December 22, 2020

"We've been educated, we've got liberated/And had complicating matters with men.../Oh we burned our bras and we burned our dinners/And we burned our candles at both ends..."

 

"K.T. Oslin... has died, according to a statement from the Country Music Association. She was 78. Oslin became the first woman to win the CMA Award for song of the year... for '80 Ladies.'" (CNN). She won the award in 1988.

You can read the full lyrics here

34 comments:

Daniel Jackson said...

"Oh but we're all grown up now, all grown up
"None of us can tell you quite how."

How poignant, How true, Thank God.

Quayle said...

Learning “how not to do” is an important aspect of life.

SGT Ted said...

She forgot the lyrics of how her daughter has daddy issues and is dysfunctional because she got divorced.

Achilles said...

All that empowerment.

I am so glad women feel so empowered. And it is the most empowered ones in the softest parts of society that are the loudest.

I think people need hardship. Without difficult decisions people grow into a flaccid pathetic shell. They are thrilled about winning a stupid music award. Even worse they are thrilled when another woman wins a stupid music award because... woman!

People are about to get some hardship. It almost touched off in Oregon yesterday. The government in Oregon finally found a riot to put down.

It is inevitable at this point.

RMc said...

Kay Toinette Oslin was already in her mid-forties when she started having hit records in the 80s. She was born a month before Paul McCartney (who has a new album out!).

William said...

Technically or, to use a better word, literally speaking, she did not succeed in becoming an eighties girl. Speaking as someone her age, I think it's indeed tragic that she got cut down in the full flowering of her senescence when she had so much to offer the world....I never heard of her or her song until just now. It's a very good song. Remember when you thought, wow, I'm old and then time went by and you got really, really old....I'm sure life will have its pleasures and rewards in the eighties, but not so many nor so intense as those in the other eighties.

wild chicken said...

Never followed her much but she was a relic of the days when artists could break through based on voice or songwriting. Even older and unhot women could build a following.

Nashville has things firmly in hand now so it won't happen again.

And gad, don't take the the "politics" of the lyrics so seriously. It's just ephemera, zeitgeist stuff. She seemed like a good soul.

Shouting Thomas said...

You don’t really have to rely on Nashville for anything in the YouTube era.

I’m old and tired and unmotivated, but a persistent presence on YouTube with fun, entertaining video can get you where you want to go.

You have to really pour out the material in episodic fashion and provide some fast moving video action, but I see a lot of total amateurs figuring out how to do that from their homes.

Achilles said...

Shouting Thomas said...

You don’t really have to rely on Nashville for anything in the YouTube era.

I’m old and tired and unmotivated, but a persistent presence on YouTube with fun, entertaining video can get you where you want to go.

You have to really pour out the material in episodic fashion and provide some fast moving video action, but I see a lot of total amateurs figuring out how to do that from their homes.


You can do it for fun.

But you have to meet the approval of youtube corporate to make a living at it. They can also decide what gets promoted in searches and how culture is shaped.

Otherwise they demonetize you.

This has nasty and pervasive effects on society.

Wilbur said...

I remember the song, and it certainly spoke to a lot of people.

One thing it is not is country music. You could still hear some on the radio in 1985, but the transformation to country-tinged pop music was well under way.

Joe Smith said...

Beautiful voice. She was never up there with the icons...not everyone can be.

Carol said...

Music was wide open in the 80s because MTV had so many hours to fill and needed content. That seemed to spill over into all the genres.

Good times.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

I find it fascinating that on some days Althouse finds several things that interest her and also interest me and in other days like this I find nothing of interest in the topics. More often there’s slight interest in one thing. What happened to that podcast?

Known Unknown said...

Hard to believe she was the first woman to win SotY considering the Tammys and Dollys that came before.

Carol said...

The lyrics seem ironic to me. Lots of mixed feelings there.

Why would you go off on them, unless that's what you always do,

Carol said...

Yeah I'd like to see her do bloggingheads again, now that I have all the time in the word to listen to it.

BUMBLE BEE said...

I'm betting on Five Finger Death Punch to fill the Icon Spot for the '20s --https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOkkWIOkWl8&feature=emb_logo

Gusty Winds said...

And we're almost done burning down America for the next generations.

farmgirl said...

I just miss those days- the days of KT and the days on the video.
Womens’ empowerment.
I’d settle for a little womens’ appreciation...

Skeptical Voter said...

Ah Daddy issues and divorce.Sgt. Ted I saw the results of that when I was a young horn dog in high school.

I swore that any daughters I ever had (and I've got two of them now who are in their early 50s these days) would never have that problem. And they didn't. You sign up for the long ride in marriage, or you don't sign up at all. Or you don't have kids if you know it's going to be a short time thing.

n.n said...

Everything old is new again with rhymes and myths.

MadTownGuy said...

"We've been educated, we've got liberated/And had complicating matters with men.../Oh we burned our bras and we burned our dinners/And we burned our candles at both ends..."

I heard the second line above as "And that's complicatin' matters with men" which I think makes more sense, but I don't have benefit of the line notes or recording sleeve to confirm that. Just listened to it as again and that is what I still hear it that way. Brilliant songwriting start to finish, in any case.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Too bad she didn't get to see $90,000,000 from the budget set aside for "Breast Feeding Peer Counselors". Damn!

J Melcher said...

As for the long ride... K.T. claims the first song she ever wrote was inspired by the declaration of eternal devotion she noticed scrawled on a bathroom wall: "I aint never gonna love nobody but Cornell Crawford"

Mark said...

Sad to hear of the death of a woman I never heard of before.

wild chicken said...

All you needed was one hit, in country music, and you could work a long time.

Very loyal fans.

Mr. O. Possum said...

And in other news YouTube has banned Dylan's "Neighborhood Bully."

Lurker21 said...

The song is a poignant look back on the passages a generation went through. It becomes still more poignant as that generation itself passes from the scene. "Alice" and "Betty" and "Connie" were Eighties ladies. What are they now?

Sometimes it can be uncanny watching old TV. These people were in their prime then and now most of them are gone. I don't really get that feeling with '50s, '60s, '70s TV, but the '80s is hitting close to home. The actors aren't from the generation of one's parents or grandparents, but people who were a part of one's own more or less adult world.

Jupiter said...

So it sounds like they managed to fuck up some other people's lives along with their own. Must be feminists.

rightguy said...

That is a very well crafted lyric. KT Oslin was a very good songwriter.
Born in Crosset, AR-I've been there more than once in the past. Nice small southern town, an hour+ east of where I was born (El Dorado).
RIP

Earnest Prole said...

I find it fascinating that on some days Althouse finds several things that interest her and also interest me and in other days like this I find nothing of interest in the topics. More often there’s slight interest in one thing. What happened to that podcast?

Let Althouse be Althouse.

effinayright said...

Wymyn put their bras back on, feminism slid into shrill harridanism, and men wanted nothing to do with them.

Progress, I guess.

madAsHell said...

In honor of ......????..... we need to consider female reparations.

Anonymous said...

Way back when, the 'Womens' movement was never about women. It was about lesbians. They hid their agenda behind 'women' to amplify their voice. They never spoke for women, but their marketing worked.