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rfmcdonaldI've recently listened to Armand van Helden's remix of Tori Amos's 1996 song "Professional Widow", from her album Boys for Pele. I prefer to listen to the Armand van Helden remix, which extracts the essential elements of the song--the rhythm, the vocals--from the suffocating harpichord playing of the original. His version deserves its recognition as a classic remix of its type.
In the remix version of "Professional Widow," one lyric features frequently as a sort of motif:
This lyric lends itself to some obvious interpretations. Looking at the original version's lyrics and listening to the actual song, however, it becomes apparent that this lyrics is only the beginning of a longer narrative, to wit:
Amos herself expanded substantially upon her meaning elsewhere:
There has been a lot of speculation that "Professional Widow" is a song written about Courtney Love, reflecting Love's troubled relationship with her late husband Kurt Cobain, the way in which their relationship was unhealthy (even without accusations of Love murdering Cobain), and the way in which Love gained recognition as a star partly as a consequence of her husband's epoch-defining death. Back in 1996 on USENET's rec.music.tori-amos, Norman Buchwald caught this: "I think 'Professional Widow' is a particular archetype in our current culture. Think. Jackie O, Yoko Ono, Courtney Love. And others I'm not thinking of, I'm sure. What are they all? They're 'the professional widow.'" More radical readings of "Professional Widow" in the light of Love/Cobain are possible. One could touch upon Cobain's play with gender and sexuality to expand on the homoerotic potential of Amos' couplet, for instance.
The remix is perhaps the most prominent example of the Burroughsian cutup in early 21st century popular culture, with popular DJs and musicians rearranging the lyrics and musics of popular songs and remarketing new versions for consumption in alternative markets. Tori Amos, for instance, definitely did not begin her career as a dance-music artist. The cutup was presented by William Burroughs and his predecessors as a revolutionary literary form, capable of generating new meanings by forcing the establishment of new relationships between components of text. Still, I can't help but wonder about the example of "Professional Widow," and the ways in which the van Helden remix might indicate that the cutup deprives a text of meaning, that instead of forcing the creation of new meaning it permanently reduces a text's capacity for meaning; perhaps even worse, that its effect is substantially blatantly commercial, existing only to achieve still greater market saturation.
In the remix version of "Professional Widow," one lyric features frequently as a sort of motif:
honey bring it close to my lips
yes
This lyric lends itself to some obvious interpretations. Looking at the original version's lyrics and listening to the actual song, however, it becomes apparent that this lyrics is only the beginning of a longer narrative, to wit:
don't blow those brains yet
we gotta be big boy
we gotta be big
starfucker just like my daddy
just like my daddy selling his baby
just like my daddy
gonna strike a deal make him feel like a congressman
it runs in the family
Amos herself expanded substantially upon her meaning elsewhere:
As I got to know Widow, I began to really adore her candor. She was so cut off from so many other parts of being, but here she is, deliciously convincing him to kill himself so she doesn't have to leave fingerprints on his body. She'll make sure he showers before this all begins. She's ready to extract what she wants from him, the current won't be what she wants until he's dead. Whatever his addiction is, she's convincing him that mother mary will supply it.
There has been a lot of speculation that "Professional Widow" is a song written about Courtney Love, reflecting Love's troubled relationship with her late husband Kurt Cobain, the way in which their relationship was unhealthy (even without accusations of Love murdering Cobain), and the way in which Love gained recognition as a star partly as a consequence of her husband's epoch-defining death. Back in 1996 on USENET's rec.music.tori-amos, Norman Buchwald caught this: "I think 'Professional Widow' is a particular archetype in our current culture. Think. Jackie O, Yoko Ono, Courtney Love. And others I'm not thinking of, I'm sure. What are they all? They're 'the professional widow.'" More radical readings of "Professional Widow" in the light of Love/Cobain are possible. One could touch upon Cobain's play with gender and sexuality to expand on the homoerotic potential of Amos' couplet, for instance.
The remix is perhaps the most prominent example of the Burroughsian cutup in early 21st century popular culture, with popular DJs and musicians rearranging the lyrics and musics of popular songs and remarketing new versions for consumption in alternative markets. Tori Amos, for instance, definitely did not begin her career as a dance-music artist. The cutup was presented by William Burroughs and his predecessors as a revolutionary literary form, capable of generating new meanings by forcing the establishment of new relationships between components of text. Still, I can't help but wonder about the example of "Professional Widow," and the ways in which the van Helden remix might indicate that the cutup deprives a text of meaning, that instead of forcing the creation of new meaning it permanently reduces a text's capacity for meaning; perhaps even worse, that its effect is substantially blatantly commercial, existing only to achieve still greater market saturation.
