Explain what you hate about Ani DiFranco.

I feel the need to explain myself here. I too am butt-ugly and insufferably pretentious as the day as long, I'll admit it, but at least I don't enunciate in a needlessly eccentric manner while singing about how I'm more thant thirty-one flavours and then some.

Well, between songs she's humble and sweet, and then she starts singing and it's like, Hey! Check out this enormous chip on my shoulder! Isn't it neat?

Not that that's a problem in and of itself. Sometimes it is neat.

Right on, Kenan... and then yes, there's her HORRIBLE VOCAL STYLE thank you ALex in NYC that "ooh, I'm just falling off a cliff thinking up this wonderful stuff off the top of my head so darn fast" tumbling rhythm just makes me want to crush her skull. I got that Adbusters with the DJ spooky-mixed CD in it and I loved all the shit on it except the Adbusters folks' stuff (and whadya know, magazine people arent' musicians) and her track -- I just went WHO IS THIS GODAWFUL VOICE FROM HELL... oh yes, it's that self-pub princess. Ugh the self-righteous babeness of DIY at its hellish pit-awful worst...

I can't listen to preachy lyrics anymore, and most that are prosaic and without a possible second layer of interpretation tend to bore/annoy me. It's just my personal taste. I mean I thought Le Tigre and Kathleen Hanna and all that was cool when I was 19, I'm over it now. For whatever reason.

I think it's the slam-poetriness of it all, mainly. I don't think that stuff is cool anymore. It embarrasses me to listen to that stuff.

Also, plz introduce me to a lesbian who isn't a huge ani fan... I will kiss them right away. I do know a couple of them, though. I know, generalizing, but I'm gay myself, and I have met LOTS of gay (and non-gay) ani fans in my circle of acquaintances, so I'm not just being cruel. It gets tiresome. I'm actually afraid to dis certain musicians around some of my friends because I don't know if someone will blow up and get all offended about it. (I mean, I'll get pseudo-offended for a laugh, but it's just music, I can't take it personally.)

i guess i don't hate her, it's been years since i've even heard anything by her. who knows how bad i'd cringe, if at all.

taking sides: ani difranco vs belle and sebastian

if you're a teenager and have nobody who understands how you feel (about any particular topic, not just coming out), it's understandable that you'd latch really tightly onto a figure like Ani DiFranco. depressed white boys like me frequently do the same with Nirvana, but hey different strokes etc. when you're a bit more grown up and ought to have developed a bit of maturity, it's k-pathetic to fly off the handle because somebody had the nerve to dis your personal saviour. just because 'ani difranco saved my life' doesn't make her music sound any better to the average person talking smack about boring music in a record store, and if you can't handle it then you need to get some therapy. urrrrrgh.

The argument that "she needs a good editor" seems to be used only because she releases so much. Her double album from 2 years ago is almost flawless as far as I'm concerned and I can listen to both discs in a row very easily; by comparison her single-disc release this year seemed very flat, and was a real stretch to listen to all the way through. Which makes me think that she doesn't need an editor so much as an advisor, to tell her which deliberate decisions she makes (in terms of lyrical content, stylistic twists, etc. etc.) are good and which are bad.

The album that's coming out in January is astounding. With anything after Not a Pretty Girl, I've sort of forced myself to listen to it, to wade through the over-instrumentation and softening to find great songs within the mush. I didn't have to put any work into Educated Guess. Over the years, she's achieved focus with her lyrics, while becoming more vague -- her songs used to be all over the place in terms of content, though incredibly specific, and now they're just sort of about one thing and vague in themselves. Because the entire album, save two political tracks, is about her divorce, she's shading and making this multi-faceted take on the whole ordeal. Plus, she recorded it all herself, so while she's not entirely back to slashing and burning with her guitar, it definitely feels old school and lean and like a complete return to form.

And, she often sounds like Prince.

I think it took her eight years to make a great album again. I'm just happy that she still has it in her.

I personally really love like almost everything she's ever done, but I think my favorite of her material always seems to be the broken-hearted stuff.

Nobody ever talks about this. They talk about her politics, her sexual preferences, her lyrics, her songwriting, her label, etc. Ani's a good guitar player.

I guess there's a lot of hate fodder, but I interviewed her once for a TV show and she was sweet, accomodating, forthcoming.

And she scores extra points for publishing Hamell on Trial.

One of the things that originally turned me on to her was her distinct vocal cadence & idiosyncratic style, honestly. I think the thing I most love about it is that she feels actually affected by what she's singing, she doesn't feel detached from her own voice like many other singers.

