Bonnie's Pride and Joy

Fansite with ALL the news about Bonnie !

Media Backlash to Bonnie Raitt’s Grammy Success
There has been a mixed media reaction to Bonnie Raitt's Song of the Year Grammy

on February 7, 2023 No comments
by Paul Cutler

Bonnie Raitt’s shock win in the prestigious Song of the Year category at the 65th Grammy Award, for “Just Like That,” was for many the triumph of the seemingly-lost art of crafted song-writing which reflects the trials and tribulations of ordinary life.

For others, particularly in the mainstream music industry, it was plain treachery

Rolling Stone magazine was among the first to react to the shock choice under a headline many might deem offensive: “WTF: Bonnie Raitt Wins Song of the Year”.

It began, somewhat condescendingly: “To be very clear, Bonnie Raitt is an absolute legend. “Just Like That” is a stellar song, and it’s amazing that she became the first woman over 50 to win Song of the Year in Grammy history.”

Rolling Stone, under a generic by-line, then opined: “That said, giving her the award over wildly popular future classics by Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Kendrick Lamar, Beyonce, and the other nominees was a typical Grammy blunder, and one most likely fueled (sic) by name recognition for older Grammy voters.”

It added: “We thought the Grammys had moved beyond such bizarrely out-of-touch choices, but apparently not.”

Esquire deemed Bonnie’s win the “chaos vote.” Dave Holmes added: “It was already a weird night long before ol’ Bonnie swiped Song of the Year from Harry Styles’s “As It Was” and Beyonce’s “Break My Soul” with “Just Like That,” a song nobody had heard until sometime this morning, leaving us to wonder whether the win was a sort of lifetime-achievement situation for a longtime Grammy favourite, or just an expression of support for the Sex and the City reboot.”

Other perspectives were somewhat kinder.

The New York Times reaction came under the headline “Best Graceful Shocked Reaction: Bonnie Raitt.” Pop critic Jon Pareles commented: “She is one of the mature singers and songwriters who have been relegated to formats like “Americana” and “Legacy.” But Raitt has learned from the best – notably John Prine – how to tell a sad but uplifting story with a voice and a small band. Some proportion of Grammy voters – enough to lift her into a plurality above Beyonce and Adele – obviously recognised the combination of passion and terse craftsmanship.”

In Pitchfork, Sam Sodomsky continued this theme: “Inspired by empathetic story-telling of John Prine, it’s a simple song that surges with genuine emotion, human connection and the beauty of the unexpected. Fittingly, Raitt’s win for Song of the Year embraces those same qualities as she thanked the audience with visible surprise and a hard-won sense of gratitude.”

Indeed, in a most sincere acceptance speech, Raitt invoked the memory and work of her late friend John Prine, who died of COVID complications in 2020. She said: “People have been responding to the song, partly because of how much I love – and we all love – John Prine, and that was the inspiration for the music for this song and telling a story from the inside.”

Like many Prine songs, particularly in his early years, Raitt was driven to write “Just Like That” while reflecting on a real-life event which moved her emotionally.

In an interview with The New York Times prior to the Grammys, Raitt detailed how the slow, endearing “Just Like That” came to her: “And completely out of the blue, I saw this news program. They followed this woman with a film crew to the guy’s house who received her son’s heart. There was a lump in my throat – it was very emotional.”

She added: “And when he asked her to sit down next to him and asked if she’d like to put her head on his chest and listen to his heart – I can’t even tell the story to this day without choking up, because it was so moving to me.”

She translates the story to lyrical form by writing in the first person and setting a scenario whereby a stranger approaches the house of the grieving mother who lets him in because something about the man that puts her at ease. She then recounts his mission.

I’ve spent years just trying to find you
So I could easily let you know
It was your son’s heart that saved me
And a life you gave us both

Putting real-life stories into song is, of course, nothing new. They date back to great folk artists like Woody Guthrie and indeed his devoted admirer Bob Dylan.

Guthrie too was motivated by news stories when he penned his classic “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).” In January, 1948, Guthrie was appalled that most radio and newspaper coverage of a fatal plane crash in Los Gatos Canyon, California, had not given the names of the victims – apart from the crew and a security guard – but merely referred to the passengers as “deportees:”

RELATED
Bonnie Raitt visits Bull Moose record shop on Record Store Day 2022 for a Q&A!

