Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned

Why has music documenting female rage captured modern listeners?

Cambridge Dictionary recently named the term “parasocial” as its Word of the Year. The dictionary’s publisher, Cambridge University Press and Association, discussed the selection, citing the trend of fans becoming increasingly infatuated with celebrities — developing “one-sided emotional bonds” with those in the public eye. Specifically, the Association mentioned Taylor Swift and Lily Allen’s recent albums. The pop-cultural impact of these albums appeared so potent that it led to mainstream, academic recognition of parasociality.

The most recent works by Swift and Allen are The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD), The Life of a Show Girl, and West End Girl. Each of these centred on the artists’ love lives. The respective focal points of TTPD and West End Girl take aim at the artists’ ex-partners, brutally airing the ebbs and flows of the relationships. Both ex-partners are individuals in the public eye. Swift’s album targets Matty Healy, lead singer and frontman of The 1975, and West End Girl focuses on the collapse of Allen’s marriage to actor David Harbour.

TTPD takes listeners on a journey through Swift and Healy’s ten-year-long, on-again, off-again situationship, disseminating everything from the height of their relationship to its sudden end. She faced criticism from many — including Healy’s mother — about publicising intimate details of their affair for the masses to consume. By masses, I really do mean masses — surpassing 300 million streams on the day of release, TTPD became the most-streamed album in a single day, breaking the previous record (also held by Swift), then reaching a billion streams within five days.

But Swift wasn’t the first to strike. ‘About You’ (arguably The 1975’s biggest song) is allegedly about Swift. I would challenge anyone to remain nonchalant if the lyrics “We get married in our heads” and "Hold on and hope we find our way back in the end” were written about them, let alone if they were performed in front of thousands and streamed by millions, all to end with being promptly broken up with and ghosted. Despite a temple of discography dedicated to his love for you, you would have to suffer heartbreak in front of millions. An extremely eloquent number-one album implying he’s not a man is almost not enough of a punishment for him.

West End Girl similarly scrutinises the decline and ending of Allen and Harbour’s marriage. It takes listeners on a chronological journey, from Harbour asking to have an open marriage to Allen discovering that the parameters they’ve placed on this relationship have likely been violated. But where Swift disguises the most difficult parts of her relationship in complex metaphors, Allen lays it all out there. Naming the woman she thinks her husband has been having an affair with, discussing how his infidelity makes her want to relapse (Allen is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict), finding a box with letters from ex-girlfriends “wishing you could have been better,” and discovering a receipt from Bergdorf Goodman's for a handbag, dated when Allen was in London. Not much room for subtlety in “Duane Reade bag with the handles tied, sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside.” 

These are merely the latest in the pantheon of artistry by scorned women. ‘Silver Springs,’ a B-side Fleetwood Mac song from the ‘70s, which didn't elicit much mainstream attention upon its release, has made a comeback. The epitome of revenge, Stevie Nicks addresses her ex-lover, Lindsey Buckingham, in brutally beautiful lyrics, cursing him to always be haunted by her memory. The cherry on top, of course, is that Buckingham was the lead guitarist in Fleetwood Mac and was forced to perform on stage with her.

The timeless nature of these revenge anthems (or albums) shows how strongly they resonate with so many. So why do these songs, as opposed to upbeat love songs, remain so streamed, so ubiquitous in cultures for which they were not originally designed?

Well, as we all know, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. A line as true today as it was when it was written 400 years ago. This phrase has echoed down the ages, finding fertile ground in the twenty-first century, the first time in history when women are enshrined in law as equal to men. 

A woman speaking out against a man who wronged her does not just speak for herself, but for all women. This music resonates with us so much because the artists are not just speaking for themselves — they are speaking for all women who have been wronged by those who established and perpetuate the system to oppress us.

Illustration from Wikimedia Commons