Winehouse's
song unintentionally points to unique challenges men face
By
Caitlin Ward
Stronger
than Me
By Amy Winehouse
You
should be stronger than me
You’ve been here seven years longer than me
Don’t you know you supposed to be the man,
And I pale in comparison to who you think I am,
You always wanna talk it through — I don’t care!
I always have to comfort you when I’m there
But that’s what I need you to do — stroke my hair.
CHORUS
’Cause
I’ve forgotten all of young love’s joy,
Feel like a lady, and you my lady boy,
You should be stronger than me,
But instead you’re longer than frozen turkey,
Why’d you always put me in control?
All I need is for my man to live up to his role,
Always wanna talk it through — I’m OK,
Always have to comfort you every day,
But that’s what I need you to do — are you gay?
CHORUS
He
said ‘the respect I made you earn —
Thought you had so many lessons to learn’
I said ‘You don’t know what love is — get a grip.
Sounds as if you’re reading from some other tired script.’
I’m not gonna meet your mother anytime
I just wanna grip your body over mine
Please tell me why you think that’s a crime
CHORUS
You should be stronger than me
English singer Amy Winehouse is famous for a couple of things — drug addiction, alcoholism, bringing back the sound of 1960s girl groups, winning four Grammy Awards, having a very impressive head of hair.
What she’s not particularly famous for is her first album, Frank,
which came out in 2003. And to be honest, I occasionally mourn that
fact. It’s no secret (or at least, not much of one) that I adore
Mark Ronson, who produced the more commercially successful half of Winehouse’s
breakout sophomore album Back to Black (2006), but her first album seems
a bit more real, musically. It’s a seamless blend of jazz and
hip hop that’s more interesting than the straight nostalgia of
her second album.
It’s easy to argue that Winehouse’s sound shifts dramatically
from the first album to the second, but it’s harder to make a
case for the fact that her lyrics change just as much. She seems to
be talking about the same things: men, making bad choices about men,
alcohol, making bad choices about alcohol. The real difference is in
form, not substance. On her first album, she’d write a song about
cheating one someone (What is it About Men?), whereas on her second,
she’d write a song about how gut-wrenching and awful it is to
actually do it (You Know I’m No Good).
If you asked some professors of English which was better, lyrically,
they’d probably tell you — well, actually, you’d probably
have to have an argument first about whether or not lyrics are a worthwhile
thing to study. But after that was out of the way, I’d bet most
of them would call the second album’s lyrics better. And in terms
of poetics, I’d have to agree. It’s the specific and the
peculiar that make works of art, not broad and general ideas.
That said, her lyrics have a self-awareness on the first album that
was clearly lost by the second. Rather than a series of moments or images
strung together, each song seems to have a thesis: something in particular
she wants to talk about. It might not make for the most poetic of songs,
but there’s usually a clear thing to talk about in relation to
any one of them. Listening to the album’s opener, Stronger than
Me, there’s really only one thing you can talk about. And lucky
for me, it’s one of my favourite things to talk about.
You see, I spend a lot of time thinking about the other half of the
gender debate. We’ve spilled a lot of ink on the place and role
of women in the last 50 years or so, but it’s only recently that
we’ve started looking at the place and role of men. No one would
say that being a woman didn’t come with its own set of challenges,
but I think perhaps we’re a lot more aware of what those challenges
are — certainly more so than we were 50 years ago, but also I
think more so than we are aware of what a man’s unique set of
challenges are.
Winehouse’s song unintentionally points to this issue. While the
song is rather specific in that the narrator talks to a particular person
about a particular situation, Stronger than Me also addresses this massive
push-and-pull between men and women that does seem to be a direct result
of the feminist movement.
She’s frustrated with a man who needs to lean on her and who wants
to talk everything through. There’s a reversal of roles; the common
trope in popular culture is that women want to talk about their feelings
and have a lot of cushions, while men really only care about beer, sex
and football. Neither are particularly fair, but if you listen to any
hack comedian, you know those stereotypes are still on our minds. Winehouse’s
narrator doesn’t mention football, of course, but it’s clear
she wants a simpler relationship without all this business about emotions.
In effect, she’s taking the archetypical role of the man.
The curious thing about this is that though she’s taken on the
traditional role of “the man,” she also expects her partner
to be “the man.” I think it’s there that the crux
of this problem lies. Her narrator opens the song with, “you should
be stronger than me.”
As I listened to her sing that, I was struck with the question, “should he?” Generally, as a culture, we’ve come to the conclusion that women can be whatever they would like to be: strong, accomplished breadwinners; strong, accomplished homemakers; gentle, vulnerable people; some combination of the three, or perhaps something else again entirely. The western world has opened up to women. While it’s far from perfect, any self-confident, self-aware woman knows what she’s capable of: she’s capable of being just about anything. And while we’ve at least accepted in principle that this is the case for women, I’m not sure we’re sold on the idea that it’s also the case for men. Does this narrator’s boyfriend need to be stronger than she is? Why does his sexual orientation have to come into question when he doesn’t fit into a neat box of proscribed masculinity?
Women certainly continue to struggle for equality in the western world,
and further afield there are horrifying consequences for many women
and girls who are not given equal value to men. But we know that’s
a problem. We look at it, we study it, we care about it. As a culture,
I don’t think we’ve decided that as a gender, men deserve
the same attention.
Ward is a freelance writer and aspiring documentary filmmaker based
in Saskatoon. You can find her short bursts of insight and frustration
at http://www.twitter.com/newsetofstrings.
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