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won’t have your names
When you ride the big airplane
All they will call you
Will be deportees

Much of Dylan’s work in his early days around the clubs of Greenwich Village, NY, related to social issues and events of the day. Most of the songs were somewhat abstract in content, but among the more specific was “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” off his ground-breaking 1964 release The Times They Are a-Changin.”

Dylan also saw the story in a newspaper. It was about the death of 51-year-old African American barmaid Hattie Carroll after being attacked by a wealthy tobacco farmer William Zantzinger in downtown Baltimore. Though not all Dylan’s facts were correct – he misspelt the assailant’s name – his song largely portrayed what he saw as a racist attack.

Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane
That sailed through the air and came down through the room
Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle
And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger

Dylan later told a talk-show host: “The story I took out of a newspaper. I used it for something I wanted to say.”

And he said it best in the immortal chorus:

But you who philosophize disgrace
And criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now is the time for your tears

It was this very chorus which influenced Prine when writing one of his most endearing songs based on a real-life event.

It was some 14 years after Dylan’s “Hattie Carroll” that Prine released his dark tale “Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow),” based on his childhood experience when he was an altar boy at a Catholic church in Illinois. One Sunday morning, when he went early to shovel snow off the church steps before Mass, he came across an accident in which another altar boy had been killed by a local commuter train.

Like Dylan, we soon learn in lyrics the facts of the tragedy:

I heard sirens on the train track howl naked gettin’ nuder,
An altar boy’s been hit by a local commuter
Just from walking with his back turned
To the train that was coming so slow.

Then, as in Hattie Carroll,” Prine’s unusual chorus also preaches:

You can gaze out the window get mad and get madder,
Throw your hands in the air, say ‘what does it matter?’
But it don’t do no good to get angry,
So help me I know
For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter.
You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there
Wrapped up in a trap of your very own
Chain of sorrow.

Raitt’s reference to Prine “telling a story from the inside” is no better personified than in one of Prine’s very early songs, “Hello in There,” from his 1971 debut self-titled album, which also includes “Angel from Montgomery” – a song Raitt would make her own with her majestic 1974 version.

Prine used another memory from his upbringing to write “Hello in There.” As a teen, he delivered newspapers in Chicago and his round would include an old people’s home. He later recalled: “When I was writing the song, I thought that these people have entire lives in there. They are not writers but they have a story to tell.”

So Prine chose to reflect on the stories of these elderly folk through the first-person narrative:

We lost Davy in the Korean War
And I still don’t know what for
Doesn’t matter anymore
Ya know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder every day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, “hello in there hello”

The success of Raitt’s sorrowful “Just Like That” ballad is a timely reminder that there is still a place in the music industry for good old-fashioned, compassionate story-telling, even if it might be “relegated to formats like Americana.”

The Recording Academy should feel proud it chose a Raitt above a Beyonce! And it should not be intimidated by the multi-million dollar marketing machine which influences the mainstream music media.


Source: © Copyright Americana Music Appreciation

Please rate this article


/ 3

Your page rank:

Related Posts

Take a look at these posts
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
oldest
newest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Also enjoy listening to Bonnie in these posts!