Right now I think "Dilate" is maybe my favorite, she sounds like she's breaking down midway through it, but then when the lyricless singing parts come through it's so friggin' triumphant.

I've mostly avoided her after knowing too many of the aforementioned tunnel-vision fans.

Ani is attractive.

The extended metaphor thing also works really well on the more political songs on R/R too - Ani's so much better when she makes her point by twisting and bending language rather than sloganeering. It comes across in the performance too - the way she rhymes on "Tamburitza Lingua" is so offhand and natural, in stark contrast to something like "Serpentine" which is very forced.

I suspect the reason why the political songs on R/R work is that she sounds so tired of didacticism. In a funny way I suspect that September 11 "rejuvenated" a lot of occasionally political musicians like Ani in a manner that was ultimately negative - the perceived urgency of saying something once again took priority over the other two crucial issues: whether something can be said, and, if the answer to that is yes, how it should be said.

"i search your profile for a translation
i study the conversation like a map
'cause i know there is strength
in the differences between us
and i know there is comfort
where we overlap

come here
stand in front of the light
stand still
so i can see your silhouette
i hope
that you have got all night
cause i'm not done looking yet

each one of us
wants a piece of the action
you can hear it in what we say
you can see it in what we do
we negotiate with chaos
for some sense of satisfaction
if you won't give it to me
at least give me a better view

come here
stand in front of the light
stand still
so i can see your silhouette
i hope
that you have got all night
cause i'm not done looking yet

i build each one of my songs out of glass
so you could see me inside them i suppose
or you could just leave the image of me
in the background i guess
and watch your own reflection superimposed

i build each one of my days out of hope
and i give that hope your name
and i don't know you that well
but it don't take much to tell
either you don't have the balls
or you don't feel the same

come here
stand in front of the light
stand still
so i can see your silhouette
i hope
that you have got all night
cause i'm not done looking yet"

I love how each verse introduces a slightly stronger note of doubt and bitterness into what is, musically and in its chorus, a very sweet love song. And again the the use of extended metaphors: the notion of glass houses used to imply both transparency and reflectivness.

It all probably comes across as deeply unimpressive to the non-fan...

Similarly I love the first stanza of "This Bouquet":

"Got a garden of song where I grow all my thoughts
Wish I could harvest one or two for some small talk
Seems like I'm starving for words whenever you're around
Nothing on my tongue, so much in the ground..."

Part of what I've been thinking about was inspired by listening to Imperfectly, which is probably her most didactic album in terms of so many of the songs being almost straightforward statements of her politics etc. (see "In or Out", "Make Them Apologize", "The Waiting Song" etc.) and thinking "okay, so these lyrics are pretty didactic, but I still love them. What's wrong with didactic ultimately?

Like most things when talking about music you can dig deeper here, and say, "okay, so it's not a question of whether something is didactic or not, but whether it gets away with being so." And then you have to work out the ways in which the music is persuasive in making you either accept or look past or even enjoy the didacticism.

I think with Ani, or at least with her early stuff, it's precisely because you can tell that she's drawing no distinction between her personal songs and her political songs (I think I made this point upthread) that the rants lose their lecturing, hectoring quality - she's too personally caught up in what she's singing abou. So when she sings "cos the music business is still run by men/like every business of everything/but I can sing/like a son of a bitch/make 'em twitch around their eyes/make them apologize" it doesn't actually feel that different to elsewhere on the album where she sings, "oh it's good/good to see you again/good to meet your girlfriend/I'll try not to wonder where you are/when you go outside to kiss her/in the front seat of your car."

This becomes less true later on, perhaps "Fuel" was the first political song she did that felt more like propaganda than confession, even though I liked it a lot at the time. Now it reminds me a bit of Michael Franti's "Rock The Nation" or something.

I don't think that this early entanglement of personal and political goes all the way in explaining why Ani's lyrics work for me, but it's a big part of it. Another part of it that, because so much of the politics is expressed through stories or vignettes or very carefully constructed metaphors, you get these very specific and at times quite layered "political" statements - like, the fact that people call "In Or Out" her "lesbian" song seems so off the mark to me, and perhaps even ironic, when it is in fact skewering the possessive chauvinism that straight men and lesbian women feel towards her.

More generally though, I guess a lot of my liking this stuff comes down to getting into Ani when I was 14 and thus almost having a contractual agreement with her music that I'll at least give it a chance to win me over.

is this a joke?
No disrespect intended, it's just a funny agreement from someone whose vocal affect could also be deemed unique in this way.

