Season of the 'Bitch'

Meredith Brooks is no one-hit wonder

by Jim Macnie

The New York Times recently reported that it wasn't MTV that sent Meredith Brooks' ubiquitous "Bitch" up the charts. The key marketing thrust, said the paper of record, was the wildfire word of mouth from "preteen girls who turned the song into a playground anthem." How you quantify that, I don't know. But Brooks did a smidgen of informal demographic determination prior to the release of her million-selling Capitol debut, Blurring the Edges.

"A friend of mine in Oregon has two children, one who's 13 and one who's 17," says the singer. "I gave them the tape, said, `Don't tell the kids who it is,' and they just went crazy over it, both the boy and the girl. And for different reasons, too. The guy was into the groove and the girl was into the meaning of the words."

A good chunk of America has also proven to be into the disc. From out of nowhere, Brooks has slam-dunked the summertime sing-along song through the Billboard hoop; "Bitch" is up in the retail stratosphere with other irresistible ditties like Hanson's "Mmmbop." Though it's been correctly perceived as an anthem, it's not the many-moods-of-womanhood rhetoric that drives the sales, it's the catchiness of the chorus. Did I say catchiness? I meant overpowering command. A recent crash-bash review of "Bitch" in the Village Voice denigrated its hollowness, but allowed that "Brooks' unraised voice is so vacantly sweet it recasts evanescence as a joy unto itself. Every sound [on the record] says I'll make you happy for three minutes, then you can throw me away." My response is, "Where's the fire?" I don't know about you, but when I'm slurping radio pop, three minutes is all I'm expecting anyway.

Brooks has made a dent in the moment because as far as crafting sound goes, she gives us what we had yesterday, yet also finds a way to offer a bit of tomorrow. For many pop artists, that traverse between the old and the new can be an ominous and icy trek. How do you juxtapose the fully tested with the somewhat unknown? Or more to the point: how do you do it without creating a result that lives in the dreaded land of Neither Nor? Brooks is an unabashed classicist who enjoys going on an exploration or two. Beneath an array of modern guitar textures are tunes so solid that they avoid all slip-ups. Both markedly familiar and refreshingly novel, they zig one way, zag another. Yet as the record plays out, you see nary a wobble.

"That's pretty much what I wanted," she confirms. "Making tracks that have more than one dimension is important. With the help of my producer David Ricketts I was able to create a sound that shows the rough and soft. I wanted to take traditional songwriting -- and I'm definitely a traditional songwriter -- and funk it up, edge it out."

This is all a part of what Brooks calls a "reinvention" of her sound. For the last few years she was part of the Graces, an LA aggregate that made one record and played a slew of gigs before cracking apart. The Oregon native is an R&B zealot. She adores the emotionalism of a seething vocal or a nasty guitar lick. Though they're catchy enough to be deemed bubble pop, the songs on Blurring the Edges are much more aggressive than anything in her past. "No comparison," she assures. "This is really far afield from the Graces stuff. David and I thought a lot about making old-fashioned body-moving music with digi-tech guitars."

Blurring the Edges was created at the home studio of Ricketts (yes, he of David and David). For three months during the summer of '96, he and Brooks honed the mighty snap and electric crackle of this inspired pop album. To help make these points vivid, Brooks turned to an extensive palette of guitar voicings. She professes to be a guitarist first and foremost, and is taken with the palpable energy and limitless personae of her chosen instrument. Specifying that it's instinct rather than cognition that guides her choice of sounds, Brooks lays claim to every lick played on the record. She's keenly aware that women guitarists seldom get the props they deserve.

"I told the label I wanted the record's cover art to stress my femininity, because there's always been such a stereotype for women guitar players -- the tough chick vibe. Don't worry, I can do the masculinity thing. Just being out in the world and doing what I do uses a masculine energy. But sexuality and sensuality beget a spirituality which I hope is the essence of my music. And at that center is the guitar." Check the emotional stomp of "Shattered" or "It Don't Get Any Better" and, especially, "Wash My Hands."

Brooks is quick to assure that all the subject matter here comes from personal experience. One tune speaks of the transition of moving from a backwater Oregon town to a glitzy mecca like Hollywood. Another rebuts a pal's pooh-poohing of her much vaunted optimism. She's subject to frustration, aggravation and all the other relentless human bugaboos. But instead of reflection or confession, Blurring the Edges has a tinge of proclamation. "I Need," the next single, which contains equal amounts of humor and earnestness, asks for the "right to be silent and then to be heard." The album sees its adventures as non-exclusive acts, battles paralleling those fought somewhere by someone every day of the week. Their pertinence is universal.

Brooks also likes to look into the hows and whys of the mind. The way that personal decisions breed, thus changing the culture at large, is of special interest. "I personally find that my own language and thoughts are not so foreign to other people anymore, and it's a great feeling. Maybe 10 years ago, if someone spoke of metaphysics, they'd likely be in California. Now it's just another subject, and you can talk about it at the local grocery store anywhere in the country. Things have opened up."

Brooks' philosophy of songwriting sounds like that of a hedonist who recognizes responsibilities. "Well, I'll tell you," she sighs. "Writing alone I get bored really fast. For these songs I often wrote with a pal. With one friend, we'd get together, laugh our asses off, drink coffee, be goofballs, and write. For `I Need' we made a long list of items and she organized it. If it were any other way at this stage in my life, I couldn't do it. Another friend, who worked on `Somedays' and `Stop,' is the only one who helped with melodies -- usually I'm always in charge of the tunes. I hate the term song doctor, but after putting together these tracks, I found that I like to work with people who bring just as much to the party as I do."

One of those people would be Ricketts. Expressing the impetus that made Brooks write certain tunes wasn't always an easy task. "The idea was to get to the true me," she affirms. "I kept on saying, `Nope, not gonna wear the mask today, not going to wear the mask.' Lyrically I was the one who made it happen. But sometimes David really had to push me vocal-wise. There are places that are hard to get to on your own; there's a fear of it being too close to what's really under there. Like on `Wash My Hands' -- I went as far as I could. But at first I didn't know how to take it there vocally. David helped me make it, and really let everybody hear the real me."

The real Brooks is a Gemini who has "both masculine and feminine qualities pretty well in balance." Symmetry shows up in other places, too. Though her forte is cranky guitar pop, she's also taken with atmospheric music. Plus, she's a metaphysics buff who realizes that pondering is no match for immediacy: there might just be some obvious answers to problems at hand.

To whit: a utilitarian streak shows up on the record. When making "Watched You Fall," Brooks enhanced its mini-fantasia with the crashes of a washing machine lid. "And that cool percussion thing in `My Little Town' was a bunch of us banging on the fireplace," she laughs. "I like to keep a lot of organic sounds around me. That kind of spontaneous stuff makes work fun."

Meredith Brooks appears at Lupo's on Sunday, August 10.