The Album: Janelle Monae: Dirty Computer (2018)

To close out our Women Behaving Boldly mini-series, we brought things all the way up to the present by tackling a 2018 album. Our guest, music writer and journalism professor Evelyn McDonnell wanted to talk about Atlanta's Janelle Monae and her recent LP, Dirty Computer.

Between her various alter egos and concept-driven albums, Monae's been a critic's darling since she first broke out ten years ago and the intervening decade hasn't dimmed her creative appeal a bit. Dirty Computer, and its accompany mini-movie of music videos, touches on many of Monae's favorite themes: sci-fi futures (some good, some not so good), fluid identities (including her own evolving sexuality), and some of the most soul/funk/rock/pop concoctions you can imagine.

If Monae's recent gem was a perfect capstone to our six weeks of Women Behaving Boldly, it was perfectly matched by the guest who chose it. McDonnell is one of the most accomplished music journalists of her generation, having previously written the books Queens of Noise, about the Runaways, Army of She, which is about Bjork, and Mamarama, which is about Evelyn herself.  Her latest is the massive anthology, Women Who Rock, a 400 page edited anthology that focuses on over 100 of the most important women in pop music history, written by many of our favorite writers including both Lynnee Denise and Ann Powers, both of whom also contributed to our Women Behaving Boldly series.

More on Evelyn McDonnell

• Evelyn McDonnell on Bullseye.
• More on Women Who Rock
• Blog | Twitter

More on Dirty Computer

• The album's "emotion picture" mini-movie.
• Album review (Pitchfork)
• "Janelle Monáe On Owning Her Queer Identity With 'Dirty Computer'" (Billboard)

Show Tracklisting (all songs from Dirty Computer unless indicated otherwise):

• Make Me Feel
• Janelle Monae: Sincerely, Jane
• Janelle Monae: Tightrope
• Pynk
• I Like That
• So Afraid
• I Like That
• Pynk
• Aerosmith: Pink
• Django Jane
• Screwed
• Make Me Feel
• Americans
• Don't Judge Me
• The RH Factory: Poetry

Here is the Spotify playlist of as many songs as we can find on there

If you're not already subscribed to Heat Rocks in Apple Podcasts, do it here!

For the fourth installment in our Women Behaving Boldly mini-series, we spin the clock back to an episode we first aired a year ago: Ann Powers, talking about Madonna’s Like a Prayer from 1989. From the beginning, we knew this episode in particular would make a perfect fit with the WBB series. After all, few pop artists, female or male, have done more to transform the pop landscape since the 1980s than Madonna, often times inviting scrutiny and criticism in the process for pushing the proverbial envelope on what people found acceptable by musical artists in that era. And to have Ann Powers, one of the country’s premier music critics, here to break down Madonna’s import was a gift unto itself. If you missed this the first time, we’re excited for you to hear it now. And if you heard it before, revisit this gem from our vaults.

The album: Madonna: Like a Prayer (Sire, 1989)

This week, Morgan and Oliver are joined by Ann Powers of NPR Music and author of the new book, Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music. Together, the three dug into Like a Prayer, Madonna's critical breakout album form 1989. As Ann lays out, Madonna had already established herself as an MTV-era mega-star with her previous albums but Like a Prayer, with its then-controversial sexual politics and surprising personal candor, marked a new level of artistic ambition.

More on Madonna and Like a Prayer

• The "Like a Prayer" video
• NPR Music's review of Like a Prayer for their "150 Greatest Albums Made by Women" list.

More on Ann Powers:

• Ann Powers @ NPR Music
• Ann on All Things Considered, talking about Good Booty
• Her Twitter

Tracklisting (all songs from Like a Prayer unless indicated otherwise):

• Like a Prayer
• Madonna: Like a Virgin
• Till Death Do Us Part
• Express Yourself
• Act of Contrition
• Love Song
• Cherish
• Keep it Together
• Like a Prayer

Here is the Spotify playlist of as many songs as we can find on there
If you're not already subscribed to Heat Rocks in Apple Podcasts, do it here!

The Albums:

• Aretha Franklin: Young, Gifted, and Black (1974)
• Aretha Franklin: Jazz to Soul (1994)
• Aretha Franklin: Rare & Unreleased Recordings from the Golden Reign of the Queen of Soul (2007)

Heat Rocks had always planned to sit down with DJ Lynnée Denise, an LA-based DJ and music scholar, but when Aretha Franklin passed on August 16th, we invited her to come talk with us about the Queen's life and legacy as part two of our series Women Behaving Boldly.