Her vocals never really bothered me. I think what drew me to her work was a combo of the prose and instrumental precision. Excellent on the acoustic.
And, I really do think she has some great lines, but those, also, can at times be hit or miss. There are certain vulgarities she fits into her verses that make me wonder, why. Just. Why? ("but you can't will yourself happy/you can't will your cunt wet." Really, did she HAVE to? The tune is grating along just fine and then I realize, ehh, I just can't belt along any more.)

"More generally though, I guess a lot of my liking this stuff comes down to getting into Ani when I was 14 and thus almost having a contractual agreement with her music that I'll at least give it a chance to win me over."

I might say this is part of the reason that I genuinely do still enjoy her music. I've been an Ani fan ever since I heard the live track "Gravel," and only an amateur on the guitar, I could not for the life of me figure out how she was playing like that. Maybe it's the curiosity as to if she can continue to impress on that level.

1. Her hair
2. The mispronunciation of her own first name. There are few things more obnoxious than having an Ani fan lecture you about how it's pronounced "Aah-nee", and not Annie.

Most of the negatives about Ani have been cited here; annoying vocal stylings, a lyrical persona bordering on the narcissistic, jam band/world music/fake funk moves, slam-poetry-style wordsmithing, heavy-handed political posturing. What redeems her is strong songwriting and a body of work that's nothing to sneeze at; her first 6-7 albums are pretty consistent. As a non-fan, I think her best is '94's Out of Range, though Living in Clip is the perfect primer/crash course/compilation for that period.

Those who hate her voice should check out the self-titled first album. Stripped-down production, her vocals are straightforward - this was before her goofy melisma went into overdrive. And it's arguable that she never wrote anything as good as the first track, "Both Hands," a perfect little jewel of a song (avoid the pretentiously overblown version on Living In Clip - a portentous sign of the beginning of the end).

The earlier material derived a lot of its crackle from the tension between Ani and her drummer, Andy Stochansky. Clearly it's always been The Ani DiFranco Show, but when Andy left in '98 things declined in intensity. I saw them (w/ Sara Lee on bass) do a version of "Shy" in '97 in Nashville that was so urgently desperate it was frightening. There's always been something a little punky about Ani that separated her (at least in my mind) from Dave Matthews and others of his ilk.

And yeah, she's got a way with words. Here are a few of hers that stuck with me:

In each other's shadows
we grew less and less tall
and eventually our theories
couldn't explain it all
I'm recording our history
now on the bedroom wall
and eventually
the landlord will come
and paint over it all
-Both Hands

I was 11 years old
he was as old as my dad
and he took something from me
I didn't even know that I had
- Letter To A John

One thing I find interesting about Ani DiFranco's career is how it demonstrates the speciousness of the "selling out" concept. Musicians don't sell out as much as they burn out, as inspiration provides diminishing returns over the course of a career. This naturally-occurring process is usually mirrored by an increase in popularity and an affiliation with larger labels that is mistaken for a cause-and-effect relationship. Ani's independence did little to prevent an eventual aesthetic decline. Even my wife, the self-described "Ani nut," finds the post-Little Plastic Castle material slow-going.

this is the pinnacle of eloquence and you hit every annoying notion that represents "Ani-dom" to me!!!
WELL DONE!!!!
and let's face it, it's ALL about the fans near fanatical defense of everything she's ever done that put most people off...as is the case w/ most band, innit?

and hey, i'd know - my ani obsessive phase began my freshman year of high school and ended my freshman year of college, when i replaced her with sleater-kinney and le tigre and the slits and bratmobile for my feminist girlpunk jollies.

but her good stuff (imperfectly, out of range, dilate, to the teeth, parts of little plastic castle) is some of the best, most tough and smart and sensitive songwriting i've ever heard. i've finally come round to liking her again, and i must say, dilate still remains one of the most heartbreaking relationship albums, right up there with "blood on the tracks" and "the meadowlands". i really don't like her warbly ness and weird vocal tics, but when she's just singing - angry or sad - it's very powerful stuff.

and she is an absolutely brilliant guitar player. her fingers must be made of some space age material that never scuffs or anything. seriously.

like someone said in a previous post - she just needs an editor, or at least shouldn't record and release what seems like every single song she ever writes. her last few albums have been depressingly mediocre.

She uses some kind of false press-on fingernails (reinforced w/ glue and/or tape) for picking IIRC.

ended my freshman year of college, when i replaced her with sleater-kinney and le tigre and the slits and bratmobile for my feminist girlpunk jollies.

