Remember Mary Chapin Carpenter? Mary is your hard-knock, single aunt, the one who is all, “You look like you need a mojito and a trip to the shooting range,” which are probably the last two things on earth you really need, but somehow it works. She’s fiercely political, feminist, whip-smart. She has a generous, pure authenticity, the kind that died for most people somewhere in the 90s. A couple of years ago, Mary almost died of a pulmonary embolism, and then she lost her father, and then she got divorced, and then she picked up her guitar again because she was fifty-fucking-whatever and life goes on.
I grew up with her music, with Mary telling it like it is–but gently, at nice, uncomplicated dinner parties, the kind with pasta and unintentionally mismatched placemats. I’m going to go ahead and argue that everything that went wrong in our lives can be traced back to that foolish moment where we decided we were too cool for adult contemporary country music.
Therefore, I submit: there is no moment in your life so painful that it cannot be made more bearable by a Mary Chapin Carpenter song.
You’re 22 and pulling out of the driveway with a backseat full of trail mix, absolutely convinced that something is going to change–like change is imminent, it’s out there, you’re driving towards it. Somewhere just off the highway in South Dakota. You’ve been sleeping in a single bed shaded by the green hills of Vermont for the past four years. You grew up by the ocean. Seven years from now you’ll live alone for the first time, in an apartment where actual mushrooms protrude from your bathroom ceiling when your upstairs neighbours use the shower, and you will love it and it will feel nothing like home. Mary knows this.
You need: Almost Home (Party Doll and Other Favorites, 1999)
I’m not running, I’m not hiding, I’m not reaching, I’m just resting in the arms of the great wide open.
Even if you didn’t get married at age 21 to a man who wants to keep you down, this is for those days when you worry every tiny choice you didn’t even realize you were making has suddenly locked you to a life you’re really not sure about. The woman in this song leaves her husband at 36 and gets a minimum-wage job in the typing pool (!), and it’s the most awesome act of strength. Why has no one made this into a fabulously empowering movie?
You need: He Thinks He’ll Keep Her (Come On Come On, 1992)
Everything is so benign, safest place you’ll ever find–God forbid you change your mind.
Do you remember those nights when your friends all said, “Let’s go dancing!” and you thought, when in the entire history of the world has anyone ever really wanted to go dancing? And you ended up face-down on the couch, trying to warm up the half bottle of fridge-chilled red wine by sticking it in your oven? That’s when you listen to this song. It’s important to remember that the world is not always your friend, but you can will it to submit. Also, Mary Chapin Carpenter is a badass–she actually PURRS–and somehow makes the lyric “Hot Dog, I feel lucky tonight” sound irrepressibly cool.
You need: I Feel Lucky (Come On Come On, 1992)
Dwight Yoakam’s in the corner, trying to catch my eye. Lyle Lovett’s right beside me with his hand upon my thigh.
Every moment is a decision. Breathing in is a decision, sometimes a very difficult decision, and then you do it, and it feels like a little miracle in your chest. Mary Chapin Carpenter was light-years ahead of the radical vulnerability movement. “Show the world a little light,” she croons. Oh, do.
You need: The Hard Way (Come On Come On, 1992)
We’ve got two lives: one we’re given, and the other one we make.
(Bonus: AMAZING BADASS COUNTRY WOMEN AND SEQUINS in this video.)
Before a date. After a date. During a date. While you’re getting ready for a date and you perform a debilitatingly awkward striptease in your mirror to get revved up. Fuck, any other time works too. This is a great song. Mary gets low and sultry here. She’s been hurt before. Maybe the one person she thought would keep her safe decided to head for the hills and then maybe she went dark, built a little house made of yoga classes and all the fragments of all the silly times she said “yes,” and then maybe years passed and one day she realized how much she missed the feeling of removing her heart from its cave and just sort of looking at it, gutted and fish-red and alive. Maybe.
This is the soundtrack for setting up your first OKCupid profile.
You need: Shut Up and Kiss Me (Stones in the Road, 1994)
Love’s as much the symptom, darlin’, as the cure.
A hideous Entertainment Weekly profile from 1994 (“Country’s favorite folkie examines the sorrows of single life on her latest album”) names Mary “a spokes-singer for the thirtysomething single woman.” Mmmkay. The piece verbally bullies her into tragedy, at one point calling her a “postmodern spinster” (SHE WAS 36 AT THE TIME) for the loneliness she weaves through her music, and you can feel her bucking against this narrative with everything she’s got. “I don’t want to grow old by myself, but I also believe that if it’s going to happen, it will. I can’t force it,” she says, and the writer clucks back in pity. Mary Chapin Carpenter could crush you like a bug, but she has a heart of gold. Mary Chapin Carpenter wants you to know that you are not alone. Mary Chapin Carpenter says sure, maybe you’re no longer 24 and life hasn’t quite played out the way you imagined it would, and sure, maybe there are times you are deprived of some essential functioning, feel the love you have to give against you like a ghost, but Mary Chapin Carpenter will never let you settle for anything less than you deserve.
You need: Passionate Kisses (Come On Come On, 1992)
Shout it out to the night: “Give me what I deserve, cause it’s my right.”
(This is actually a Lucinda Williams cover, but Mary did it harder and better. Sorry.)
