SOUNDTRACK: JANN ARDEN-“Could I Be Your Girl” (1994).
It’s fascinating to watch the video for this song now, since all I really know about what Jann Arden looks like is the author photo and her TV appearances since the 2000s.
She’s got long dark hair!
The song is pretty and I guess lyrically it’s pretty dark and poetic. This lyrics is pretty surprising for a pop song
And I am ashes
I am Jesus
I am precious
Could I be your girl?
I don’t really care for the “oh my lord” backing vocals, for the sound, not the words.
Indeed, the whole song feels kind of bland. For a song that seems pretty dramatic, I want a little more from the song. Maybe the production is too smooth?
It’s catchy though and I suppose in the 90s it was pretty remarkable. But really it’s just not my style.
At the bottom of this post, you can see Jann Arden talking about this song and basically telling me that I’m an idiot.
[READ: February 2024] The Bittlemores
I’ve known about Jann Arden pretty exclusively from her appearances on Canadian TV (she has her own sitcom too which is pretty funny in the parts I’ve watched). She was a perennial guest on the Rick Mercer Report which I loved. She was always funny and game for something.
Her music, on the other hand, is serious and poppy.
I didn’t know what to expect from this novel, but I knew I wanted to support her first foray into fiction (I won’t be reading her memoirs which sound very sad).
And I have to say that this story shocked me from the start because the home life she conveys in this story is so horrible, so miserable, that I was fairly shocked at the things I read. And yet, her tone is never heavy, so even the most unpleasant things (an old man drowning kittens) are delivered in a tone that makes you not want to throw the book across the room and say “I thought you loved animals, Jann!”
But she pulls no punches as the story starts: “Harp Bittlemore is a horrible man.” The Bittlemore farm was once a thriving farm but it is now mostly dried up and useless. It is in the middle of nowhere, miles from anything and even more miles from the nearest city. There’s a couple of sad cows and pigs. And there’s a young girl.
Margaret is the Bittlemore child. She hates living with the Bittlemores. They are mean and unloving. And she wants to get even with them. What does a girl with no agency do to get back at the adults around her? She gets pregnant. At 14.
This didn’t punish the adults as much as it punished her, of course. And as soon as The Bittlemores found out she was pregnant, they locked her in the house–for five months. Margaret had been going to school but the adults told everyone that she had been accepted to a school in France and that she would no longer be in the area for a while.
When Margaret has the baby–at home, with Mrs Bittlemore stitching her up, Margaret makes a bold decision. She runs away. She climbs out the window of her room (while in a ton of pain) leaving behind her baby, and flees up the road with no destination. She meets a truck driver (female, thankfully) named Tizzy who has a soft spot for this poor girl in trouble and she takes her as far as her route is going. (more…)
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SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
I Just Read About That... 