SHEROES RADIO PRESENTS: THE ROAD TO JONI September 13, 2024 READ MORE Julia Gets Wise with Bonnie Raitt April 3, 2024 READ MORE The Blues Show with Cerys Matthews - BBC Sounds June 5, 2023 READ MORE 6 Things To Know About Bonnie Raitt: Her Famous Fans, Legendary Friends & Lack Of Retirement Plan March 6, 2023 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt Talks with David Remnick February 3, 2023 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt - The Bob Lefsetz Podcast October 20, 2022 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt performs as if no one has ever seen the show before October 7, 2022 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt - Bullseye with Jesse Thorn October 4, 2022 READ MORE Bonnie joins Dave Cobb on Southern Accents Radio September 17, 2022 READ MORE Paul Ingles - Talk Music With Me - Bonnie Raitt: JUST LIKE THAT June 28, 2022 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt, Blues Sister: Her Life And Times In Eight Songs June 7, 2022 READ MORE Spotlight On: Bonnie Raitt May 28, 2022 READ MORE {{title}} {{date}} READ MORE A conversation with Bonnie Raitt May 8, 2022 READ MORE {{title}} {{date}} READ MORE Bonnie on CBC LISTEN q with Tom Power April 22, 2022 READ MORE {{title}} {{date}} READ MORE Bonnie Raitt - WTF with Marc Maron Podcast April 11, 2022 READ MORE Bonnie on The Record Store Day Podcast with Paul Myers April 5, 2022 READ MORE Bonnie talks to Bruce Headlam on Broken Record Podcast March 16, 2022 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt - Questlove Supreme March 9, 2022 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt sits in March 7, 2022 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt: favorite songs from each album August 25, 2021 READ MORE {{title}} {{date}} READ MORE Hear a 21-Year-Old Bonnie Raitt Cover Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock’ August 14, 2020 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt on Angel From Montgomery while on Debatable April 14, 2020 READ MORE {{title}} {{date}} READ MORE I Am (Not) a Diva June 4, 2019 READ MORE Turning The Tables Listening Party: Women Of Roots And Americana December 1, 2017 READ MORE Little Kids Rock Honors Elvis Costello and Bonnie Raitt October 19, 2017 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt still giving them ‘Something To Talk About’ May 27, 2017 READ MORE {{title}} {{date}} READ MORE {{title}} {{date}} READ MORE Bonnie Raitt On World Cafe July 27, 2016 READ MORE Johnnie Walker meets... Bonnie Raitt on BBC Radio 2 May 29, 2016 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt on The Music Show May 22, 2016 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt: 2016 April 8, 2016 READ MORE {{title}} {{date}} READ MORE Concert review: Bonnie Raitt digs in deep at Heinz Hall March 23, 2016 READ MORE Listen to Bonnie Raitt on The Strombo Show - March 6, 2016 March 7, 2016 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt in Magnetic Form Once Again with ‘Dig In Deep’ February 29, 2016 READ MORE {{title}} {{date}} READ MORE Americana Music Association UK Produces First Awards Show February 5, 2016 READ MORE {{title}} {{date}} READ MORE Bonnie had a fantastic chat with Simon Mayo on BBC Radio 2. Have a listen! February 2, 2016 READ MORE Nick Of Time - Track by Track 25th Anniversary July 16, 2014 READ MORE The Leonard Lopate Show - Bonnie Raitt November 5, 2013 READ MORE Interview: Bonnie Raitt October 13, 2013 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt On World Cafe December 26, 2012 READ MORE 2012 Americana Music Association Honors & Awards Show September 15, 2012 READ MORE Focus On: Bonnie Raitt - 2012 Americana Music Association Keynote Interview September 15, 2012 READ MORE {{title}} {{date}} READ MORE Bonnie Raitt: A Brand-New Model For A Classic Sound June 16, 2012 READ MORE Paul Ingles - The Emergence of Bonnie Raitt May 11, 2012 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt - Words and Music - 2012 May 10, 2012 READ MORE Something To Talk About With Bonnie Raitt April 17, 2012 READ MORE {{title}} {{date}} READ MORE Bonnie Raitt Posts Live Duet with Maia Sharp for Download March 22, 2012 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt, Taj Mahal let the good times roll at the Greek September 12, 2009 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt, Taj Mahal provide perfect ending to Meijer Gardens Summer Concert Series August 24, 2009 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal Interviewed by Michael Bourne (Audio) August 10, 2009 READ MORE WNYC Soundcheck - Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal July 28, 2009 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt serves up variety of styles at Majestic May 12, 2009 READ MORE Mississippi Fred McDowell Blues Trail Marker May 8, 2009 READ MORE A Prairie Home Companion June 7, 2008 READ MORE A Prairie Home Companion with Bonnie October 28, 2006 READ MORE Blues and Conversation with Bonnie Raitt July 6, 2006 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt – Telluride Bluegrass Festival, CO 2006 June 18, 2006 READ MORE Review: Bonnie Raitt live at Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles November 22, 2005 READ MORE Bonnie Raitt Shakes it Up May 4, 2002 READ MORE

Popular Posts

Recommended Reading