

The relevant difference here, of course, is that “Miriam” is a song of romantic vengeance, if you will, and “Little Water Song” is a song of the victim. Still, in both cases, the hatred itself is somehow redemptive or transformational within the emotional logic of the song.

More pertinently, though, for our current purposes, “Miriam” does what several other artists we’ve listened to over the years have done in different ways–developing female agency in the murder ballad. This is in most cases just a fancy way of saying “making the women the killers.” We’ve seen plenty of allegations here and there that the murder ballad tradition is misogynistic, but we’ve also now heard over the years of this blog people finding all kinds of innovative ways to balance the scales–for whatever benefit that might represent.

The Brunette Stranger

Is “Miriam” off the hook on the misogyny question? Even though the decedent is female, so is the murderer. Having killed or punished her lover, what’s behind the desire to finish the “competition”? I don’t know that I can sew it up for you, but perhaps a contrast with another work we’ve discussed recently will help.

I find it difficult to distinguish what Jones’s protagonist does in this song from the first killings of Willie Nelson‘s Red Headed Stranger. That murder ballad concept album, as you will remember, provokes quite a lot of analysis of misogyny within the murder ballad…and not just from me. You may remember critic T. Walker Herbert arguing that Nelson’s Stranger killed his wife for “showing that she has a mind of her own,” or words to that effect–perhaps rather speedily glossing over certain relevant emotional complications involving marriage vows, among other things.

“Happy Pills,” the song that precedes “Miriam” on the album, gives more context to the comparison. In the video, Jones’s character kills her cheating lover. The lake in which she disposes of his body will look familiar to you by now.

Lyrics here. (You’ll note that it takes the video to make this song a murder ballad, and not just a break-up song.)

I’ve argued before that Nelson’s album, Red Headed Stranger, can’t be summed up and dismissed as a simple expression of misogyny. Something else artistically relevant and perhaps crucial is going on there. Perhaps it is also true that “Miriam” can’t just be summed up and dismissed as a revenge narrative, although revenge is certainly more central to the emotional core of “Miriam” than it is to Red Headed Stranger. In Jones’s tale, the violence itself is redemptive. In Nelson’s, it is not.

Whether or not this is indicative of good or bad things about our society, there are surely differences in how we view the redemptive capacity of violence across gender, and how we might view the value and purpose of engaging artistically, as singer or listener, with the depictions of that violence. To use what is perhaps a rather facile example, we can turn back to the story with which I opened this post. However odd you might find it that “Deb” wanted to watch movies of men getting hurt after her break-up, it’s not morally perverse. If you changed all the genders involved, however, things get considerably murkier, to say the very least. We might be (rightly) more inclined to view a spurned man’s revenge fantasies as morally execrable. This is, for instance, why I was reluctant to engage with Adrian Roye’s “Josephine,” until I figured out what “really” happens in it. I found the unrelenting menace of its protagonist off-putting.

Although (or because) we’re less culturally accustomed to depictions of violent women, as we’ll address below, “Miriam” still gets something of a pass from me on this score. Perhaps this is only because it seems less likely and resonates less forcefully with existing social pathologies and gendered dynamics of violence and power. Perhaps this is why some of the more traditional “male-kills-female” murder ballads find the redemption in judgment and atonement rather than the violence itself.

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

This dynamic reminds me of the feminist critiques of Reinhold Niebuhr‘s concept of sin, which I mentioned in response to the comments on “Little Water Song.” Niebuhr thought of sin as pride, and it primarily represented man’s [sic] denial of his finitude.** The feminist critiques of Niebuhr argued that women’s sins were not typically willful or excessive self-assertion, but quite the opposite–the denial of self. “Miriam,” in this light, may be less troubling precisely because it shows the claiming of agency through vengeance, under the assumption that that agency has been too long suppressed. Good for our protagonist, I suppose; tough luck for Miriam. I especially welcome your thoughts on this point in the comments.

“I would never fantasize about killing somebody…”

For its film noir feel, “Miriam” feels closest in spirit to me to Jim White’s “The Wound that Never Heals.” Although her motivation is perhaps less bound up in childhood trauma, our killer in “Miriam” is not that far afield in terms of her mental state. Incidentally, Jones acknowledges that a pulp noir genre was on her mind in the crafting of the album, and in the choice of the cover for it. The cover draws from a movie poster from the movie “Mudhoney” on her producer‘s wall. “Miriam” gives us a classic femme fatale, with Jones as her unlikely portrayer.

One sheet from “Mudhoney”

Cavalieri and my friend Gina both note that “Miriam” seems to go against type for Jones, particularly relative to her earlier material. As it turns out, though, Jones has murder ballad bona fides behind her. In this CBC interview, Jones explains where “Miriam” is coming from and puts it in the context of her work with the Texas country band, The Little Willies. “It’s not a country song, but it’s got a country song style to it.”

A bonus feature of the interview is a list of Jones’s own “Essential Eleven” murder ballads. It seems she shares some favorites with your faithful bloggers here at Murder Ballad Monday. (Check out Pat’s two “Essential Eleven” posts here and here.)

Jones provides further insight into “Miriam” in this Complex Music interview with Brad Wete. She again mentions some of the influences of the song, but also shows some ambivalence. Either she’s ambivalent about indulging murderous feelings in her art, or she’s ambivalent about just how much of her personal story she wants to share in this interview.
__________

My favorite song on …Little Broken Hearts is “Miriam.” It’s about you confronting the woman that broke up your happy relationship before you kill her. What mindset were you in when you made that song?

____________________

Not So Fatal Foremothers

Loretta Lynn

As she mentions, Jones has been venturing into territory covered previously by Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton in her work with The Little Willies. These songs are not murder ballads per se, but are about as close as those two artists came to them in the early years of their stardom. For all their centrality within mainstream country music, I’ve had a difficult time finding fatal violence in their songs that’s not self-inflicted and relatively off-stage (e.g., “Gypsy, Joe and Me”). I may just not know enough of their work.

I’d be interested to know if Lynn or Parton felt like they couldn’t really go there back then–that taking up that material would be too off-brand–that there wasn’t enough room for women in Outlaw Country. It’s quite possible that the danger was less that they would seem less ladylike and more that they would run the risk of becoming “folk singers” rather than Country stars. Perhaps it’s a sign of progress that Jones feels no threat to mainstream success by going all the way through to murder in “Miriam.”

Musically, I’d say that The Little Willies performances are well done and faithful. Full comparisons here would be rather invidious, given the iconic status of the originals. In other words, I kinda fall in love with Loretta Lynn each time I see her performances from this era.

Listen to the song on Spotify here. See and hear Loretta Lynn’s version on YouTube here. Lyrics.

Listen to the song on Spotify here. Listen to Dolly Parton’s performance on YouTube here. Lyrics.

Coda

Perhaps as a further step away from country, Jones has also released a more up-tempo remix of “Miriam,” with the contributions of Peter Bjorn & John. Give it a listen and see how this one works for you. Perhaps you can slot it in on your playlist after “Pumped Up Kicks.”

*Is it just me, or is there a rather sinister sort of mondegreen toward the end of the song? All of the lyrics sources I can find have the protagonist saying “I punished him for being too weak,” but I can’t help but hear “I punished him from ear to ear.” Occupational hazard of a murder ballad blogger, I suppose. Tell me what you think.

**Niebuhr also described sin as a denial of one’s freedom (in addition to the denial of one’s finitude). Sin as a denial of freedom can be seen, for example, in giving in to desire.