What a fantastic decision!

Admittedly, Queen Aretha's discography is too vast and too fire to be discussed on just one show so we cherry picked our favorite heat rocks: Oliver (The Queen in Waiting - The Columbia Years), Morgan (Rare & Unreleased Recordings from the Golden Reign of the Queen of Soul) and DJ Lynnée Denise (Young, Gifted and Black).

The three of us, brought together by a shared love and reverence for the Queen talked about her incredible voice and gift of interpretation and DJ Lynnée unpacked the Aretha's relationship with the church, with Detroit, with her instrument(s), with black folks and of course, her place in the canon of music.

Heat Rocks is thankful for an opportunity to spend an hour talking about the undisputed Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, with DJ Lynnée Denise who dropped some nuggets of wisdom on us.

More on Lynnée Denise

• The Afro-Digital Migration: A DJ's Journey from Hip-Hop to House Music
• Website

Our favorite Aretha performances

• Soul Train (1973)
• Blues Brothers (1980)
• The 1998 Grammys

More on Aretha

• Aretha's Wikipedia Entry
• "At Aretha Franklin's Funeral, Gospel was the Heart - and Backbone" (NPR)
• "Soul Survivor: The Revival and Hidden Treasure of Aretha Franklin"

Additional Aretha Links

• Aretha Franklin in Pictures (CBS News)
• With George Michael "I Knew You Were Waiting for Me"
• Freeway of Love

Show Tracklisting (all songs by Aretha Franklin unless indicated otherwise):

• I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)
• Rock Steady
• EPMD: I'm Housin'
• Rock Steady
• Young, Gifted and Black
• Soulville
• Border Song (Holy Moses)
• The Long and Winding Road
• At Last (Let Me In Your Life Outtake)
• Nina Simone: To Be Young, Gifted and Black
• Young, Gifted and Black
• Elton John: Young, Gifted and Black
• The Heptones: Young, Gifted and Black
• Bob and Marcia: To Be Young Gifted and Black
• I've Been Loving You Too Long
• Day Dreaming
• Just for a Thrill
• Drinking Again
• This Bitter Earth
• Jump To It
• One Step Ahead
• Mos Def: Ms. Fat Booty
• Ain't But the One
• I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You) [Demo]
• At Last (Let Me In Your Life Outtake)
• So Soon
• Rock Steady (Alternate Mix)
• Are You Leaving Me [Demo]

Here is the Spotify playlist of as many songs as we can find on there.
If you're not already subscribed to Heat Rocks in Apple Podcasts, do it here!

The Album: The Rolling Stones: Exile On Main Street (1972)

In 1972, The Rolling Stones were at the peak of their success...and excess. In order to flee British tax collectors, Keith, Mick and the crew fled to France where, over the course of many months - and a ton of drugs - the group pieced together what would become an epic double album. It would take Mick dragging the tapes to Hollywood to complete production but once finished, Exile On Main Street would become embrace as one of the group's greatest albums and for some, it marked the end of the group's "golden era," in terms of how it blended together rock, soul, and blues together in a mish-mash of styles that still invoke awe - and controversy - today.

The album pick came to us via Chris Ryan, executive editor at The Ringer, where he contributes or hosts a number of podcasts himself, including the pop culture show, The Watch, and the site's movie discussion show, The Rewatchables. Before that, Chris was a long-time music writer, based out of New York, and one of the funniest and smartest critics Oliver's ever met.

More on Chris Ryan

• The Watch podcast
• The Rewatchables podcast
• Author Page on The Ringer | Twitter | Blog

More on Exile On Main Street

• "How Exile On Main Street Killed the Rolling Stones" (The Atlantic)
• "The Stones and the true story of Exile on Main St" (The Guardian)
• "Trying to Make a Record in the Führerbunker: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on Exile on Main St" (GQ)

Show Tracklisting (all songs from Exile On Main Street unless indicated otherwise):

• Rocks Off
• Casino Boogie
• Ventilator Blues
• Sweet Black Angel
• Shake Your Hips
• Sweet Virginia
• Tumbling Dice
• Turd on the Run
• Rocks Off
• Happy
• The Rolling Stones: Miss You

Here is the Spotify playlist of as many songs as we can find on there
If you're not already subscribed to Heat Rocks in Apple Podcasts, do it here!