Women of Musical Genius Wednesdays: Nellie McKay

Admittedly, the overwhelming majority of my music collection consists of white guys playing guitar, and though you’d be surprised what diverse sounds can be produced by such a demographic, I recognize the need to be a more equal-opportunity listener as well. So in another attempt to create obnoxiously alliterative weekly offerings, I present to you the first in a series of posts on my favorite female performers out there today. First up: Nellie McKay.

Bottom line: it’s a damn shame that more people haven’t heard of this girl. I think I heard her do a live set on the now dead for all intents and purposes WDET-FM, and was just amazed that a girl about my age could sound as if she’d been writing music and performing in smoke filled lounges late at night for years. I had to have more—and that’s where the trouble started.

You see, Ms. McKay tends to write music that isn’t, how shall we say this, male friendly. I believe the AMG review described her music as “the soundtrack to some long-lost feminist musical”. Naturally, my dumb guy defense mechanisms kicked in, and I held off on buying the album for the sake of my masculinity, until one fateful day when I stepped into the Barnes and Noble here in East Lansing and saw it on the featured album rack. I couldn’t resist it any longer, said ‘fuck masculinity’, and purchased it (all while avoiding eye contact with the cashier, of course).

And you know what? It was worth it. Yes, Nellie McKay spends an awful lot of time pondering what its like to be a young woman in this day and age, and a lot of it I can’t relate to personally, but it doesn’t change the fact that she can write, play, and sing devastatingly well (The fact that she’s pretty attractive doesn’t hurt either—my friend Chris, after hearing the album, gave it a one sentence review of “I want to marry her”). Sure, it’s resulted in a few embarrassing moments of me singing lyrics like “David don't you hear me at all, David dear I'm just down the hall” while walking to class with my ipod on, but I’m pretty sure nobody caught that anyway.

As a bonus, I’m putting up two Nellie McKay tracks today: one from her stellar double-disc debut album “Get Away from Me” (notable as probably the only time you’ll ever hear MLA format being referenced in a song), as well as one from her should have been released by now follow-up “Pretty Little Head,” which is currently trapped in a Yankee Hotel Foxtrot style struggle with Columbia Records, which you can read about here.

Nellie McKay- Inner Peace

Nellie McKay- Long and Lazy River

Tune in tomorrow for… Time Warp Thursdays? (I’m kidding… God I hope I'm kidding)