The Dixie Chicks, Goodbye Earl: Each of the songs on this list sparked a bit of controversy in their day, but the gleefully irreverent tone with which the gleefully irreverent Dixie Chicks recount this tale of premeditated murder singled it out for particularly intense criticism. The song tells the story of two best friends, Mary Ann and Wanda, plotting, executing and deftly concealing the murder by poisoning of the eponymous Earl, Wanda's abusive husband. Its chorus features a series of darkly comic lines such as my personal favorite "Ain't it dark wrapped up in that tarp, Earl?"
Miranda Lambert, Gunpowder and Lead: This guitar driven toe-tapper is the most recently released song on the list. It can be heard on Lambert's 2007 album, Craxy Ex-Girlfriend. The plot is short and simple: The narrator's boyfriend was arrested (presumably for domestic violence) and has just been released on bail. She races home where she intends to load her shot gun and await his inevitable return when she will "show him what a little girl's made of: gunpowder and lead." While the version of the song edited for radio does not include the actual murder, the album version ends with what is unmistakably a gunshot blast.
While compiling this list, I've thought long and hard about why I (along with hundreds of thousands of other consumers of popular music) find these songs about women murdering men so compelling. Before I can answer this question, I need to cite a few statistics: In a survey conducted by the American Bar Association in 1995-1996, nearly 25% of women were raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse. This same study found that only half of 65 abused women who applied and qualified for a protection order actually received one.
Most of us don't need statistics like these to tell us about the prevalence of domestic violence in our communities or how inadequately its overwhelmingly female victims are served by our criminal justice system. We all know that the laws of the state, the traditional structure of the family and the cultural expectations of gender are arrayed against women in particularly harsh ways, but we don't all know how to verbalize that knowledge. These songs do that for us. Their candor is an important part of their appeal.
Another dimension of these songs' appeal has nothing to do with their veracity or their ability to objectify our experiences. In fact, it has to do with just the opposite. We like these songs because the universes their characters inhabit are, in some respects, very different from our own. Janie overcomes her shame and her socialization to passivity. The battered mother of Independence Day transforms herself from victim to hero in one final act of revolutionary self-sacrificial defiance. Wanda, Mary Ann and the nameless narrator from Gunpowder and Lead defend themselves when the laws of their state prove inadequate. These songs have, if not happy endings, at least just outcomes. Such moral satisfaction is rarely found amongst the narratives of real battered women. To find it in a song provides at least some consolation.
The final, and I would argue, most intriguing part of the appeal of these songs is that their heroines are just that. Although they transgress innumerable fundamental social, cultural and moral boundaries, the women in these songs are not punished or vilified. They are not branded murderers, victims or hysterics. (The title of Miranda Lambert's album even pokes a little fun at the way women are so often dismissed as "crazy.") Instead, their praises are literally sung. Just like those of a soldier, a traditionally male vocation that is often extolled in song, the suffering and horrific deeds of these battered women are woven into a narrative that imbues them with righteousness. Consciously or not, these songs all simultaneously invert and reclaim the traditional heroic narrative, arguably the oldest and most ubiquitous literary form. No wonder we can't seem to get enough of them.
