Grrrrrl Power Takes on the Country and Sends A Message
by James Carragher Washington, DC Reviewed on January 10th, 2005
Firing as much in-your-face tude as Sleater-Kinney, Gretchen Wilson debuted with one of the best CDs of 2004. She has a great country singer's belting voice and a band that's tight both on the rowdy and the quiet cuts. But that's not why Here for the Party and Wilson are such winners. Likewise, while the title cut or Redneck Woman were surely everyone's introduction to the CD and are both great morning start-me-up's (especially on a night after you were there for the party), they also neither define this CD nor are they the best things on it. For if Wilson partially sees herself as a redneck party girl, she is a whole lot more. She writes, for example, with insight on woman/man relationships (When I Think About Cheatin') and people who try to mess them up (Homewrecker). Two of the four non-original songs are excellent views of the subtle, mystifying ways love turns wrong (What Happened and The Bed). A third cover, Chariot, is a funny, but dead serious comment on faith and the high octane rewards it will bring in Heaven. All this is a lead-in to the CD's final, highest note, Pocahontas Proud, Wilson's take on her life to this point. Here, far more than on Party or Redneck, she makes herself a paradigm, with a chorus celebrating grit, determination, and pride of person and place -- "I'm the biggest thing that ever came from my hometown/And I'll be damned if I'm gonna let em down/If it's the last thing I do before they lay me in the ground/You know I'm gonna make Pocahontas proud." With this message, Wilson has in the end, I think, made a work of art as political as any from the just past election year. And as the Democratic Party leadership and would-be candidates seek ways to turn red states purple -- if not blue -- before 2008, they could do much worse than listen a while to Redneck Woman and figure out how to seriously respect and reach the audience that Wilson has.
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