Also, she seems to be a gateway artist: a bit eccentric while still accessible, but mostly a bag of stems and seeds, hooking nascent music nerds and guiding them towards the uncut stuff. Like Jane's Addiction. Is there a thread on bands like that?

i used to admire the way she approached her career (diy, yadda yadda yadda) until i found out that her parents hired a harvard mba (at a cost of $30k/year) to manage her career when she was starting out.

Not as indestructible as you might think - she had to cancel a tour recently to recover from some nerve damage issues with her hands. One of those "take a break or you'll never play again" things...

I've barely heard her music, aside from like one or two songs someone brought into an undergrad Music & Gender course I took. If it garners comparisons to Rush and Ali Farka Toure it's probably worth hearing though.

i used to admire the way she approached her career (diy, yadda yadda yadda) until i found out that her parents hired a harvard mba (at a cost of $30k/year) to manage her career when she was starting out.

a) Rush is not lifeless. at all.
b) Difranco's pre-fame records, of which there are many, are basically home recordings -- vocals and guitar -- and are the polar opposite of "slick"
c) the harvard mba thing sounds spurious, at best

What irks me is the seemingly endless parade of Ani wannabes, and lest you think I'm dealing in strawmen here, I sat through more than my fair share of them during my open mic-attending college days. All of the fire, twice the passion, but not a single coherent statement, engaging lyric, or memorable melody in the bunch.

I also have a funny story involving her ex-drummer, but that's another rant for another time.

This is the red light.

And while it's unfair to blame a musician for their imitators, gawd she has the worst.

I haven't listened to ani in literally years but for some reason I've had a couple of her songs running through my head the last couple days. I spent a while being really into the stuff she realeased in the late 90s and as annoying as I eventually grew to find her whole shtick, she's a talented woman. Also, seeing her play this in NM in 1998 was one of the two times I've cried at concerts. It was incredible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwEI6UNMkag&feature=related

so cleaning out my section of the office I found an unopened promo copy of Evolve beneath a pile of folders.

Tim says it's bleh. Should I try it?

Ask John maybe, I got rid of that one years ago.

Knuckle Down from a few years afterwards was great though.

boy Jon Hassell sounds great on "Pulse."

It seems like she was popular because she presented a confident image and said what a lot of young women needed/wanted to hear. As a songwriter and performer I find her abysmal -- obvious, didactic lyrics with awkward phrasing, worst guitar tone I can imagine, not catchy

good to know dude

Explain what you hate about Ani DiFranco.

Casual fan here, albeit one who hasn't heard anything she's put out since around the turn of the millennium, but there there is a certain type of gay guy who is obsessed with her that was a bit annoyingly overrepresented in my social circle for a while.

Ani's in that select group of people I hate but have no desire to slag in public

(i do not consider hurting's post a slag btw)

the new album is great

The first half sounds like she has been listening to D'Angelo.

Agree this is great, trying to decide whether it's her best since Knuckle Down or Red Letter Year or Allergic to Water (though really the albums after Knuckle Down tend to blur together for me).

Am I inventing this memory or did she complain that Eno “stole” her observation that the Eventide H3000 Ultra Harmonizer sounds great when you overdrive it?

I can’t find it anywhere on the internet right now. And yeah, dudes take credit for women’s ideas all the time. But even still, this is some weak sauce.

"shrinking violet" is achingly perfect. it's like "if i believe you" (the 1975) mixed with "tolerate it" (taylor swift)

There's nothing I can say
Beyond this whispered wish
Your anger has a hunger, mister
And I'm its favourite dish
There's nothing I can say
So I don't make a sound
I just wipe the counter and I
I keep my head down

The last Secondary English Curriculum I used incorporated the lyrics of her song “Amendment” and asked students to analyze the language she employed. I got more out of it than the kids, but they’re apathetic to everything

Gotta say I did not expect to see much Ani love on ilm, but heartened nonetheless. I listened to her a ton in college, then fell away for a bit but have been paying more attention to her recent stuff. Hoping to get my copy this weekend.

"shrinking violet" is achingly perfect. it's like "if i believe you" (the 1975) mixed with "tolerate it" (taylor swift)

OTM but also lol at this Beatlejuice-like attempt to manifest Brad in this thread.

I realized that I hated my roommate 26 years ago when he asked me if I liked Annie. Me thinking Annie Lennox replied, “Oh my God I totally love her!” and then he started playing Ani Difranco… 🤢

Ani Difranco has no redeeming qualities to my ears. Sorry to those who like her but fingers on a chalkboard are more appealing than her incessant whining and dreadful stream of consciousness word vomit.